You may notice things look a little…different…around here.
They’re going to look even more different-er soon because I am super duper not in love with this theme that I mistakenly ended up applying to the site.
Sooo…yeah. Bear with me while I tear my hair out and try to find a set-up I actually like.
Why do I do these things to myself?
Ugh.
Barf.
We have this neighbor named Steve.
Well, Steve might not actually BE his name, but that’s what we call him.
He also technically might be a “her” rather than a “him”. It’s hard to tell, honestly…
…because Steve is a chipmunk.
The Steve Saga started back last summer. Our actual human neighbor, Gary, has his mailbox affixed to this antique standing scale. One day last summer I was walking Junior, Professional Harsher of Mellows, down our road. As we rounded the corner by Gary’s mailbox, a chipmunk came barreling out of the underbrush growing along the edge of the lawn and dove straight under the platform part of the scale that the mailbox is attached to.
Ever since then, Junior has been OBSESSED with the platform. He let up over the winter while the chipmunk was hibernating, but this spring when things started thawing out, Junie was right back at it – sniffing, digging and making tiny angry Wookie noises every time he got near the platform.
Mark decided the chipmunk needed a name a few weeks back, so he started referring to him as Steve.
It wouldn’t have been a problem if not for the fact that I have this terrible habit of talking to the dog while I walk him. Not just general guidance like “good boy” and “no, don’t eat poop”, but often fairly extensive one-sided conversations.
I mean, Junie never actually answers me BACK, so that’s a step in the right direction, but it’s still probably somewhat disconcerting for the neighbors to look out their windows at 7am and see me wandering around mumbling in a sing-songy voice about how Steve’s not home and can’t take your call right now but if you leave your name and a brief message…
…yeah.
“Do veef nuff mek mah mouf wook faf?” – Steve the chipmunk
Last night while I was making the bed (right before getting into it, because I’m at least semi-adult…when it’s convenient…), my husband walked into the room wrapped in a towel. He had just been in the bath and was searching around for a pair of underwear to put on. Once located, he dropped his towel and stepped into said underwear. Then, looking especially thoughtful, he turned to help me make the bed while asking:
“Do you ever find that, when you’re coming up the stairs and the bathroom door is open, you catch yourself doing little mini T-rex arms at your reflection in the bathroom mirror as you walk?”
I stopped and looked at him, one eyebrow raised. Random questions involving dinosaurs are normally my wheelhouse, not his. I mean, it’s not like a private wheelhouse or anything…but, you know.
“Err…no. I can’t say as I’ve ever done that”, I replied, and fluffed the pillows on my side of the bed.
As if I hadn’t said anything, he continued on in his thoughtful tone while straightening the corner of the quilt purposefully.
“And by mini T-rex arms, I mean like, full-on T-rex arms, basically. Like, RAWR RAWR I’M A T-REX.”
In that moment, I had two thoughts.
The first was that every once in a while the Universe reaffirms that I’m spending my life with the absolute right person.
The second was that I was NEVER going to be able to go up those motherfucking stairs again without at least considering doing T-rex arms at my reflection in the bathroom mirror.
This week has been a long mental slog. April showers might bring May flowers, but they’re depressing the fuck out of me in the process. I need to see the sun again – preferably when the wind ISN’T blowing 30mph at the same time, so that I could actually enjoy it.
It’s not just the weather. My brain has a basic pattern of fuckery that I’m fairly used to and can track with relative accuracy, but it also likes to keep things interesting by serving me the occasional giant steaming mental shit sandwich on top of that.
Mmm. Beefy. Also, pro-tip: don’t Google Image Search “shit sandwich”. Like, ever. I did it for you to confirm that it is, in fact, a very bad idea. You’re welcome.
Unfortunately, sending said shit sandwich back to the kitchen isn’t really an option, so I’m left with either ignoring it or trying to work my way through it.
Ignoring it just makes it stink more, trust me. It’s like a cat-box that needs changing. You keep putting it off and eventually your whole house, all your clothes, everything is going to smell like piss and people are going to start to notice. When the smell of piss starts keeping you from doing your job or keeps you away from people you’d like to spend time with, then it’s probably a problem that merits addressing.
Unless you’re an independently wealthy hermit, anyway. In which case, congratulations on living the dream, my friend.
ANYWAY.
That leaves me with working my way through the shit sandwich instead.
And so, I slog.
Twitter is kind of beyond me.
I have an account (@Alpacalypse5), but 99% of my posts are Instagram photos and links to posts that I write here on the blog. Succinctness (is that even a word? Spellcheck says it is, so suck it) isn’t my strong suit to begin with, and that little character-count in the bottom right corner of the Twitter posting screen just fills me with dread. Plenty of people are really good at being very funny and/or profound in 140 characters or less, but my heart probably couldn’t take the amount of Adderall I’d need to be included in their ranks.
Could you imagine, though? Going out in a blaze of Adderall-fueled viral tweet glory? My obituary would be like:
“In search of that one golden moment of virality, Shelby took a whole handful of prescribed ADHD meds, wrote what is now considered the Best Tweet Known To Mankind, then dropped dead of a massive coronary. She is survived by her husband and dog, who are both pretty fucking annoyed that she didn’t stock the fridge with sandwiches before she croaked.”
And then the obituary editor would be like, “Frank, virality totally isn’t a word” and Frank the obituary writer would be like, “Fuck you, Steve. You’re always so negative. You know what? I’m sick of this dead-end job, and that’s not even a pun. I’M OUT.” And then, in the final cruel twist of irony, Frank’s flouncing would knock my half-written obituary into the recycling bin next to his desk, never to be finished. The author of the Best Tweet Known To Mankind wouldn’t even have an obituary to be remembered by and her memory would fade into the ether as quickly as, well, a non-famous person’s tweets…
…
…wow, I got kind of lost in that one.
ANYWAY.
What I came here to say was that I’m going to try to be better at actively tweeting instead of just lurking, so feel free to follow me if you want.
Also, if you’re super confused right now, it’s totally ok. I am too, and I wrote this shit. Sometimes you have to just go with it.
Acid reflux, huh? I feel your pain, birdie.
I bought some grapes while grocery shopping on Sunday.
It was a mistake.
The grapes themselves are fine – it’s me that’s the problem.
You know those awful memes you see on Facebook where someone buys a bag of grapes and then notices there’s a GIANT FUCKING SPIDER in the bag?
Yeah.
Those things haunt my dreams. I’ve always been vehemently anti-spider (or, anti-spiders-in-my-space, I should say. I have no problem with spiders who respect my personal boundaries), but those spider-in-the-grape-bag memes have fucking scarred me for life.
Except, I forget things a lot (due in large part to the inside of my head constantly being like a freshly shaken snow globe. The snow being thoughts, not cocaine. Just so we’re clear…ish…), so sometimes the things that have scarred me for life kind of take a little while to bubble back to the surface and become Big Fucking Issues…
…which is how I ended up with a 3-pound bag of grapes on my kitchen counter that I subsequently spent quite a lot of time eyeing suspiciously, examining for signs of movement and/or arachnid legs.
THEN I started thinking about how the grapes had been in the house long enough that any spider living in them had probably crawled out by now and made a home behind my fridge or something. MOTHER. FUCKERS. At that point I began contemplating the feasibility of nuking the entire site from orbit. But, nuking would have meant having to move in with my parents until we found a new place which, at 36 years old and newly bankrupt from having bought a nuclear weapon, seemed…less than ideal.
My husband finally saved the day (albeit unwittingly) by breaking into the bag of grapes and eating like half of them yesterday while I was at work. When I noticed he’d been eating them, I told him how I bought them and then couldn’t make myself put my hand in the bag because of the spiders and how the grapes were all too close to each other in the bag so I couldn’t see, like, AROUND the grapes enough to be sure that there wasn’t actually some kind of lethal (or at least super hairy) spider in there, and how I was relieved that he had finally eaten some so now I could see they were safe and eat some too, but also that I felt kind of guilty for thinking that because I didn’t purposefully WANT him to eat unsafe grapes but I appreciated that he (again, unwittingly) took one for the team. So to speak.
I think he probably stopped listening somewhere around “internet memes of spiders”, because he’s known me a really long time and that’s usually where things start going downhill quickly for me.
ANYWAY.
I managed to nut up and take some of the grapes to work with me for lunch today. They were OK, but they weren’t really worth all the mental turmoil they caused. I think I’ll stick with apples. Or pears. Fruit that I can see completely around and inspect thoroughly before consumption. And if any of you assholes send me memes about spider-infected apples, we’re done. DONE, you hear me?!
Also, side note to any Federal agents who may have been led to this site by Internet bot scanners (don’t lie, it’s a thing. I’m not paranoid, you’re paranoid) picking up the phrase “bought a nuclear weapon” , chillax. If I had that kind of money, I’d be in a secret bunker, covered in puppies, drinking high-end merlot through the longest twisty-straw I could find, and paying a group of scientists to come up with a coating for Cheetos that doesn’t stain your fingers. PRIORITIES, YO.
Normal adults can do that, right? Just roll into the grocery store and buy what they need without having a premeditated list (preferably written out in sections, in order of the their preferred route through the aisles)? And they come home with the stuff they ACTUALLY need, not a farraginous assortment of shiny bits and pieces that seemingly called to them across the aisles?
I keep buying toilet paper, though. It’s becoming a problem.
We don’t have a bathroom closet or linen closet or whatever – if I overflow the under-sink cabinet, I’m going to have to start stashing TP in our bedroom or the spare bedroom.
And that seems…weird.
Even to ME.
This picture came from www.toiletpaperworld.com.I, for one, feel better knowing that this website exists.
My office is on the second floor of an old converted farmhouse. There are a couple other tenants with spaces on the second floor as well – some guy that I’m pretty sure is a mad Internet scientist (he’s the one with the dog), and a lady who teaches Pilates classes.
Obviously, because the Pilates lady is teaching classes, there’s a fair amount of traffic up and down the stairs and in our little hallway some mornings and afternoons. For the most part the people that come for the Pilates classes are no big deal, although for a while there was one that would always wear so much perfume that it would throw me into a migraine or an asthma attack whenever she showed up.
There was also The Groaner – a guy who would make the most hilariously awful sounds during his sessions on the Pilates Reformer machine thing. It seriously sounded like he was making geriatric Pilates porn in there. Which, don’t Google that…just assume it exists and move on with your life untainted.
Anyway.
So, there’s one bathroom on the second floor. It’s a little half-bath like you’d find in a home, not an industrial multi-stall deal. Normally that’s perfectly adequate, as when it’s just the people from my company working up there, we number only four. Sometimes somebody from our downstairs office will sneak up and use our bathroom if they know they’re going to lay a particularly stinky egg, but whatever. Still adequate for the number of employees, and we seldom experience any kind of toilet traffic drama.
At least, until the Pilates people show up.
There are the ones that use our bathroom as their changing room, the ones that just need a quick pee before or after class…and then there’s Doorknob Jiggler.
First of all, I don’t know if DJ is always on the verge of pissing herself or what, but she never even slows down long enough to notice that the bathroom door is closed and the fan is running. She just always makes a beeline straight from the doorway of the Pilates room to the bathroom (which is like three steps) and bodily throws herself at the bathroom door. Maybe her bathroom door at home is made of solid mahogany and is really heavy so she’s just used to having to heave her whole weight against it to move it? All I know is that it’s terrifying to be sitting there on the toilet when she gets out of class because you’d swear it was a fucking battering ram coming through that door.
Second of all, if DJ encounters a close and locked door, rather than saying to herself “oh there’s someone in there, I’ll hang out in the hall and wait my turn”, she will, in fact, start jiggling the doorknob. Further, if she jiggles the doorknob and you don’t immediately say something to let her know you’re in there, she will assume that the door is somehow mistakenly jammed shut (again, the fan and light are both on if someone is in there. You can see the light around the edges of the door and you can hear the fan halfway down the hall), and will start turning the knob and start battering the door bodily again.
This afternoon was one such situation. There I was, spending some quality time with my Instagram feed while enjoying the tranquil confines of the bathroom, when suddenly I heard someone coming. I didn’t think much of it until the first loud BANG as she heaved against the door.
“Shit“, I thought…”it’s DJ and she sounds like she means business“.
Apparently the split second I took in self-dialog was too long for her liking because the doorknob jiggling started almost immediately.
“Occupied” I said, trying to sound friendly but, you know…busy. I put my phone down on the counter, wiped, stood up, and jumped as she banged into the door AGAIN!
“Be right out” I said, not trying for anything less than terse this time. I washed my hands, dried them, put my phone in my pocket, reached for the slide-latch on the door to unlatch it…and found that DJ had in fact bashed into the door so aggressively that it had jammed the motherfucking latch. She started jiggling the doorknob again just about then and I was done with her shit.
“HOLD ON. The latch is jammed.”
I could hear her muttering on the other side of the door but I took the high road and ignored it – mostly due to the fact that I was dealing with mounting panic over being permanently stuck in the bathroom, I’ll be completely honest.
After a couple of tries, I finally got the slide-latch thingy to unlock and the door swung open. DJ stood there in the hallway with an accusatory glare on her face and basically SHOVED past me into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.
I silently wished in that moment that she would sit down on the toilet and discover she had pin worms. Or some other kind of anal-itch-causing malady. Basically, I really wanted her to feel like she needed to drag her ass across a nice rough carpet. Preferably with a bunch of people watching and trying to get her to hurry up because they wanted to use the carpet themselves. Although who would want to use a carpet after someone butt-dragged on it, I don’t know. But still. You get my point.
Like, the guy who is giving away a whole bunch of dowels. I can see needing maybe A dowel, maybe even two….but what would you DO with dozens of dowels? Build a yurt, maybe? I don’t know if dowels even figure in to yurt construction, I’m just spit-balling.
Or, the person trying to unload six gallons of unused battery acid. What? Just…why? Why does a normal person in a tiny town in rural New Hampshire need six fucking gallons of BATTERY ACID, unless they’re going to like…I don’t even know. Build a big battery, I guess? OR DISSOLVE A WHOLE BUNCH OF BODY PARTS. I’m just saying.
“Chairlift for Sale”.
(Also worth noting, by the way: I have no garden, nor do I have any significant amount of lawn of my own. We rent, and we live in kind of rural version of an apartment complex where there are a bunch of fields and lawns around us, but we don’t actually OWN any of them.I would have literally nowhere to put any kind of bench, chair-lift or otherwise.)
“Two outdoor elite straight rail stairlifts for sale”
Stairlifts?! Those aren’t fucking CHAIRLIFTS. WTF, person who wrote the ad. The headline CLEARLY said”Chairlifts For Sale”, not “Stairlifts For Sale”. I went back and checked three times because even though I know I’m crazy and I’m mostly at peace with that, I feel like I still have fairly reasonable reading comprehension skills.
I mean, granted, I could have actually read the ad itself, realized what it was being sold, saved myself the excitement over planning a chairlift garden bench for my non-existent garden and the SUBSEQUENT DEBILITATING DISAPPOINTMENT OF WATCHING THAT DREAM GO DOWN THE DRAIN…but on the same token, YOU could have been more clear in your headline, ad-writer.
Way more clear.
You probably have to pay more for the Majestic Dog option. Picture courtesy of Fire On Demand, who actually MAKE these babies, along with super cool fire pits. This is not a sponsored ad placement, by the way. I just really liked this picture and wanted to give credit where it was due.
So there.
My dog can harsh anyone’s mellow.
Seriously. The Dalai fucking Lama could roll up in here, my dog would lose his shit because, OMG stranger danger, and the Dalai Lama would be like, “Shit, dog…you’re SHRILL”. And after five whole minutes of the drama that is Junior’s carrying the fuck on, the Dalai Lama would be like, “I can just sit with a lot of annoying things and be at peace with them but your dog is way too much. I gotta go.”
Or …who’s more laid back than the Dalai Lama?
OMG, I HAVE IT.
Matthew fucking McConaughey! My dog could harsh stoned-ass Mr. “Alright Alright Alriiiiight” Matthew McConaughey’s mellow, I swear to you.
Nice, uhh…belt buckle.
Sidenote: Mr. McConaughey, if you’re reading this and you want to test the theory, please do feel free to stop by. I make excellent brownies and I’m definitely a fan. A big…BIG fan.
Ahem.
Anyway, WTF was I talking about before I got distracted by Matthew McConaughey?
Oh, right. My dog being a shit.
So, I’m laying on my back starfish-style in the middle of the living room floor this evening (I TOLD you things get weird when my husband isn’t home), attempting to meditate. It didn’t actually start out as attempted meditation, by the way. It started out as attempted yoga to try and coax the GIANT KNOT OF EVIL out of my back. Which, that sort of worked but sort of didn’t because the original giant knot of evil kind of eased off but then two other places started to seize up on me while I was laying on the floor. Which was why I was laying starfish-style on the living room floor to begin with – because basically, I couldn’t get up.
SO, while I was stuck down there, I figured I might as well close my eyes and try to meditate for a little bit. Or more to the point, “sit with the pain”, as they say. Those fucking sadists.
So, again, laying on the floor on my back, arms and legs akimbo. Eyes closed, taking nice deep breaths. Calming breaths. Quiet breaths. So quiet. So calm. Everything is smoothing out, things are coming down a few notches all by themselves. Things are OK. I’m whole, I’m at peace, I am a denizen of the motherfucking light…
…and then the shit hits the fan.
“AAAAAAA-RRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!”
The dog was three inches from my head when he let out with this full-throat war cry of doom. Also, keep in mind that he’s a tiny dog – he weighs like 10lbs and is smaller than most house cats – so it’s not like a regular sized dog’s howl. It’s as if someone took the tiniest miniature wolf imaginable, gave it several hits of helium…and then stepped on its tail. (Side note: if you like puppies, do yourself a favor and search “tiny howl” on YouTube when you’ve got like an hour or three to spare. I assure you, you will not be disappointed. Case in point. Also, that video is not at ALL what my dog’s howl sounds like, unfortunately.)
“AAAAAAA-RRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! ARRRR ARRRRR ARRRR-OOOO!”
Three. Inches. From my head. After ten whole minutes of blissful silence and falling deeper and deeper into a concentrated state of mellow (which, as I’m sure you’re aware, does not come easily to those with teh ADHD and anxiety). It was like someone dumping a bucket of ice water on a sleeping person. Much spluttering and swearing ensued.
What set him off? WHO FUCKING KNOWS. It certainly wasn’t a knock at the door or a car in the driveway or any other even remotely reasonable thing. Maybe a mouse farted three houses over. Maybe the wind blew in the scent of the Dreaded Neighbor Cats. Maybe it was the exact moment when Mercury hit the 7th house of Libra with Pluto ascendant. This is legit how capricious my dog is. There doesn’t even HAVE to be a reason for him to sound the alarm. It’s like he’ll sit there and think to himself, “You know, I haven’t scared the shit out of the humans with my sudden blood-curdling howls lately. Maybe I’ll let one rip right…NOW”, and he’s off.
So, suffice to say, my mellow was harshed quite suddenly and thoroughly.
“Not a single one of the six people that read this blog are going to believe you, Mahm. I have stolen all their souls through the Internet and turned them all against you.” -Junior T. Armitage
How Bad Can It Go? 