Friday morning rant

Please allow me to rant this morning. It is Friday and has been a long week and I spend too much time in the car listening to talk radio and am stressed out on the verge of major decisions in my life. And I haven’t slept enough.

Here are the things that have me ranting this morning.

#1 I read an article this morning about how the state of Michigan is going to have to cancel 100 road projects originally slated for 2011 because they are experiencing a shortfall of $84 million dollars in their budget. Really? Could it be because half the state is unemployed and people are leaving the state in droves and the city of Detroit is a shadow of its once booming self? Is it me or when your income is reduced, you should also reduce your spending? It seems obvious to me that the state would have to cut some spending somewhere to make up for the loss of revenue. Not rocket science. It just seems like everything I turn around I am reading about another local government that is bankrupt or on the verge of it. The state of California, the city of Detroit. Come on, how hard is this concept? Less money coming in, less money going out.

#2 President Obama said in a speech this week that at some point some people have made “enough money.” Can someone tell me how much is enough money? Because I’ve got to tell you, I don’t think I will ever have enough money. I understand that some people have more money than I could even ever imagine, but oh fucking well. Maybe Michigan should confiscate some of that money to pay for the $84 million shortfall in their road construction budget. That would be the fairest thing to do, I mean you should see some of the houses around here. They’re huge and the people living in them are obviously gluttons and have more money than they know what to do with.

#3 Right now, there is a case going on in the county I live in where a 4 year old boy was beaten to death over the course of 4 days by his mother’s live-in boyfriend as a punishment for wetting his pants while sitting on the couch. It turns out that not only had the mother come and gone from the apartment over the course of the beatings, but several other people had as well and while a couple of them mentioned that she should take the boy to the hospital, none of them called the police or 911 or anything (including the mother). It makes me ill. Both the boyfriend and the mother are being charged with murder, but the defense attorney for the guy is running around saying that he (the pos boyfriend) is actually a schizophrenic and that the county knew about it and that they didn’t do anything to help. And now the attorney for the mother is asking for her to have a psych evaluation (to see if she is fit to stand trial). Both of these individuals have multiple drug convictions in their past and apparently one of the reasons that the mother didn’t want to take the boy to the hospital is because she didn’t want her parole officer to find out that she had moved. So my rant about this is that obviously both people are some sort of mentally disturbed, but the bottom line is that he barbarically beat a little boy to death (just to horrify you further, he burned the boys hands and feet, kicked him in the abdomen and head and poked his eyes and I’m guessing there is more detail that hasn’t been released yet) and the mother out of whatever sort of fucked up self-absorption or apathy or drug haze stood by and did nothing about it. So, let’s stop this crap with the “why oh why did these people do this?” and get on with their trial. Quite frankly, I don’t really care if they are both crazy as loons, they killed a little boy. Put them away and throw away the key and be done with it.

And, that’s all I have to say about that.

Kids and work haikus (harder than you think)

Made kids wash dishes
They are whining about it
Have no sympathy

Sitting at my desk
My oatmeal tastes like soap
I’ll eat it anyway

Long drive in today
Feel like I live in my car
Lottery ticket?

I have a meeting
The 17th one this week
Such a waste of time

Hormones aren't a girls best friend

This weekend two events happened to coincide. #1, The weather was dreary beyond belief, all weekend. The sun never made an appearance and it was kind of cold and it rained several times. And #2, I was suffering from PMS. Therefore, in general, I was cranky and irritable and mostly wanted to lay on the couch watching movies like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory the Gene Wilder version, not the lame Tim Burton/Johnny Depp monstrosity and Where the Heart is which is the fabulous story where a young pregnant Natalie Portman lives in the local Wal-Mart until she gives birth, and Somewhere in Time because we are going to be going to the Grand Hotel and I need to watch it every time before we go, and also it is a wonderful chick flick that I can get my husband to watch because it involves time travel.

I only got to watch Willy Wonka. There were a couple reasons for this, one being that it had come to my attention that my husband had never seen Fight Club and Netflix delivered, so I had to acquiesce and watch that.

Some social obligations (baby shower and man-b-que) kept us from just staying in all weekend. Also, 14 almost 15 year old boy stayed home again this weekend (I actually cannot remember the last time he went to his mom’s for the weekend). I can’t bring myself to tell him he has to go, but if there was ever a weekend I should have done that, it was this one. He is not a bad kid, but he is 14 almost 15 and he is COOL. Being COOL manifests itself in a variety of ways, the most common involve making comments that are funny to the 14 almost 15 year old but no one else, having aforementioned comment for everything which sound strangely like back talking and playing drums on everything that is stationary. Combine the teenage coolness with my PMS and you have a recipe for “demonstrate to your 14 almost 15 year old that you wrote the book on sarcasm and that if he wants to spar, you most certainly are going to win.”

By the time we started winding down last night, I was feeling tired and blue and dreading coming to work this morning. I started questioning every decision that I have ever made and feeling like nothing in my life is good. Of course, I can step outside of myself enough to know that this is the hormones talking and that in a day or two (or a minute or two!) I will feel better. But I have to ask why this happens. Does anyone else think that hormonal mood swings and PMS seem to be a design flaw of women?

What!? I'm a Secretary?

Today is Administrative Professional Day. I realized this last night about 6:30 which required an emergency trip to Bath and Body Works to get gifts for my two assistants and Dave’s assistant. I don’t really like Bath and Body Works, but in the town I live in, there aren’t a lot of options at 7:30 on a weeknight that doesn’t require driving 25 minutes. I would rather have gotten gift certificates for a swanky restaurant or an upscale store at the mall, but I did manage to scrape together some decent gifts from the old BBW.

(Sidenote: My senior year of college, I worked at the Bath and Body Works in the Mounds Mall. On my breaks, I used to eat the hell out of the pepperoni breadsticks at Luca Pizza along with a giant cherry coke and I wonder why I was fat in college.)

So I got the gifts and was dismayed to discover that the only Hallmark store in town has gone belly up and was boarded up. So I had to run to Kohl’s to find gift bags to wrap the decent gifts I managed to scrape up from the BBW. I was happy to discover that Kohl’s entire gift bag stock has been marked down 50%, but worried that means they won’t be carrying gift wrap anymore. Where the frick am I going to buy wrapping paper now? Might this require me to actually plan ahead when gift giving? That might be a problem for me.

All the running around for Administrative Professionals Day caused an involuntary trip down memory lane. Please come with me to a time approximately 12 years ago. I had graduated from college with a Bachelor’s degree in English and a minor in writing. I was aimless and unfocused and had no idea what sort of career I should pursue or even what I wanted. I was 22 years old and after some long painful months of unemployment, I landed a job at USA TODAY. Now you would think based on my degree that I would be doing some sort of writing or something that anything to do with that, but no. No, I my position was titled “Customer Service Associate” or “Customer Service Coordinator” or something like that. I was taking phone calls from home delivery customers who had complaints about their service along with a sundry of other office related tasks. It wasn’t exactly my dream job, but since I wasn’t really quite sure what my dream job was, I went with it.

12 years ago Administrative Professionals Day was known by a different name. You might remember it. It was called Secretary’s Day. Okay, to recap, it is 12 years ago. I am working at USA TODAY. I have a degree but no direction. I started there in March and it is now April. 12 years ago. I am about 22 years old. I don’t like my job and am dealing with the letdown of clawing my way through 4 years of college only to find that I feel even more aimless than when I started only now I am $15,000 in debt with student loans and I making about $11/hr. Oh and I was driving a purple Ford Escort (a color I did not pick out but that is another story). It is Secretary’s Day and I come to work to find that I have been given flowers. Because I am a secretary. I didn’t know I was a secretary until that day and I called my mom blubbering. Oh my God, if I could travel back in time and slap that little girl upside the head. I would have told her to quit that fucking job and go find something that she loved to do and do it. I also would have told her to stay away from that guy (you know what guy I’m talking about).

That was not a good day. And now you know way too much about me.

Cleanliness is next to what?

We got home from vacation last Thursday and I am ashamed to admit that both of our suitcases are sitting on the bed in the spare bedroom open with clothes half unpacked and strewn about the room. I find that the spare bed has become more of another place for me to stash overflow clothes rather than a place for guests to sleep and in fact, the only time the bed gets cleared off is approximately one hour before we have a guest over.

I have a. lot. of. clothes. It is ridiculous. Plus it is that time of year when I need to put the winter clothes away and get the rest of the summer stuff out. If I try to keep everything out all year, there isn’t enough room in my closet and bedroom furniture for everything. There is also an enormous amount of clutter in my nightstand drawers (books I read over a year ago, pictures, magazines, etc….), which if cleared, could provide an extra amount of space. But do you think I have jumped on that bandwagon yet? No, of course not. Because every night when I drag my sorry self home from this shit hole I call an office, the last thing I want to do is start organizing and trying to make the decision as to what I should get rid of. Maybe I need to watch an episode of Hoarders to inspire me.

The other problem (I am full of excuses) is that I made a very very poor purchase of bedroom furniture when I was about 22. After I got out of college and moved back home to my parents house (not the best decision I ever made) I found myself unable to tolerate my childhood bedroom set which happened to be off-white with shiny brass trim that I once found beautiful and irresistible. So I got the bright idea that I would purchase a nice new bedroom set which I purchased interest free from a local furniture store and also happened to be solid oak and to call it huge would be an understatement. It was the floor model set so I got a really good deal and it included a headboard, footboard, dresser with tri-fold mirror, a nightstand and the biggest chest of drawers you have ever seen. It is three drawers across and about 7 or 8 rows high and it holds a lot of shit.

The problem is that, with the exception of the bedroom at my parents house, I have never been able to fit the damn thing in any bedroom. It wouldn’t fit at my condo and when we bought our house, it sure wouldn’t fit in our bedroom. I hate it and I want to take a chainsaw and hack it up into little pieces and burn them one by one. It sat in my parent’s garage for years until, when we were moving into our current house, my dad seized the opportunity to force me to take delivery of it. Did I mention that it does fit in Sam’s room? Since he has no real bedroom set and only a twin bed, we were able to wedge it in there and now he has lots of space to store all his clothes and other little odds and ends. Did I mention the thing is solid oak and weighs about 700 lbs (that might be a slight exaggeration, but it is f'ing heavy!) even with the drawers all pulled out of it?

I tried to sell the whole set a few years ago and Sam had a fit. Apparently he has bonded with the damn thing and now he refuses to part with it. So that leaves me a piece short in my bedroom and since I have to split the drawers in the dresser with Dave, I have a lot of overflow when it comes to clothes storage. Since I am avoidant when it comes to difficult decisions (like getting rid of clothes), I tend to just pile things up in the spare bedroom and shut the door.

Okay, I’m getting depressed typing this. I had repressed the trauma of the giant dresser and actually was not thinking of it when I started this post. I thought I had made peace with the situation, but it turns out I haven’t. It’s a catch-22. If I don’t sell the existing set, I can’t afford to buy a new set. My husband doesn’t care if our room is an unfinished hodge podge and every time I bring up buying a new set, he poo-poos it.

I wonder if he’ll will show me how to use the chainsaw this weekend……

10,000 years can give you such a crick in the neck!

I snoozed for an hour and a half this morning. I think it goes without saying that I am having a hard time getting back on schedule from our vacation. All I can think about is sleep. I can’t get enough caffeine in my system and I had to go reload my Starbucks card. $4.08 triple grande lattes will eat up your balance so quick and they are only good for a half a day’s energy. Does anyone else notice that their pee smells like coffee after drinking Starbucks coffee or any strong coffee for that matter? Oh no? No one else? Well, me either. I just made that up ;)

In other news, B-girl has been at her mom’s house this week (spring break) so it was been pretty quiet around our house. Sam is still there, but he is a lot less in your face than Becca.

I booked the Grand Hotel vacation I was talking about previously and I am so excited! I can’t wait to tell Becca when she gets home. She is going to be so excited. As you can see, I am doing everything I can to pass on my extravagant travel bug to her. Uh oh!

Vegas Report

We’re back from Vegas. Actually we got back last Thursday night, but two things have kept me from posting. #1 I have been recuperating and #2 We came home to find that our wireless router had died, therefore no internet on my laptop. I hijacked Dave’s computer since he has broadband service, but I ran out of time before I could complete anything.

So here’s the skinny on Vegas. This was our first time there and it was pretty much like we expected. In short, it was crazy. We had fun, but it was not relaxing. Also, two events occurred that put a little damper on the trip.

#1 I sprained my foot. I use the word sprain not as any sort of technical medical diagnosis, but instead because I don’t know what else to call it. All I know is that I did something to my heel the first full day we were there which prevented me from walking on it for the rest of the trip. That kind of sucked, but I hobbled around anyway. And we took a few more cab rides than we normally would. A little heartbreaking as I adore walking, but I’m over it (kind of) (okay, truthfully, I am trying not to be bitter about it)

#2 On our last night there, Wednesday night, I came down with either a wicked case of food poisoning or the stomach flu and was violently (and I mean violently) sick all night long. Ya’ll this is the sickest I ever remember being in my life and compounded by the fact that I was in a hotel, it left me begging for mercy. We considered staying an extra day because we weren’t sure if I would be able to leave the hotel or to board a plane. But I desperately wanted to go home and I think it was by sheer will that I stopped puking about an hour before we had to leave for the airport. It was not pretty and God bless my sainted husband who carried all our bags and supported me through the pain of airport check in and security. Sidenote: because of the 6 hours of puking and my completely empty stomach, I was afraid to take any Motrin which is what I had been using to numb the pain in my foot all week. So that left my foot throbbing and me only able to hobble my pathetic self through the airports in both Las Vegas and Detroit. That was the longest flight of my life.

Not to say that we did not have some fun. We went to some nifty clubs (which made me feel old and why didn’t anyone tell me that I was supposed to buy a dress that only fell 1 inch below the bottom of my butt cheeks. I was very overdressed. And by overdressed, I mean that my dress feel well below by ass but well above my knees), we ate some good food (with the exception of possibly Wednesday night’s dinner – the jury is still out on if it was food poisoning or the flu), and we kept some good company (our friends over the weekend and my parents during the week). We also saw the Hoover Dam, the aquarium at Mandalay Bay and “O” the most amazing Cirque de Soleil show at the Bellagio. Things we did not see that one or both of us wanted to see but we just ran out of time, The Erotica Museum (Dave), The Titanic Exhibition at the Luxor (me), Peepshow with Holly from Girls Next Door (Me), A titty bar (Dave), The Venetian (me).

So Vegas left me kind of exhausted. I would post some pictures for you, but in my usual fashion, I kept forgetting to take the camera with me on our excursions, except for the Hoover Dam. Dave had the camera for most of that, so I am guessing that when I do get the pictures off of the camera, there will be about 100 pictures of the dam with no people in it. We’ll see, maybe he’ll surprise me.