My First Rant of ’09

Walmart is not my friend this week. Well, really, I can’t blame Walfart…it’s not the corporation that I’m fed up with, it’s the ignorant, common senseless, rude, annoying customers and employees that are causing my ire.

I should have know it was going to be a bad day when I got in the car and yelled, “I hate everything”. Not a good way to start the day. Oh, did I mention, I’m premenstrual. Yeah. That explains it all. So, as I pull into the Walfart parking lot I’m quite happy to find a fairly decent parking spot seeing as we have a billion tons of snow and negative wind chills. I pull into the spot and start to exit the vehicle. I hear a horn honking but think nothing of it. I hear it again and again, getting more frantic and louder. I then realize that the honking is coming from a minivan that is reversing toward me as I get out of my car. The minivan pulls right up next to me and my daughter as we begin our trudge to the store. And what do we see? A psychotic female driver, one hand still on the horn, the other flailing wildly in the air as she mouths something I cannot understand. She continues to yell and point at my car. I realize what she is trying to tell me through the rolled up windows of her minivan. I took her parking spot. WHAT? Seriously lady? She continues to scream “YOU TOOK MY SPOT”, without ever rolling down her window. I’m completely fired up at this point and scream right back at her “LADY, YOU WERE HALFWAY UP THE ROW. I DIDN’T EVEN SEE YOUR VEHICLE UNTIL YOU ALMOST RAN ME OVER! I’M NOT A MIND READER. I DIDN’T REALIZE THIS SPOT HAD YOUR NAME ON IT.” My child starts snickering and I grab her by the arm and we head toward the store. The frickin’ lady starts beeping her horn AT ME AGAIN. Oh man, I was SO ready to turn and run at her vehicle and offer her some more words of advice. But, I bit my tongue and walked away seeing as the little one was with me. And guess what mini 2LD tells me to do? She says, “Give it to her Mom…give her the finger!” The woman sat in her vehicle for a few moments…I think she actually thought I was going to climb back into my car and offer up the spot. Ha. Not so much. When she finally realized she was out of luck she sped past us, still yelling and flailing.

Now, I’m thoroughly annoyed and don’t quite feel like shopping but I’m on a mission. I need paint for my bedroom walls because, you see, I found a picture in Pottery Barn of these lovely brown walls and I decided I just HAD to have that color…TODAY. Thing is, the Pottery Barn paint is Benjamin Moore paint. We all know I’m little miss thrift and I’m certainly not going to spend $30 on a gallon of paint – especially when I’m only going to paint two walls. So, smarty me – I go to the Benjamin Moore store, get a swatch of the color I want and take that swatch to Walmart so the paint person can color match it. Wooooo!…..saving me about $17.  I’ve had a custom color made before, it’s no big deal; the swatch is scanned and the computer comes up with a match. I proceed to have ‘Larry’ the paint guy make me my oh-so-lovely brown custom color. Apparently, it was Larry’s first day with the color match system. The color that Larry reveals when he opens the can makes both me and my daughter cringe. It’s not brown. Oh, no. It’s a washed-out sort of cranberry color. I explain that I will certainly not be painting my bedroom walls red, to which Larry replies, “It’s a custom color, you have to take it.” I respond, “The color you’ve made does not MATCH, and doesn’t even come close to the color on the swatch that I brought in so I would certainly hope I wouldn’t be required to purchase it.” Larry’s response, “Well, then you can go argue with my manager about it.” Me (trying very hard not to yell),  “Oh, you bet I will, just point me in his direction”.

I guess Larry didn’t feel like getting reprimanded on this particular day because as soon as those words came out of my mouth his tune changed. He was going to go out of his way to ensure I got the color I wanted. He fiddled around with the swatch a few more times, ran it through the computer again, added some more colors and finally…an almost perfect match. He was suddenly very apologetic and thanked me for being patient. Damn skippy, Larry, ’cause I was gonna turn your ass into management.

Momma’s all happy now that she has her cheap, almost perfectly matched paint, now all we have to do is check out and we’re home free. Check out is usually not a problem because we use the self check-out. Momma can swipe those barcodes waaaay faster than those checkout gals! Except today. Wouldn’t you know. We get behind some freakish girl who, with only a few items, takes almost 10 frickin’ minutes to check out. Why? Because she has to put her gloves on to touch the screen, then she takes her gloves off to bag the item, then the gloves go back on to touch the screen, and so on, for the next 5 items. I stand there gritting my teeth, trying to find a magazine to look at to distract me. The girl can tell I’m obviously agitated. Gee, ya think? Who the heck goes through these crazy maneuvers just to check out? But wait, it gets better. After she scans her last item, she carefully removes her gloves,  fishes in her purse and finally retrieves money. And guess what? She doesn’t have enough money for her purchase. OMG. She has to call an associate over to remove her supersize bag of Doritoes. I’m so flippin’ agitated at this point I’m quite sure my face is pure red. The girl turns to me and says, “Thank you for being so patient”. I smile (now I feel bad for being such an uber-impatient/intolerant person). On top of it all she makes sure to tell me to have a great day…and I, of course, tell her to do the same.  Geez…can’t a girl just be agitated for ONE stinkin’ day without some nice person ruining it?

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Rant and Roll

I haven’t posted a rant in a very, very long time. I think I’m due. Plus, I need to do a little boo-hooing, woe-is-me-ing so I can get some things off my chest. Great. Are you ready? Don’t worry, I’m not going to out anyone (at least this time around)…this one is all about ME.

I have had a craptastic past two weeks. Yep, count ’em…two weeks. It seems that my little friend, vertigo, has decided to pay me a visit. And this time he doesn’t want to leave. I had an episode of vertigo about four years ago. It wasn’t terribly bad – I was still able to function and it only lasted about a week. The doctor did tell me that I may have recurrences. And that, I did. I woke up one morning, took one look at my alarm clock, couldn’t see the numbers because my eyes wouldn’t focus and I felt like I was in the belly of a capsizing ship, I knew I was in trouble. And that, my friends, is how I’ve spent the last two weeks – feeling like I’m constantly walking around on a ship…in the middle of the ocean…during a hurricane. Barf. It’s been diagnosed as Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo. Which means when my head is in a specific position it causes vertigo. Luckily, I’ve figured out that the dizziness occurs when I lean to the left…so, no leaning to the left for me. Which isn’t so cool because I’m a left-side sleeper. And a tossing and turning sleeper. Yeah. Try keeping yourself on your right side all night long. It’s not so easy. Luckily, the meds I’ve been prescribed keep me pretty much comatose during the night so I don’t move. But, they make me feel drugged during the day. Not that feeling drugged is bad, as long as it’s during the weekend when I have nothing better to do…but, during the week when I’m supposed to work…not so much fun. I’ve had to reschedule all of my clients because there is no way in hell I”m getting on a ladder. I’ve been sitting here…eating, knitting, crocheting, crafting…trying to figure out how the hell I’m going to make money while sitting on my ass. If I could get paid to eat I’d be frickin’ rich.  I’m pretty sure I’m developing bed sores – or couch sores – because I’ve been sitting on the couch for what feels like FOREVER.

I was able to enjoy Thanksgiving with my family, thanks to prescription drugs. Although, I’m pretty sure I spent most of it sitting in my chair drooling and staring into space . No one minded. It was a bummer that I couldn’t partake in the wine drinking. That was a first. Oh, and when I did manage to get out of my chair I was feeling a little dizzy and bumped into the wall where my Mom had a decorative plate hanging. Needless to say, the plate ended up in a million pieces on the floor. Oops. Heh. You can’t blame the dizzy.

Anyway, to top it all off, apparently, whilst in the doctor’s office I contracted some horriblistic cold. I’m blaming it on them because I haven’t been out of the house or come into contact with any other humans in weeks. So now, not only am I dizzy, my head and chest are congested, my throat and head hurt, I have a nasty cough and I feel downright shitty. The dust and dog hair is piling up, the laundry is piling up, the dishes are piling up. It’s just an all-around mess here. And dammit, I want to get the Christmas decorations out of the attic and start decorating. Boo hoo hoo. Let’s all have a pity party for me.

Oh yeah, and then one more thing…yesterday as I walk into my laundry room (where the downstairs toilet is) I step in a pool of water. And by pool I mean the entire floor is covered in about an inch of water. Fantastic. The toilet is leaking (more like gushing, really). I shut the water supply off (praying that as I bend over I don’t go into a spin, crack my skull on the floor and drown in an inch of water) and hope that ends it. Nope. Later in the day….still more water. I then have to bail the water out of the tank, which obviously has a crack or leak of some sort. Grrrrrrrrr. I do have another bathroom – it’s upstairs – and I don’t feel like dizzily climbing stairs with my head pounding and my nasal passages burning. Again, boo hoo hoo. It’s a sad state of affairs around here.

Okay, I’m done. I feel SO much better now (not really). Thanks for listening.

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Spaghetti with Worms, Anyone?

I never should have gotten up yesterday. It was a complete day-from-hell for me. I’m just now getting around to posting about it because I’ve been in such a pissy mood that I haven’t been able to sit still long enough to write. This is my story…

I haven’t made any baked goods since I sold my restaurant in February and my daughter has been begging me to make oatmeal cookies. So, I caved and we made cookies Monday evening. We had a few – right out of the oven, with milk, of course, and then I packaged up the rest and left them on the kitchen counter.

As I was getting out of the shower yesterday morning I could hear my daughter yelling – at the dogs. I hurried downstairs to find that they had gotten the cookies off the counter and had proceeded to ingest almost half of them. Great. So, needless to say, my day started out quite shitily. I angrily tossed the remaining dog-spit covered cookies into the garbage as my daughter looked on in horror.

The rest of the morning was fairly uneventful except for my daughter’s constant protests and whining about having to clean her room. We accomplished some cleaning and decided to stop for lunch. And then…

All hell broke loose. I decided to throw some spaghetti together for a quick lunch. I grabbed the box of spaghetti from the cupboard and as I dumped it into the boiling water I could see some strange and unexpected ‘things’ floating in the water. Oh.My.God. Upon further inspection the ‘things’ were found to be WORMS. Yes…nasty little larvae. I gagged, choked and screamed all at the same time (which sounded something like – “gahahggrrgglrlrfcoughholyfuckohmygodeeeekoooohnoooo”) and also did a squirmy heebie-jeebie dance because this is what I saw:

Except they were all shriveled and boiled and there were at least a dozen of them. Ugh. Now, I realize that to some these may be a delicacy. But, um…I’m not going there, thanks. I tossed a heaping mound of half cooked spaghetti and worms into the garbage along with the remaining uncooked pasta – and started investigating. To my horror I found MORE, yes more of the larvae in a sealed box of soy flour, in E’s crackers, in the pancake mix, in the cake mixes, in the dog biscuits; they were in just about everything in my cupboard that was grain/flour based.

We got on the computer and started researching and found that they were Pantry Moth larvae (also known as Indian Meal Moths). Super fun. I had actually noticed that we had more of a moth ‘problem’ this year than most years but the moths were tiny…not your average garden-variety moth that you occasionally see seeking out the nearest light source as evening approaches. Here is a photo of the nasty bugger:

I don’t typically have a problem with moths. What i do have a problem with is the fact that these monsters are laying eggs (apparently 100’s at a time) in the nooks and crannies of my cupboards and in boxed food. These eggs are hatching into larvae that are INFESTING my foodstuff. GAG, GAG, GAG. On one site we read that you are to place any unopened, packaged food that you suspect to be infested in the freezer and this will kill the larvae. Um, yeah. So…I’ll have DEAD larva in my food. Clever. I opted to not go that route and tossed everything into the garbage. Dammit. I was pissed.

I ordered pheromone traps to snag these nasty critters before they can reek any more havoc in my house. I got the traps in the mail today and immediately set them up in my cupboards. HA! I caught several moths right off the bat. Apparently, I didn’t wash my hands properly and still have some moth pheromone on me because as I type this I have two tiny moths dive bombing me. Gotcha suckas!

So, now I have to empty my cupboards, clean them thoroughly and caulk any and all cracks and crevices to prevent another ‘infestation’. I really dislike that word. Bet you’re all just dying to move in with me, aren’t you?

I was exhausted and pissy. I needed something sinfully delicious to calm my nerves. And seeing as I had to throw out just about every ounce of food in the house the only thing I had left was: marshmallows, a chocolate bar and some graham crackers. Ahhhhh…s’mores. I was too lazy to start a fire in the fire pit so here is how my day ended…with this:

and this:

Oh…and with a very nice, long nap. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

And as a quick aside…my dear fellow blogger and ever-so-talented artist, bronsonfive, over at Pictures of Doom has hosted his first ever “Contest of Doom” – featuring drawings submitted by fellow bloggers. Go on…go check it out…you won’t be disappointed. You can even see my latest artistic endeavor!

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Stop Bugging Me!

I’m sitting on my deck innocently trying to catch up on my blog reading when all of a sudden I feel something on my foot. I writhe a bit and let out my typical I-can’t-get-this-off-of-my-body-soon-enough squeal as I swat whatever creature has decided to land on me away. But…oh no…this thing doesn’t move. BECAUSE it’s a huge frickin’ insect that has apparently attached itself to my foot with its sticky clawed legs. Ugh. Most of you are not aware that I am plagued by Insectus Giganticus Syndrome. I blogged about it last year here.

Now, I can handle bugs – most bugs, that is. I’ve lived in apartments above bars/restaurants before and was accustomed to having cockroaches crawl about my body whilst drunkenly passed out on my futon…and was also accustomed to watching said insects scurry in swarms down my drain when I turned on the kitchen light. No big deal.

Here’s the problem. I live in New York…not Florida, not Arizona…not in a state that is commonly known for LARGE, mutant insects. If a bug is larger than my thumb then there’s a problem. It should be living in another state. Not here.

So, when I go to swat this insect off of my foot and feel its sticky, squishy body, I, of course, investigate. To my shock and horror it is some horrific, prehistoric looking thing. It plays dead as I remove it from my foot.

It’s just nasty, nasty…would you want that mofo clinging to your foot? I think not.

The dogs hear me freaking out so they come to investigate.

Ridley starts salivating immediately (you can see little specks of dog spit on the deck) because he loves bugs and thinks he’s about to have a meal.

I love this photo – he thinks if he looks at it out of the corner of his eye the bug won’t notice him.

The dogs LOVE bugs. Ridley has been known to play with cicadas for hours and hours…just watching them flutter and hiss and spin. Ick. Gus, he likes the big, nasty scarab beetles that somehow find their way into my house. He got one last week and I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out why he was foaming at the mouth. My daughter yelled, “Oh no, he has rabies”. Um, no. Eventually, I found the culprit. Another fine black scarab specimen.

The first such scarab that we found in the house was captured, put in a jar and fondly named “Midnight”. My daughter insisted we keep him/her. I, of course, refused. We set it free in the back yard as she cried, “Goodbye, Midnight, I’ll miss you.” Goodbye is right. And don’t come back.

A few months later I stumbled upon an Oleander Hawk Moth. Now, the moth was not as bad. It was quite interesting and I even let the thing crawl around on my hand for a photo op.

THAT was a BIG frickin’ insect. Just look at the wing span!

And then there were the cicada killer wasps. *Gulp* I seriously thought that I had stepped into “Land of the Lost” when I walked into my kitchen one evening to find a wasp the size of a small bird swooping around the ceiling. My first instinct was to run like hell. But I was in my own home, where would I go?

Nope, that’s not my hand holding the nasty wasps…are you kidding? I will only go so far for the sake of a photo op…and holding giant wasps would be going too far for this damsel.

Now, I will say that I don’t really like to kill bees of any sort but the first time I encountered the cicada killer wasp I was so panicked that I grabbed a broom and a can of bug spray and shot the sucker out of the sky then beat it with a broom. I was literally shaking…and trying to figure out why my house had been selected for this mutant insect experiment conspiracy.

That was not the only cicada killer wasp incident. I still get them every so often. But at least now I know what they are so I stifle the scream and just deal with them.

The bug this evening was not that big compared to what I’ve witnessed in the past. It was just…nasty looking, plus it was crawling on my leg and it had no business doing that. Eeeewwww.

I let the pooches play with it – only because I wanted to get some interesting photos to share with you so you, too, can be creeped out. You’re welcome.

It didn’t flutter, didn’t hiss, didn’t flop about. It just played dead so they lost interest and I took a stick and swatted it into the yard. Ick. No more big bugs, please. I’d be very happy if I didn’t see another insectus giganticus this year.

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Pissed Offitude

Yes, the lack of deliciousness in my diet is getting to me. I feel like I’m eating dirt and twigs – that’s how fucking bland this diet is. Blehck! I’m pissed. I’m grumpy. I’m sick of eating the same shit day in and day out. I’m trying to keep my mind off of it by staying busy…which I am able to do most days. Today…it was another story. I had too much time on my hands and every few minutes my mind wandered – to chocolaty goodness land, to icecreaminess land, to ANYWHERE but frickin’ dirt & twig land. I then tried to redirect my pissiness. I wasn’t too successful with that and now I’ve ended up with a nice little list of shit that pissed me off today.

#1 The school drop off loop. At my daughter’s school there is a parent drop off loop that I use every morning. It’s the same routine every day: you pull your car up to the head of the loop, let your kid get out of the car and watch them dash into school. Simple, right? Holy hell. I wish it were that simple. For some reason I always seem to get behind these idiot women who take FOREVER to unload their kids. Why does it take them so long? I’ve paid close attention lately and here is why: because they are talking on their cell phone, lighting a cigarette (or crack pipe), fixing their hair in the mirror, reading a book, or painting their nails (I made the last two up but they are possibilities). They can’t just pull up and dump their kid off. They have to sit there for minutes on end while traffic is backing up behind them. Today I sat behind a vehicle and started to boil as I saw, not the mother, but the daughter sit and play with her hair in the mirror for what seemed like 5 minutes. I was furious. Come on, my kid needs to get into school and YOUR kid should have done her frickin’ hair in the mirror at home…not in your blasted car taking up MY time in the loop.

#2 Parties of two who decide to take the largest frickin’ table in a restaurant. Oh.My.Gawd. I want to smack these people. I was having lunch with the girls today (no…not my boobs, my girlfriends: 3 of them + me = 4) and I arrived at the restaurant first to find that there were no 4-tops available. BECAUSE the only two tables that could seat 4 were being occupied by couples…yes COUPLES…2 PEOPLE…not 4. What the hell? There was a plethora of 2-top tables. But, oh no, do you think these folks could be considerate and sit at those? Nooooooo. So, we had to sit at the bar and wait until these morons were finished before we could be seated. Grrrrrrrr.

#3 People at the grocery store with carts filled to the frickin’ ceiling who refuse to let ANYONE ahead of them…even those of us with just one measly item in our paws. Arrggggghhhhh. Motherfuckers. These people need to be tied to the back of a car and dragged…to frickin’ Egypt (well, actually probably somewhere in the States since you couldn’t technically drive to Egypt). I always…yes, always, let someone in front of me if I have a shitload of groceries to purchase and the person behind me has a pack of gum…or even an armful of stuff. Don’t these people know how annoying it is to wait…and wait…and wait…when all we want to do is pay for our frickin’ tampons (or whatever) and get out of the store?

#4 Let’s just continue with the grocery store tirade, shall we? This one is for Kate…and all my other short friends who can’t reach the top shelf at the grocery store. The shelves are always neatly faced first thing in the morning. By mid-day the shelves have been picked over and the items that do happen to be left are so far back on the top shelf you’d need an arm extension to grab them. Hey, Captain Hook, can you come here and help me grab this can of corn? Now, how the hell are people supposed to reach these things? In my grocery shopping experience I’ve had more than one person ask for my assistance (it helps to be a 5’10’ Amazon woman) in reaching an item on the top shelf. We are at the grocery store…to shop…for things on the shelf…things that should be easily accessible. How hard is it to send one of the grocery boys (or whatever the hell they call themselves these days) around to reface the shelves mid-day? Isn’t that what they’re there to do anyway? Oh wait, we wouldn’t want to bother those busy little boys who are collecting shopping carts in the parking lot and playing “wheelie” as they ride them to the cart stall.

#5 People who have NO idea what the center turning lane is for. This drives me absolutely crazy. What the hell do people think that middle lane is for? Do they think it’s some new fangled “walking lane” for pedestrians – so they can safely walk down the middle of a frickin’ street? How hard is it to figure out what that lane is for? Oh.My.God. I want to ram my car into the back of the next motherfucker who doesn’t use that lane to turn and remains in front of me to turn left.

Wow, that was quite a bitchfest. I feel much better now. That is all for now. Over and out.

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