Category Archives: Are you freaking kidding me?

I’m sorry….what?

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Today’s wtf files:

Microwave instructions on instant pudding. Because there *needs* to be an option between 5 minutes of stovetop and buying premade pudding. [Yes, dammit, it’s organic and low sugar. Sue me.]

At least one father at every single playground I’ve been to in the past six months: texting or playing games on phone or having really insipid phone conversation while kids try desperately to get his attention. Dude. Do you see *any* of the moms doing that bullshit? And when there are other dads, it’s still only one guy. Loser.

Fifteen of the twenty products rated “must have” in some lame-o mainstream parenting magazine at the doc’s office are either toxic or useless. And these people are raising the assholes our kids will go to school with.

Why do people tell me to watch MadMen and not Weeds? I freaking love that show and don’t get the same nausea after an episode or two that followed Betty Draper’s existential spiral.

The Bay Bridge is falling down. And people are complaining about the traffic instead of remembering 20 years ago when we counted every second, hoping they’d find someone alive in the Cypress and thanked heaven only one person died on the Bridge. But by all means, whine about your commute.

My kid has gained three pounds this month and I can’t freaking lift him up. He’s always been a timid eater, and he’s now scarfing down adult portions and taking seconds and eating veggies and taking two hour dinners. Who is this guy?

Preschool still has no space for us. This kid is going to be in college before I get him the hell away from me for a couple of hours a week. In fact, he told me he wants to go to college right now because he wants to be an ultrasound technician so he can push all the buttons. Fine by me, dude.

A street sweeping ticket is $48?! For what? I’ll get out a push broom and clear the tiny bit of stuff from under my car. Don’t you people have better ways to raise money?

I’m confused.

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I’m a bit confused, I must admit. When you were new to this world, we had to eat dinner in under 3 minutes. As you grew, we got even faster, because without at least two hands to supervise your every antic, we were in way too much trouble to even make dinner worth it.
And now it takes you 90 minutes to eat the tiniest dinner we can concoct.

I’m also stymied on this: I know my parents wished upon me a child just like me—nay, worse, if possible, in every timbre. So is that why you have that thing about licking applesauce and yogurt off your spoon one cc at a time? Is that why your temper is absolutely off the charts? could this be why you hold grudges for over a year, even if that means more than a third of your life? Is that why you drive me batshit insane? Because I thought it was that you took after your father.

And clear something up for me, if you would…why do you feel the need to use what I say against me? I can’t handle tantrums or whining or freaking out in general (from you anyway, since I’m brewing my own over here), so I told you to take a deep breath and explain your point of view carefully instead of flipping your Dr. Jekyl switch. But that doesn’t mean you need to answer a “no, we don’t have candy corn for dinner,” with “[big sigh] Mommy. I understand you don’t want me to have sugar right now. But how about just one piece?” What the hell kind of freak of nature are you? How can I resist a calm and reasoned response? You know me better than that. Let’s be honest: I really need you to be of moderate intelligence, like me and Pa, because we are simply not up to the task of someone who listens and modifies his attacks based on our weaknesses.

And maybe it’s my lack of a full compliment of firing neurons, but I’m not quite clear on why, in a fit of frustration with your nonsense, I ask, “you wanna rumble?” having never used that word before, and you intone “and ramble in blackberry bramble” from a book we haven’t read in several months. Do you have a perfect memory for words? Why, then, does it seem impossible for you to remember what I said just three minutes ago? You do something forbidden. I gently correct you. You stop. I thank you for listening. And three minutes later it happens again. And I’m again patient and you’re again responsive. So why does it happen again five minutes later? You just proved you can remember what I say when you want to.

Do you want to rumble?

SIGG toxic b.s.

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I am so angry it’s taking all my energy not to scream obscenities and cry. Sigg, the maker of stainless steel bottles I’ve used for YEARS to escape exposure from the scary hormone-disrupting chemicals found in plastic (especially BPA), actually contain BPA. Or did, until last year when they changed their liner without telling anyone about the toxins.

Should I have known when they touted their bottles as an eco-alternative that “does not leach BPA” to read between the lines and see that doesn’t mean “does not contain BPA?” Sure. But I wasn’t the only one fooled. Consumer advocates have been trying to prove for years what we all suspected: Sigg is too good to be true.

Now Sigg is willing to replace their old bottles with their new, BPA-free bottles. I refuse to link to their website because I am angry I could spit BPA tainted water. Several retailers are exchanging the bottles for the new version or for an alternative.

I’m not getting new Sigg bottles. I’m going to put on hold my boycott of Whole Foods, whose dolt of a CEO wrote an editorial opposed to health care reform and basic human services (hello, do you know your customers at all?) because Whole Foods is taking back Sigg bottles for a credit. And with that credit I will buy the bottles I thought I could never afford but am now KICKING myself for not buying earlier, distraught with what I may have done to my body, my children’s bodies, and my Spouse’s body by relying on Sigg for so many years.

I’m scared and mad and feel so f—ing misled. What is the point of reading and researching and trying my absolute best if goddamned companies goddamned lie as a way of doing business?

No aluminum. No Gaiam bottles (I knew that because they taste like plastic). No Sigg bottles.

Yes to stainless steel. Yes to Kleen Kanteen. Maybe to whatever other alternatives you’d like to suggest, if you can prove they’re not taking our money and lying like certain other companies. Like all of them.

No, seriously.

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You read how my day went down yesterday. I’m not kidding, at all, when I narrate for you now the way the evening after that rather trying day proceeded:

After Peanut’s in bed and Spouse is settled, I head to the main library on campus to pick up a book on hold and to (hopefully) nab another book someone returned before anyone else notices it’s back.  I arrive at the main door and walk through the glorious and stately halls  to get to the circulation desk. Time: 8:45.  I watch as the metal gate descends, too far away to holler or run or be otherwise indecorous. I get to the entrance and read that closing time is 8:45. Well, I guess I should have checked that online. Book on hold will have to wait. (Phlebotomist rants replay in my head…)

So I walk down the hill to the lowly undergrad library, through the catacombs of which I can still access the main stacks even after closing. I search for the book purportedly returned. Not on the shelf. Nowhere to be seen. To whom does one report that? The circulation desk at the main library. But they are at home with their phlebotomy and philately and whatnot.

So I research underground or a while, collecting articles that I’m not allowed to access from home, due to the vast conspiracy between the online critical journals and the babysitting lobby. I subvert them all with my free sitter, the father of my freaking child.

I recheck the shelf, just in case. No luck. But good thinking on rechecking, eh? Wouldn’t want it checked out this morning before I can peel the lad from my leg or anything like that.

And on a whim last night, after an hour or so of journal trolling, I search for a free reading book I’ve been coveting. In luck: it’s housed in the aforementioned lowly undergrad library. I navigate catacombs, climb stairs, survive glares that remind me a nigh-on 40 year old pregnant alumnae is not a quote-unquote normal site on campus after hours. If ever. I find the book. I descent the stairs and head to undergrad circulation. Time: 10:07. Sign on the desk informs me that circ. closes at 10:00. Guess I should have checked that before I leisurely used the stairs instead of the elevator. I’m really tempted to issue forth with a SCREW YOU, AL GORE here, but I hold back. Bottle it up. It’s of more use to me there. I contemplate, I grouse, and I drop the book into the return slot. Hope that confuses them for weeks, those loser philatelists.

And, I swear to all things chocolate and marshmallowy, I showed up on campus this morning to get both books and to report the missing text: marquis sporting event of the year ongoing; library apparently closes for such nonsense. There were lawns full of food vendors and grand entrances full of dancers and drummers. On the marble steps of the oldest University in California. Drummers. Dancers. Where are the books? It’s unseemly but true: the library closes for football. This ain’t one of those Big Ten schools where they go to college as an excuse to have an alma mater to support all football season. Our football prowess is not exactly our calling card. Nobel Laureates, sure. number of periodic elements named by and for our graduates, yup. Holdings of original Mark Twain manuscripts. Yes. History of protest and disorderly conduct? You betcha. Football? No. But you’re gonna close the library. I see. I guess I should have checked that online. Wherever library closures due to gridiron conflict are listed, I suppose.

I smell a new dotcom.

I have now slogged to campus, up and down the north hill twice, carrying 40 lbs. of briefcase during precious writing/childcare hours yet left with none of the three books I desire.  Not one.

And I can’t even rant about it. They’ve beaten me down, fair readers. Librarians and phlebotomists and veterinarians and quarterbacks. Seriously, I’m waiting for the cosmic payback. Better be one cute f—ing baby, one Lazarus-like cat, and one awesome journal that publishes my paper for all this b.s.

Look! It’s rant time!

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To whomever wrote: “You’re probably feeling a whole lot better as you settle into your second trimester. Less nausea, fewer mood swings, and “glowing” skin contribute to an overall sense of well-being.” SCREW YOU, LIAR!

To the cat whose illness has led to feces on my bed, urine all over my house, and a $400 vet bill with a shrug and an “I’m not sure what’s wrong with him,” SCREW YOU! Next time you get sick I’m spending the money on an iPod and you get a brick in a pillow case.

To the vet clinic who told me to collect feces and urine for my cat then forgot to give me the kit and locked the doors before I had even gotten to the car: Screw you, too. I’m not coming back for the kit then going home then coming back with samples. Screw you a lot. Now YOU get to come over and collect feces and urine. For all the family members. I do it every other day; now it’s your turn.

To the phlebotomist who closed the lab ten minutes before we got there: Screw you. No, I didn’t check your hours by calling or anything. But who the hell runs a lab open 9am to 4:30pm, closed for lunch 12-1? Seriously? Do you do any work? I collected a toddler and a sick cat, both of whom needed more than the usual amount of fecal clean up today, got the noisier of the two into the car and drove half an hour for your stupid one vial of blood intended to scare me about all the things that could, hypothetically, but we can’t tell you with any certainty, what might be wrong with my poor, maligned, nauseating Hazelnut. Screw you, lab tech. You give phlebotomy a bad name. and sphignomenometers. And sternocleidomastoids. And stuff like that.

To the librarian who accused us of returning a DVD case with no DVD: SCREW YOU! I always double check because I don’t want to walk all the way down here and have to go back for a stupid disc. AND, I don’t rent baby Einstein crap. No, I didn’t. No, I didn’t. Stop telling me I need to go home to get it. I’ve never IN MY LIFE checked that crap out of your library. I’ve never seen that DVD in my existence. No, I didn’t. Oh, and how do you propose I do that? Buy a new one and give it to you? Screw you. I may have mentioned that, but it bears repeating. SCREW YOU. Oh, you’ll double check? That’s so thoughtful. Oh, it wasn’t me? Oh, you’re paging a different library patron without apologizing to me? You’re ignoring me now? SCREW YOU! I’ve never liked you. You’re greasy, icky, and rather creepy and give my kid a bad image of the few male librarians on this planet. You know what? I’ve taken bibliographic methods. I’ve aced out of all the methodological and theory-based library sciences courses. I could OWN you if I felt like it. Don’t ever accuse me of Baby Einstein Forgetting again.

You know what, world? Screw you. Screw all the nasty people and the yucky people and the rude people. Screw all y’all. Cuz I don’t have the patience for your asinine driving, ugly looks, rude cell phone talking, and general in-my-way-getting. Get off this planet, you jerks. Especially the dude who took the last jar of m—-f—ing olives today. Screw you. You’d think I’d have something new or clever to say, wouldn’t you? Nope. Screw you. You people are killing me. And you don’t need those olives like I do.
I hope global warming takes out, like, 85% of you by next year.

(And to the little emotional sponge who lives in my house, who is way intense and way sensitive and way perceptive and way neophobic, I’m sorry dude. I know when I’m way off my rocker it’s even harder for you. I watched as each of these little wrongs in our day sent me further and further from reacting well, you absolutely melted down. Sorry, friend. We’ll both get some sleep and one of us will have a really, really dreamy can of caramel colored sugar water and tomorrow will be better. That said, if you ask “why” one more time I’m ripping your arms off and shoving them down your throat.)

We now rejoin our midlife crisis, already in progress

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We went to the guitar store today to restring Peanut’s awesome little 1/2 scale SX guitar. He earned it potty learning, when he got 20 dry days in a row (and therefore 20 stickers) at 21 months. He bought himself a guitar with the stickers. You’re damned right, kiddo. Not yet two and dry all the time? Guitar? Fine.

Well the trip to the guitar mecca coincides with a midlife crisis I’ve been contemplating, based in part on the nausea I’m feeling at life, my choices, and the impending and rapidly growing BOMB that will descend on my already precarious situation. My midlife crisis today looked a LOT like a $2660 twelve string guitar. Then it looked like an $80 used and totally awesome used natural ash wood bass for the band my newest peeps and I are starting. Then my midlife crisis looked like a miraculous $3200 keyboard that sounded honest to goodness like a well tuned piano.

And then my midlife crisis reminded me what end was really up. Because besides not having even the $80 for a bass, I don’t have time for a new hobby. I have a novel to edit. Again. I have a paper to submit, another paper to write, and a PhD application to ponder for next fall. I have to find a babysitter and a preschool.

I grabbed an Atwood at the library, because there’s nothing to counter balance 32 picture books like an Atwood. We got home late and I had to wash dishes and make dinner. Peanut was in a lovely mood and tried to dump out a whole canister of ground flax. Sealed, luckily, but he was willing to test Oxo’s sturdy seal.

I asked him nicely to put it down, and he did. Sweetly. In the dining room. I continued thinking about whether, really, cowboy boots would serve the same purpose as a guitar, as midlife crises go. Maybe I’d need them for the band (blues, I think, but whatever. Everything goes with buckaroo boots.)

I went into the dining room to give Peanut some carrot sticks. He had dumped all the flax neatly on the table and was sorting it into piles. I took a deep breath and told him to get down. I asked, as I gathered the placemat parking lots, what he was trying to do. He was making pretend smoothies. Sure. okay. As I brought the soapy sponge back and forth from the kitchen, I explained that while pretend is a good idea, his pretend kitchen is a better place for pretend juices. And that using real food for pretend food isn’t a good idea. And that I understand how he wants to help, so he can make a real blender juice with my help. But real food always needs a yes from Mommy.
Okay?
Well, kind of. Except that now, at the dining room table, he has his face burrowed into my brand new, 64 oz. jar of organic kosher pickles. tongue fully extended, licking the brine in the freaking jar. i collapsed on the floor. Took a deep breath. Contemplated a good cry and realized that I already had his cold, so, no harm no foul. I mean, really, really foul, but I’ll be done with the pickles in a few days, so…meh. I told him how not okay it is to put hands or mouths on containers of food. I try to explain, I try to be forceful but casual. I remember a gorgeous burbinga wood guitar and take another breath.

So we make a smoothie together. He’s happy and proud of his blueberry pouring skills. I’m almost ready with dinner. I turn away to get cups for the juice. I pour the juice. I turn away to get lids for the juice.

And now I need one fewer lid because he’s poured all of one juice on himself, trying to get to the purple one first. “you can’t have thee purple one,” he began, before getting really wet and cold.

Here’s the thing, people. I’m barely hanging on. And now the flax-y sponge has to sop up 12 ounces of blueberry smoothie. WHY CAN’T PREGNANT WOMEN DRINK, AGAIN?

I don’t think a late night trip to the pawn shop to trade my wedding ring for a guitar is too much to ask.

Nooooooo! Not John Hughes!

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Oh, come on. Really? Sad for his family, of course. He was a human being first, and for his family I am deeply sorry.

But he was an icon for millions of kids who came of age in the 80s. Gys, no person made me feel like less of an outcast; no writer made me feel sure I would find a place in the world; no artist made me feel more at home.

Oh, Mr. Hughes, thank you for your movies. Pretty in Pink, Breakfast Club, Some Kind of Wonderful, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off were what made high school tolerable. Were what made me feel better about my awkward, painful, social outcast years. Are still what I turn to when I need to feel at home.

Oh, Mr. Hughes. I still quote your films. Almost daily. I still live in the hope that you’ll write a film about a totally lost, out of her element, thirty-something mom.

And now you won’t.

Food Inc.

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LOVE having grandma live nearby. Saw Food Inc. last night, our fourth movie in three years, and cannot get over it.

What has become of our nation’s food supply? Why is it all made from a couple of crops, paid for by tax dollars, even though it’s not the healthiest food?

I mean, I taught Fast Food Nation for three years to my freshman English students. And I’m pretty well versed in everything Pollan says on NPR when they get in one of their all-food-all-the-time blocks. But I’m still shocked by a lot of what Food Inc. had to say.

Sure, it had the predictable propaganda moments. Music swell over repeated shots of the boy who died from E coli poisoning because beef recalls are still voluntary and the FDA and USDA have no real regulatory power anymore. Dastardly sinister music while we watch what technology has done to assembly-line food production. But pretty simple parsing of the purpose of the film would predict that. Of course it’s propaganda. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t have important information. Critical thinking skills (which, unfortunately, are not always taught in colleges anymore), deduce that most of the fundamentals of the film are sound.

Mostly, I’m shocked that when the government complains we’re out of money, that we can’t get Americans healthy because we can’t afford it, they’re ignoring a glaringly simple way to rescue two birds with one pocketed stone: stop paying anyone not following organic practices. Stop it. It should not cost tax payers for huge farming corporations (all four of them who control virtually all of what this country produces) to make food seem cheap. What tax dollars buy is the ability for chemical-laden corn syrup and soy Frankenbeans to be cheaper than more healthful foods (healthful for our bodies and the planet).

If we stop paying huge multinational corporations to produce tons and tons and tons of food that we then overprocess and feed to animals who should be eating something else, maybe food will cost what it should. Maybe a head of broccoli will be cheaper than brown, carbonated sugar water trucked all across the country using scarce petroleum. Maybe organic proteins will be cheaper than a chemical-laden, ammonia bathed, bacteria-opportunistic burger or chlorine washed chicken breast at a fast food restaurant. Or maybe people will cut back from their average of 200 pounds of meat a year because the real cost finally makes it a food they enjoy but limit.

And maybe if we take the tax savings and pay for health care, people who buy the now cheaper whole foods will be healthier and not need as much medical treatment. Maybe obesity and diabetes will decline from epidemic proportions and we will all be eating what our local farmers produce instead of the chemical sludge, shipped from thousands of miles away, that we’re all pretending is food.

So cut all subsidies to food producing companies. Don’t lie about how important corn syrup is for our national health. If we have that much corn, so much that it can be processed into any number of pretend foods, then we have too much corn. Stop paying agribusiness to genetically modify and pesticide and herbicide and chemically fertilize and gas-harvest and chemically wash and process and alter and reprocess and package and truck and sell.

Now that we have all that money back, take the savings and give us health care instead of massive profit private health insurance. Or subsidize organic farms and teach small farmers to become organic farmers. It would do the nation’s food supply a lot more good than huge quantities of sprayed and processed and modified foods.

And while the gov. is taking care of that, please vote with your dollars. Buy food grown safely by people you trust.

After the movie, we ate here and I still eyed the potatoes, a produuct normally so pesticide and herbicide treated that it has to sit for several weeks after harvest to outgas all the chemicals before it’s deemed suitable for human consumption. Mmmmm.

THAT

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Well, turns out it doesn’t much matter if you don’t want it to be THAT. Sometimes it just is. I mean, it’s not the THAT that I feared. It’s some sort of parasitic frog that has taken up residence in my rumbly and queasy parts. This THAT, however, means business, as it is busy pumping blood through its froginess at like 2 million beats per minute. Little f—er seems pretty sure, even if we’re not.

I have no idea on this earth how I will make it once that frog is big enough to get out. I’m hoping it find a way to fit in because I am so over the child-centric attachment gentle thoughtful nonsense. AND, I have today only lost the contents of my stomach three times, which is an improvement. I’ve switched the “before I get horizontal” snack from pretzels or lollies, neither of which worked, to Clif shot bloks which work much better, if only because they’re easier coming back up. And I’m now officially on an all-sports-beverage hydration plan wherein I popsicle and chilled electrolyte concoction sip (only from a straw—the doc, who turned out to be an obstetrician rather than a oncologist (ooops I guess that was wishful thinking) said somehow stuff stays down better if sipped from a straw not guzzled from a wide mouth glass…who knew). Feel queasy but MUCH better now hydrated and electrolyted. Yummy expensive kind of natural and organic beverages that I gave up after my triathlon days. Happy to be earning them again, for they are way tasty.

Seven weeks. That is both a marker or current status and a hope for when these sensations will end. For it would be nice to be excited or even pleased, but I don’t foresee that until I can go for a walk without decorating the neighbors’ lawns with bile. And there are probably about 40-50 days of massive puking in my future. Then all hell breaks loose next March.

I want that voiceover guy who does summer blockbuster movies to prepare us. “Coming soon to a blog near you. Watch if you dare…”

Well, the jinx is comin’ to roost

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Peanut is being tremendously sweet lately. And willingly playing by himself. And helping around the house and being polite. And sleeping.

Which is probably why I’ve been unbearably nauseated for three weeks. If I’m awake, I want to puke. I give in more and more frequently, but even after succumbing, the need is still there, every waking second of every day. If I wake at night, it takes three seconds before I register, “Oh, crap, again?”

So, clearly I have a stomach ulcer or an inner ear cyst. Maybe it’s a tumor. I’m only four weeks late, so it couldn’t be THAT. It can’t be THAT. I have to be really honest, I don’t want it to be THAT. See that paragraph above, where P is being reasonable and semi-self-sufficient? So it can’t be THAT. I can’t have made it this to far to have it be THAT. I finished and submitted a novel. I’m getting client work. I can’t be in the black hole for another three years.

So I’m opening up a plea for nausea advice. The regular stuff doesn’t work. Empty stomach, full stomach, doesn’t matter. Please don’t say “just don’t let yourself get too hungry” or I’ll throw up. The “little bites of cracker all day” wind up tossed on my neighbors lawn when we go for a walk. Fresh air is clearly not the answer, for I haven’t been on a walk or run without making an impromptu pitstop.

For a couple of weeks, nothing but the sugar from my Glee gum stayed down before 11am, and anything before 1pm was dicey. Now it’s the reverse. Fruit and cereal might stay down in the morning, but after nap all bets are off. Back to the Glee. At no time does the desire to self-remove my stomach with a rusty grapefruit spoon go away.

Ginger (fresh or candied or tea or Ginger People candy) makes me puke. Sour juices make me puke. Tea makes me puke. Water makes me puke. Miso soup only stays down for a little while. Salt and vinegar chips help a bit but only at dinner. Lemon lollipops help a bit. Motion sickness bands may or may not help, but I wear them for at least 12 hours every day. just in case. A voodoo doll of Spouse is not helping anything. Bargaining with all manner of deity seems to have no effect. Further proof that other peoples’ gods care more about football than about my being able to take care of my kid.

So what to do? Help out a lady who has some sort of gall bladder disorder or inner ear tumor. Because clearly it’s not THAT. Back three years ago when it was THAT I subsisted on almonds and oranges and only wanted to puke all day and night. I didn’t actually void several times a day. Plus, back then I was tired. Now I’m not tired. Except for the whole haven’t slept much in three years thing.

I’m seeing a doctor tomorrow because clearly it’s some sort of intestinal cancer. I think I’m seeing an oncologist. Or something that sounds like oncologist. I don’t remember. I made the appointment a couple of weeks ago and they said I could wait two weeks because I have, like, nine seven months to live.

Good god people, are you trying to kill me?

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Today alone:

Former client ran into me on the playground of all  places and asked me to do some copywriting. ASAP. Because clients often run ideas by you  several months before they need them.

Agent emailed and said that he wants to see more of my novel but already sees the same major issue that other readers have pointed out. Must reorganize whole book and get it to him by, say, tomorrow.

Peanut does not like the olallieberry crisp we made before lunch and has requested a cookie baking session after nap. I’m not entirely opposed to his demands. But how can I blog the already baked recipe if it’s loathed by 50% of the family who have thus far tasted it? 75%, really, if you consider the cats who won’t touch it. To be fair, they thought it was blackbery crisp. Also, did you notice the two other projects that seem a bit more pressing than cookies, given the ready availability of decent cookies in every case of every local bakery in this country? Hell, FatApples is two blocks away. Run over to the bakery, little boy, and bring back two cookies. Mommy has a book to submit.

Someone with no authority whatsoever has said my novel will be a huge success as a book and also as a major motion picture, floor wax, and cheese spread. I hope it’s non-aerosol. And that she gets some authority over something soon so I can start pushing for an action figure.

Let them figure it out

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I have no problem letting Republicans figure out their own leaders, politics, and goals. They know much better than I what they want and how on earth they can believe the things they believe.

So I’m just saying this…of all the theories, and I’ve heard maybe eight this weekend, on why Palin quit a job she promised to do, I don’t care which reason is real and which is spin. What I care is that Canada embraces now the knowledge that I will undoubtedly leave this country if the Republicans choose her as their representative, and that by some stretch of faith, ignorance, or fraud, she gets elected President of these United States.

I’m not opposed to thoughtful, intelligent, inspiring Republicans getting their shot at running things. But I am opposed to that woman, who stands, talks, and walks for everything I find abhorrent in the way our democracy is going, putting her stamp on this nation.

Just saying. In advance. Appropos  of probably nothing.

Tough call

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For future reference, if you’re out of town and get a request to send a partial submission to the agent you really, really, really hoped would read your debut novel, it will cost you $30 to print it at Office Depot and $176 to print it at FedExKinkosFedOfficeFedWhatever.

Tough call. But  I think since David Foster Wallace’s agent actually wants to peruse my novel, I’ll go with the $176. Because there *must* be a reason paper and ink cost six times at FedEx, right?  Like, they’ll use their special lasers to make my writing even better, right? Or print in in black and white gold, right?

By the way, did I just seem all casual about the fact that the agency that found DFW in the slush pile is at least potentially interested in my novel? Sorry. Didn’t mean to make it seem off-handed. There isn’t an emoticon for “wetting my pants right now in fear, as I sob in relief,” is there?

What in tarnation?

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Why does it cost me $10 to get wifi at the airport? Shame on you, SFO. Hell, the rest areas in Iowa have free wifi.

Why do small people smell a crisis and grow impatient with the world just because you are?

Why does it take ATT three days to believe me that our DSL is down. “Says here you shouldn’t have any green lights. Why do you have three green lights? Maybe you need to buy a new modem.” Did that. Changed all the cords and the modem and the problem is clearly yours. “Oh. We’ll be out next week.”

Why does the company who put in the windows (thank you…just in time for summer, we can actually open our windows now) leave little shards of glass EVERYWHERE? In the toy box, in the dishes, one every floor, in the cat box, in the beds. Why did you say “move the furniture three feet away from the windows” when you meant twelve feet? Why did you not just tell us to move out? And landlord? Why did you not do this last month, before we moved in? Good damned thing I wanted windows that open…

Jerks on the red-eye across this great country: why did you all bring your kids? And why did you all buy up the upgrades before I decided it might be worth it to pay my life’s savings to get out of coach on a red-eye? Let me guess. You’re gonna keep me up all night, with your kids and your “WOULD YOU LIKE TO BUY A MEAL?” nonsense.

Sigh. I’m gonna miss Peanut and Spouse. I’m gonna have a blast. And goddess help me, I’m really nervous about making it home in one piece, so help me out on that one.

Words to the wise

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Dear handyman: get off your high horse and lose the attitude. It took you a month to schedule one stinking morning appointment, so if I cancel because of a family emergency (I want to take Peanut to the concert in the park and farmer’s market more than I want the leak in the sink gone, but you don’t know that and you’re not gonna) then that’s my problem. Do you want the work, or don’t you? Don’t act as though you’re losing your home just because I canceled. I gave you 48 hours notice.

Dear printer: stop lying. You’re not out of toner. I just bought you toner. you’ve printed, like, 200  pages. I know you better than this. I raised you, printer. You will shut your paper hole and I will obligingly open every stupid door and drawer, shake the toner cartidge, and put it back in, and we’ll have another 200 pages before you lie again. And I’ll go through the whole bullshit process again, at least twenty more times, and you’ll give me at least 2,000 pages, andIi’ll wonder which is harder: kidgloving my stupid f—ing printer or putting a toddler to bed. Secret answer: I don’t know. Neither is particularly fun or easy, but I have you both down to a science, so whatever. It’s like knowing you have to start your car on a hill. Sucks, but at least you know the drill.

Dear lady outside the Starbucks’ bathroom: stop rattling the g–d—- door knob. Didn’t you figure out the first four times you rattled it that someone is in here? i refuse to holler “someone’s in here” because any idiot can figure that out from the LOCKED DOOR. Also, I refuse to holler “almost done” because I just got in here and I am not almost done. I mean, relative to the guy before me who took half and hour and peed on every square inch of the seat, I’m almost done. But relative to my need not to talk to you, I’m not. You’d think I could pee by myself one freaking time this week. Just for that, I’m washing my hands twice. And checking my pores. And practicing origami on the paper towels, because it’s not like they’ve given me a lot of entertainment options in here.

Dear blogosphere: get back here. Just because I post anti-spanking and anti-segregation instead of lame jokes about how much my kid gets my goat, doesn’t mean you need to stop reading. By half. How the f— do half of you go away just because I talk all serious about stuff? Fickle freaks. What, are you over at the Bloggess listening to her in prison on the Nimitz story? Please. “Oh, look at me, I’m funny and patriotic and not ranting about respecting your kid.”  Fine. I get it. You’re not tough enough to take my brand of genius. Whatever. Your loss.      Wait, I mean, get back here. I’ll try to be funny. I swear. Or not, if that offends you.

Dear so-called medical experts: shut the f— up. You have no idea what you’re talking about. ‘Nuff said.

Ditto you parenting experts, job experts, and Pynchon experts.

Dear lady we saw yesterday: you’re damned right, you should be embarrassed. When you’re walking your first grader home from school, with your iPod blaring, you *should* feel guilty enough to drop the earbuds and listen to your talking kid. Kind of pathetic that it took us running by (not judging you because we didn’t know, until you dropped the buds like they were contraband) to make you listen to your kid. After she’d been in school all day. I’m glad you feel bad.  You totally suck.

Dear advertisers: stop manipulating people.  You suck.

Dear government: would you please get them to disclose what natural flavors they use? You know it’s anchovies, I know it’s anchovies. Would you please make them put anchovies on the label? Cuz otherwise I might someday thing, well, it’s natural, so it couldn’t possibly be ground up carmine bugs, right? Wrong. Trade secrets my ass. The amount of  brown sugar in something is a trade secret. The fact that they’re feeding dead chickens to cows and dead cows to chickens should be on the front of the package. In simple pictographs because nobody reads labels anymore.

Dear neighbor: please don’t call the cops. He was doing that because we’ve had trouble with deer eating our brand new sunflowers, and we thought that the only natural defense we have, since the Ivory everyone else swears by isn’t working,  is human urine, and I know you probably looked the other way when it was a three year old, but he doesn’t have a big enough bladder and the tall guy does. Besides, what are you going to tell the cops? It’s our yard. And our urine.