Category Archives: Don’t get me started (uh-oh, you just did)

Shiny new ‘pooter gets overheated…

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Oh, shiny new replacement computer, what a LOT of ranting you are going to process today.

Let’s begin with the fact that you need to exist. And that the bargain model I bought last freaking year, 13 months ago (which means one month past the freaking warranty expiration) was supposed to be a great deal. But two netbooks, stripped down to fit my pathetic budget bought within 14 months, means there will be no Christmas, no Hannukah, no new shoes—not even to replace all our white shoes after Labor Day—probably ever again. So screw your predecessor, screw you for existing, and screw you for being so much freaking better than last year’s model. And $10 cheaper. Bastard ‘pooter. I already don’t like you.

And you, Mother’s Day expectations…you suck. Because I hate Hallmark holidays and refuse to purchase Hallmarkiness in response to fabricated sentiment, I feel dirty for looking forward to Mother’s Day. I feel dirty for telling Spouse exactly what I wanted him and Peanut to make me. I feel cheap and hypocritical for smiling every time some says Happy Mother’s Day. And I feel really cheated that I didn’t get to sleep in, didn’t get a second to myself, didn’t get a shower, made my own breakfast (which the Spouse and Peanut refused to eat, thank you very much, to pour insult unctiously over injury). Sure, I have two beautiful, healthy, interesting, adorable, intriguing children to share the day with. And I’m finally, finally, finally home so I could spend the day with my mom and her mom. Everyone’s healthy and happy and really freaking lucky all ’round. But the Hallmarkiness of the holiday is centered around well rested and clean moms, yo. And I felt like a dolt for buying into that shite. I don’t sleep or shower or get any chef appreciation any other day of the year, so how dare I expect it on Mother’s Day?

You know what, I’m gonna leave it at that, ‘pooter. Cuz I don’t think you could handle a rant about all the other stuff making me a sourpuss today. And I can’t afford to lose another of your kind, you little technological bastard.

We now rejoin our regularly scheduled rant…

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already in progress:

…and you’d better call the insurance bastards to see if it’s covered.

As for you, Peanut, you are a very interesting introduction to the fine, fine phase that is Four Years Old. Nothing could be worse than Three, it is true. But if Three was all Mr. Hyde and no Jekyl, Four is the maddening experience of discerning what dropped hat sends you from Jekyl to Hyde and back. No, I will not pick up the toy you kicked across the room. You threw one, I took it away. You threw another, I took it away. Most of your collection is on top of the bookcase today, waiting to see which version of you comes out of your room tomorrow morning. So when you kick a toy out of anger, you get to pick it up yourself. No, you do it. Cry all you want; I no longer flip out when you’re in distress. A newborn has made me immune to your terrorist tactics. Butter is the antidote to my occasional Peanut allergy.

Butter, you’d better stop it. Seriously. Knock it off. I followed all your nonverbal cues, I did everything you wanted, and I got you to sleep. Just because I moved the slightest bit does not mean you can flutter your eyes open and start flirting with me. Yes, you’re cute. Yes, you’re still tiny enough that everything you do is precious. Your loud sleeping is delightful, your recent partial baldness is adorable, and your waste products are coo-inspiring. But go to freaking sleep, you little monkey!

And quit suggesting that you want to nurse just so you can gather huge mouthfuls of milk and the spit them on me. That’s not funny, despite what your brother says.

Hey, agents who have my novel and haven’t replied in well past the 6 weeks you promised: screw you! What is wrong with you? All the other rejections came within the appropriate timeframe. It’s rude to set a deadline and miss it without notifying involved parties that you need longer to complete the task. I don’t want your representation, anyway. This thing is gonna be huge, and so will the next dozen or so I write, and you’ll rue the day. You’ll weep, you’ll rend your garments and pull out your hair. You’ll want a time machine to take you back to when you first heard my name just so you can jump at the chance to take on all my current and future brilliance. You will self-flagellate, and you will be correct in so torturing yourselves.
Asshats.

Sure, Peanut, we can go to the playground. Sure you can climb that big ol’ thing you’re always scared of. Sure I can help you down. Just turn around and…no, I can’t climb up there with you. I can’t help you from up there. I can help you from down here. No, I can’t take baby home and come back without the sling. Even if I did, I’d still be short and unable to lift 35 pounds down from well above my head. I will stand here and talk to you gently for 30 freaking minutes, convincing you that I will help and you won’t fall and you can do it. And after that interminable period of patience and goodness and model mothering, during which I have to take two time outs to keep from beating you and one to nurse your brother, I will grab you by the ankles and pull you off the play structure. Yes, you technically fell. I mostly, kind of caught you, though. It was a slow fall. Are you hurt? No? Good. Come on. Time to go make you the dinner you request and then refuse to eat.

Hey! You! Damn you.

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Okay, broken tortilla chips at the bottom of the bag. I’m calling you out. YOU are what’s wrong with civilization. You sit there, all disingenuous, pretending to be cute little juvenile chips. “Oh, baby chips, how adorable and undoubtedly tasty,” we’re supposed to proclaim.

I don’t buy it, broken chips. You’re impostors. You’re not cute or tiny or in other ways deserving of the affection we give tiny mammal creatures, with their floppy heads and ridiculous mewling “et la” fencing cries, “hilp hilp hilp” guliping swallows, big eyes and delicious ears and milk-smelling breath.

No, chips. You are not cute and you are not babies. You are detritus. You are the trash that ought be thrown into a witheringly hot tortilla soup, or reserved for some lame casserole dish that demands crushed chips, not for grownup tasks like scooping salsa or taking the edge off my gnawing disillusionment and anger.

I try not to just throw you in the compost, though that is the fate you deserve. No, I make an effort, you chip-goodwill welfare recipients. I try to select you individually, little crumbled useless shard of corn and salt, to get just a hint of salsa on my palate. Tiny flake after tiny flake, I waste precious time and compulsive eating impulses just to make it seem as though I am responsible with the chip dust that I, in all likelihood, caused to break away from the bigger pieces. I have chip breaker’s guilt, and so I try to eat those lame shards.

But then my rage controls me. I might run out of binge energy at this rate, long before I’m overfull and long before the shards are gone. I don’t want to go through this again next season when I have random chip urges again. Get out of my way, chip gravel!

So I shovel pinches full of the little bastards into my gaping maw. No way to dip them, so now it’s just dry, salty tortilla shrapnel. Unsatisfying.

Finally, I look into the bag. The broken bits of chip, like my life, used to hold promise and endless possibilities. And now they are the uncomfortably dessicated flotsam and jetsam of poor choices (like bagging the chips next to the gallon of milk) lying on the shores of a vast ocean of now impossible possibilities.

So I throw the nigh on empty bag of crumbs back into the cupboard, so they can taunt me and torment me and mock me and drive me into an existential spiral in a few months. Oh, they’ll be there. Because it’s not as though anyone else will eat those little bastards in the meantime.

Nap libs

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I believe that there are many appropriate uses for my blog: entertainment, musings, politics, professional endeavors.  One use I find unacceptable, in part for the permanence of ravings on these interwebs and in part based in a basic sense of decorum, is to air the dirty laundry or the unabated joy of my marriage. (There isn’t much of the dirty, since Spouse is in charge of laundry, which is washed and dried relatively quickly. Left to wrinkle in the dryer or crammed haphazardly in cupboards, but who am I to judge, since I haven’t done laundry in ten years?)

Anyway, I figured that the things I need to say, whether cloyingly sweet or ragingly angry, are more useful to you if you can play along and find either relevance to your own relationships or find amusement in my refusal to commit to strong language…nay, any language whatsoever.

So here you go. My version of Mad Libs, a special edition just for this week in my marriage.

Oh, my  [ noun ]. My significant other is being a(n) [ adjective ] [ noun ] this week.  In fact, this [ adjective ] [ noun ] is off-the-charts impressive. Not only do my [ plural noun ] not seem to [ verb ] to my partner, but [ pronoun, possessive ] [ noun ] is about as [ adjective ] as I’ve ever seen.  It’s terrific timing, of course. We have a(n) [ adjective ] [ noun ] and a(n) [ adjective ] [ noun ] to deal with, I’m recovering slowly from a rough birth, and this is when my life partner feels it [ adjective ] to have a(n) [ adjective ] [ noun ].  After many long discussions, [ pronoun ] [ verb, past tense]  my opinion and our family’s needs and [ verb, past tense ] a(n) [ adjective ] [ noun ] of [ noun ] on a [ expletive ] [ noun ].  But even that hasn’t [ verb, past tense ]. [ Pronoun ] is being a(n) [ adjective ] [ noun ], really, [ verb, active participle ] my needs and our children’s needs to [ verb ] on the [ noun ],  [ verb, active participle ] about some [ adjective ] [ noun ] that, granted, my dear one is responsible for, but now [ pronoun] is [ verb, active participle ] time verb, active participle ] the real jobs around the house and in our lives.

What a [ noun ].

and so it goes…

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TKW posted a delightful cookie recipe on her bloggety blog. And I read it, during the newborn’s reliable morning nap while the bigger kid was at school and thought, you know what seems like some massive self loving right now? Homemade cookies.

So I looked over the recipe. “No problem. I even have eggs. I boiled some yesterday, but…oh crap. I boiled some yesterday and they’re still on the stove. Gross. Wasteful and gross and now fuck the cookies I’m taking a shower.”

And with that, delicious newborn work up and tried to eat his Moses basket and I relented to the reality that is my world for a while. But I’m making those cookies this afternoon, with bigger kid the baking partner from my dreams, while grandma cuddles the little “if it ain’t made of warm, human flesh, I won’t sleep on it” smartest dude in the house.

Know what? I didn’t even cry. Not at losing the “baking in peace” moment or the hardboiled protein or the shower. Didn’t even think of crying.

Look at me, all bright-side of things and silver lining-ish and perspective-y. Must be the hormones.

Birth announcement

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Here’s the announcement a hypothetical mama might send:

The Naptime Writing Family blissfully welcome Hazelnut Nutella Naptime to the world! He made his entrance March 23 weighing 7 pounds 3 ounces and measuring 19 1/4 inches. Mom, Dad, Peanut, and Hazelnut are all doing well and can’t wait to get to know each other.

But here’s the announcement a hypothetical mama really wants to send:

The Naptime Writing Family joyously announce the arrival of Hazelnut Nutella Naptime! He reluctantly joined our family March 23 after 41-plus weeks of gestation and 47 hours of labor. His mama made it through 41 hours of unmedicated labor and arrived at 10 cm dilation just in time to pull a muscle in her back. She lost all ability to cope and sobbed for two hours about acquiescing to an epidural. Hazelnut’s ginormous melon was facing posterior and get stuck under mama’s skeletal structure, so five hours of pushing wasn’t enough to get him to join the air-breathing lot of us. Mama Nappy’s doc offered several unacceptable options and Hazelnut got forced into reality with heroic pushing and expert, though traumatic, vacuuming.

Unfortunately, that mode of birthing left mama in shambles, and she bursts into tears every time someone says, “well, at least he’s healthy” or “you’ll heal” because she knows that and really wishes you’d say something supportive instead of dismissive (unless you, too, are currently sporting more than two dozen stitches in your lower body, twenty pounds of active volcanic rock on your upper body, and have made it seven days on approximately 20 hours of sleep).

Mama and Hazelnut are resting at home, where Peanut is as sweet as can be to his baby brother, and as terrible as he can be to his parents. Hazelnut is perfectly delicious, opinionated, and ravenous. His doting family are surviving just on nips of his sweet breath and heavenly sounds and hoping things get a bit easier.

But we’re not holding our breath.

The big lie of prodromal labor

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[Update almost 18 months later: a lot of you are coming here after searching for ways to progress prodromal labor. The secret is to WALK. A lot. Even if the neighbors have to hear you bellowing in your loud, low, open voice. And sleep when you can. I couldn’t. Read on…]

Oh, man.

Here’s the thing about having contractions every three minutes for 24 hours…if they go from lasting 30 seconds to lasting 45 seconds and then don’t progress any further, some person of questionable character will call it false labor. Not stalled or taking its time labor. False. (Technically, nobody I have talked to called it this, but the books and these here insipid interwebs aren’t afraid to…)

Let me tell you, oh reader, there is nothing fake about it. I still can’t talk or walk through these so-called false contractions. And I’ve still been awake for 24 hours dealing with what we in the natural labor game like to call strong rushes every 3 minutes. But the extra special good part? No progress. Doesn’t count. Still have all of active labor and transition and second-stage and third-stage yet to go. Maybe in a few days, they say. A few more days of strong contractions every 3 minutes.

Remember how we all joked that this baby couldn’t POSSIBLY as much work as Peanut?

Hmmm. The Office of Mandatory Looking on the Bright Side would like to remind me that this extended, healthy labor might, in some lights, be better than lolling around feeling way too pregnant because it is at least something different than being convinced the baby will never come out. Fortunately that Office is closed today.

[update, months later…intense contractions 3 minutes apart for 24 hours were a gift. They only lasted 30-45 seconds so they taught me to cope with the longer contractions. I labored 24 hours at home before I hit minute-long contractions. Those took 4 hours to come every five minutes (the typical “go to the hospital” frequency), which is when we found I was 7 cm. Tub, walking, tub, walking…7 hours to 8cm. 5 hours in transition to 10 cm. Posterior at the last minute, pulled a muscle in my back. 5 hours second stage. 1 hour stitching. Just shy of 48 hours total. That is totally not false labor. And, after the 41 hours of first stage, I can tell you the prodromal felt the same as the transition contractions…just shorter.]

Why, yes, you may

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Okay, I need to tell some of the people on the planet a few things. Close your ears if these don’t apply, cuz there ain’t no ranting like a wicked pregnant rant.

If we come to an intersection at the same time and I indicate you can go first, you’d damned better thank me, jerk, because chances are if I have to wave you through you know you don’t have the right of way. If you’re walking across the street against the light or half a block from the crosswalk and I let you go, you’d damned better thank me because I’m driving a ton of steel and you’re squishy. And if I’m crossing in the crosswalk, with the light, hugely pregnant and holding my kid’s hand, you’d damned better stop and wait for us, because I will hunt you down and maim you for being such a subhuman stool specimen turning dangerously close to us.

Waitstaff, if I ask for water twice and you forget both times to bring it, don’t be surprised if I forget to tip. If I ask for something for my kid even once and you forget to bring it, don’t be surprised if I brandish a weapon.

Parents, if your child is at the playground and you spend the whole time reading the newspaper, I will call child protective services and say the kid asked me to take him home because you lock him in the closet. I’m sick of parenting your kids for you.

Yes, you may ask:
How are you doing?
Can I bring you anything?
Could you look any more gorgeous?!
May I send you cash or a check?

No, you may not ask:
Are you ever going to have that baby? (No. I’m going to keep it in there and live off it in case I’m stuck at Donner Pass.)
Is that damned thing *still* in there? (No. Had it a week ago. Just fat. Thanks for asking.)
Could you get any bigger? (Probably. Could you get any more stupid or rude?)
What, are you waiting for your due date to come around again next year? (Yes. That’s exactly it. Nothing says fun like 17 months pregnant.)

And for these you will be stricken from the mailing list:
When are they going to induce? (Never. What part of natural don’t you get?)
How dilated are you? (Doesn’t matter. That’s not an indication of anything. Also none of your business. Also, I don’t know. Want me to run to the loo to check just for you?)
How long will they *let* you go? (Hi, have we met? Nobody is letting me do anything; I am an intelligent, consenting adult doing what my body needs without intervention, chemicals, or coercion.)
Will you have surgery? (For what? I don’t have cancer. I have a baby who’s not done cooking.)
How much weight have you gained? (Including the guilty conscience from killing you and woodchipping the body? Not sure. I don’t look at the numbers.)

Not really. Really?

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Wanna know why social networking is not the downfall of society? My brother found a woman’s wallet and keys on the DC metro and sent her a facebook friend request to try to get them back to her. She accepted a week or so later and is now overjoyed to have her stuff back, several states and an area code away.

Wanna know why social networking is the downfall of society? Because now even more f—ing people think my brother is the world’s best human and I have no way to subvert that perception. I mean, who comes off as the petulant a–hole for claiming the whole thing was a hoax and he’s just doing facebook p.r.? Exactly.

URL surprises abound

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Did you know that, if, in a fit of rage, you type ihatemyhusband.com into the URL box thingie up top there, you get a squatter site that links to Russian brides? That is just six kinds of wrong.

And seriously? Nobody has claimed and developed these sites?
apathy.com
futility.com
whythehellbother.com
myhusbandbugsme.com
Iwanttothrottlemyhusband.com
mykidisdrivingmecrazy.com
mykidsaredrivingmecrazy.com
shootmenow.com

But these URLs forward as follows…
failure.com to a scientific and engineering firm
despondence.com is a clearinghouse for mental health ads

no surprise….
depression.com is owned by a Big Pharma company selling their bottled happiness. So why don’t they buy mykidsaredrivingmecrazy.com and iwanttoothrottlemyhusband.com ?

in which I do *not* thank the Academy

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I would like to thank most of the English-speaking world for thoroughly screwing up some damned fine names. This whole baby naming process is much harder after the havoc wreaked by parents, novelists, and serial killers. Thanks for making our list much shorter.

You’re one of the big winners, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Daisy could have been lovely, but you made her a self-involved boor.

You, Marlon Brando, have completely eviscerated Stella for us. Others are brave enough to withstand the bellows, but we’re not.

Thanks a lot, popular culture, for ruining Chester. We daren’t name a molester.

You also did some damage to the grown-up possibilities of Cherry. And Dick (which is not a name we covet, but between the penile and the vice presidential, there might never be another person named Dick ever).

Sesame Street, you’ve killed great early century faves like Kermit and Grover. Not sure how Ernie still survives, but show me a kid named Bert and I’ll name my next child Elmo.

Benedict? Gone. Brutus? Not in a million years. Adolf. Of the radar. Lucifer…hey, now we’re talking!

what about your weekend, punk?

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You’re all talk, Naptime, about how much work you have and the things you need to accomplish on the weekend when Spouse, the only child care option you have, is available to weather the 4-year-old storm for a bit. So what’d you accomplish, punk?

Finish your articles?
Not really. One is 98% there and if I’d only proofread and double check my sources I’d be done. But then there’s the submission process and that seems daunting enough to put the thing off another year. The other, half-done article, is such a mess on paper and so freaking genius in my head that I just don’t know if I can reconcile the two before baby brain takes over. Again, I just need a solid weekend. But my sitting and thinking skills ain’t what they used to be.

Did you revise your book?
Yup. Last weekend. Total overhaul. Need a new title, though, so the new and improved version can go out to agents who might notice it’s just rearranged. Any suggestions are welcome, even though you haven’t read the danged thing. Seems that’s the way they name most novels, anyway.

Well, okay. Did you finish Peanut’s art project that you started a year ago?
Nope.

Edit any of the 34 hours of Peanut footage you keep swearing to send grandparents?
Nope.

Did you do anything of use, now that you mention it?
Well, snarky-pants, it just so happens I did. You read about the nightmare with the cat worms that included a day of steam cleaning the house in scratch-the-skin-off-my-body-and-buy-all-new-furniture horror. Well this weekend was two hours at the incompetent vet (yes, again) for a condescending variety of friendly ramblings, concluded by her asking whether, if we have a boy, we will circumscribe him. I guess she meant drawing the circle around him in the co-sleeper, so I said no. I might write circles around him in the crib when he or she moves to Peanut’s room, but I left it at “no; there’s no reason to.” Didn’t see the need to draw out a discussion about circumscription, since it’s so fraught with emotion.

Spouse and I also made huge headway on our organic garden by building a raised bed—6×6 extravaganza of…well, for now just wood and protective mesh screening. Soon it will have dirt and our awesome compost. Then it will have spinach and basil and carrots and strawberries and squash and cukes and such things. But for now it’s prepped. The best part was building in the rain, while Peanut played in the huge teepee we just built him. (Building semi-permanent forts sounds really good but takes way more time and energy that I believe my child is worth, but really tall bamboo teepees are freaking easy enough to finish in about 20 minutes. 8′ diameter, 6′ tall. $20. 20 minutes. My kind of building.)

I also read 2666 (next post) for the bolanobolano.com group read and got frighteningly far ahead. Must go write my assessment of The Part about Fate, which I freaking loathed. Suffice it to say that even brilliant writers need to know their limits, and Chilean/Mexican/Spaniard novelists need not try to capture the creakily-aged Black Panther movement in Detroit. Even if they succeed in making some of it funny, relevant, and thoughtful. It was like reading from inside a cubist painting. A very well done cubist painting. But still.

I wiped the hard drive of the computer that crashed AGAIN (shakes fist and grouses incoherently at Microsoft, the voodoo doll for which is coming soon) and have almost got all the backup docs and software restored. Once my software finishes updating I will have all the preschool fundraiser stuff for this week done.

Got a haircut. Completed several towers and puzzles with Peanut. Cleaned out the freezer. Wrote another novel. (Kidding. I rearranged the freezer. Big difference.)

So. I made inroads on changing the world by growing food at home, and am done preparing the house for babe. I just didn’t make any progress on the stuff that will win me fortune and fame. And that reminds me, I need to submit my game show application soon so I can win and actually afford to live here. Unless people figure out there’s as much profit in killing game show winners as there is in killing lottery winners.

Lessons from the Olympics

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Every two years I learn a bit more about human nature from watching the Olympics. Here’s what I’ve learned this time.

1) There should be compulsories in every life pursuit, including citizenship and parenting. Required maneuvers, put your own stamp on them, but prove you can do the basics, or GET OUT.

2) People who genuinely succeed in life see the big picture. “I’m here to do my best, and in that performance I achieved something I’ve never done before. It was a personal best. That’s the point, and I’m thrilled with actually doing my personal best.” People who live like leeches off successful people, for instance those who produce and write and report on television, have a completely f—ing screwed view of life. “He’s been having a terrible Olympics. yesterday he came in 13th and the day before 18th.” In the WORLD. Because he did his absolute best, and so did everyone else, and 12-17 bodies happened to just fire a bit faster on those two days. You “television personalities” are the oxpeckers of our culture.

3) Any sport that involves going faster than the human body can travel on its own is anathema to mothers. Wanna cross country ski really fast? Cool. That’s like running. Wanna hurl down a mountain at freeway speeds with just a helmet and goggles to protect you? Mama says NO. Serious negative bonus points if your sports is named after the part of you that could break…say, maybe, skeleton.

4) Holding your skate is not impressive. All that other stuff…wow. Holding your skate is really really dumb and I wish you’d stop it.

5) The absolute worst pseudo-food, food-like products are advertised during these sporting events, as though somehow putting those food-like substances in your body will make connected us to world-class athletes. Mmmmmkay. I’d rail against this faulty logic except that most of America gets suckered by this, just as they believe that pseudo-food will get fat, balding, short, flatulent men the tallest, thinnest, most intelligent and beautiful women. You just go ahead and think that, America.

6)The world will be a better place when ice fashions eliminate the flesh-toned stretchy fabric crap. “Oh, my. It looks as though she’s basically naked. How will she leap and twirl…oh, wait a minute. I see. It only looks as though there’s no fabric there. How clever. He didn’t bedazzle his flesh, he simply bedazzled some fleshy nylon. Kudos. It allows us to pretend to see her whole back and midsection without actually revealing anything, heaven forbid, in that skin tight everything-but-labia revealing dress.” You know what else makes a costume look like skin? Skin. Some of the fine competitors this year used their own skin to look like skin and it worked wonderfully well. You know what else holds up outfits? Real fabric. Straps of it or swaths of it or whole pieces of it. Other competitors used fabric. In bright colors or tasteful neutrals. Also worked quite well. This 1970s body stocking bullshit simply has to go. Thanks to the competitors who have already realized that.

And the winner is…

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The spammer who composed this beauty:

“I was reading something else about this on another blog. Interesting. Your linear perspective on it is diametrically contradicted to what I read earlier. I am still contemplating over the various points of view, but I’m tipped to a great extent toward yours. And regardless, that’s what is so great about modern democracy and the marketplace of thoughts on-line.”

Why, nameless, faceless salesperson of all things godawful, you almost make sense. Most of the other spam is barely intelligible and so I celebrate you. This is b-lls-t, in part because I’ve never had a linear perspective in my life, and because things cannot be “diametrically contradicted to” something else (they are “diametrically opposed to” or “directly contradict”), and because modern democracy allows many fewer opinions than, say, Grecian democracy, and because since the late ’90s the Wired style guide assured us it was time to take the hyphen out of the word online (a trend followed fewer than two years later by most major dictionaries.)

Also, your fake comment has nothing at all to do with the post to which you appended it, and is the most blatant of attempts to fake your way through the assignment. I’ve seen that before, buddy. I teach English to those who believe they don’t need it.

Though your attempt is head and shoulders above the rest of the spam I get (and, honestly, better than the compositions of 75% of college freshman), it’s still schlock.

So. For your efforts: A. For your dirth of knowledge and annoying posing: F.

Still. Amusing. You win. Your prize is that I won’t post your spam in my comments because it’s still spam and obviously crap; but I will take your pathetic words and use them to amuse myself for the three minutes or so it took to deride you in public.

Yay for you, spam dude.

Take this job and shove it

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This morning, as Peanut screamed an ranted that on movie day we *do not* have breakfast before movies and we might as well put him in an orphanage if we were going to be so cruel as to make and eat french toast on a holiday morning of family togetherness because ksdfjberijdfvbkja!! (I didn’t understand the last part, either) I told Spouse that *none* of my previous bosses acted this way. The guy I thought misunderstood my role in the company? Never screamed and danced the jig of impotent anger. And he gives a lot to charity. The corporate drones who stacked atop each other to Fortune 100 cloud-top perches never raged in my face while I tried to pee. The woman who ran a great company and gave me more respect, autonomy, and credit than I deserved never tried to bite me while repeatedly shrieking my name. And the other bosses, at companies large and small, generally had flaws that were within the bounds of propriety, reason, and social acceptance. Even if I didn’t appreciate it at the time.

I think it might be time for a job outside the home. The things I do best—writing, editing, and researching—are ideally done, for me, independently from home. But my home ain’t what it used to be and there’s no way to expect that I can gather together my shredded dignity, sanity, and intelligence to freelance while this monster and his soon-to-be-omnipresent sibling live here.

No doubt that, in a tough economy, many firms are clamoring to hire women who are 7 months pregnant. Right?