I don’t quite remember how, or am too lazy, to sign into my blog correctly: nowadays, I just click on the comments and then choose myself – it’s a good thing some foresighted person gave me the rights to create posts, or we would all be doomed.
Here is the explanation for my relatively protracted absence from blog, WoW, and the world in general:
My commute is longer. It used to be around 30-45 minutes to drive 20 miles, one way, to work. It is now 45 minutes – 2 hours to drive 35 miles, one way, to work. (In case you are all wondering, the going price for autonomy, love, and American automobile engineering is roughly equal to $617.00 / month.)
Consequentially, my free time is less free. It is used to run errands, dinner-make, or just wind down with Boy. I confess to doing a whole lot of nothing in the hours between sleeping and waking that are not spent in working. I sit. I stare at a television. I move very little, while my mind races to catch down to the pace. I feel like that sound you hear in your car engine when you first stop it – little pebbles frantically clanking around, not yet aware that the world has stopped for a moment.
Oh, what’s that? Your car doesn’t make that noise?
That’s probably because you don’t own a Jeep. Let’s go into that.
Two weeks ago: My check engine light comes on.
Week and half ago: I hit a pipe/bolt/screw from the Iron Giant on the freeway, and it rips open my tire. I am helped by a stranger, who, after he changes my tire, shakes my hand, gives me a bag of avocados, and a postcard of that famous biblical ship, the Titanic.
Day after week and half ago: Take my car in for a look over, to make sure that liquid I saw leaking out of my car from the day before is not going to make my care explode. Might as well take a look at that engine light and that noise my locks are making too. I am shuttled home. Repair time is estimated to be 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM. Then, 2:00 PM. They finally call at 4:37 PM. The car is ready: please bring us your first born child, and you can have it back. EXCEPT – our shuttle guy goes home at 4:00 PM, sorry. Kay. I decide to walk it the 4.15 miles in 90+ degree heat, in an hour, because I am pissed, and because pissed people are almost always dumb. I make it about…1.85 miles before I realize that I am not going to make it there on time. I go home. For my efforts, and for my unfailing sense of inappropriate footwear, I gain two blisters on my feet.
Later, same day as before: I burn my arm on the oven. It bubbles up like a little brown liquid worm on my skin, and stops hurting after a few hours, but is still fun to gross people out with.
Day after that: Noise in car is no longer going on. See, they fixed the part I told them not to fix, and did not bill me for it. Mildly vexed at moral dilemma: should I take it back and demand that I pay for it, when I explicitly told them not to? Or tell them to break it again, because I did not pay for it to be fixed? General consensus of loved ones is that it is their mistake if they can’t follow simple instructions like, “No, don’t do that.” Not certain that will fly if the Q Continuum ever takes me up on it, but Oh Well.
This weekend: Boy remembers I once said I wanted to have the famous Andersen’s Pea Soup (available in its naturally uncanned state) in Buellton, so we go there. Day after, we enjoy a pleasant walk around Solvang, during which it is good to be alive, with Boy, and with car that is unbroken, we go back to my car to discover the window down. A slight pat sends the entire window down, after which it is discovered that (and forgive me for this) it has fallen, and it can’t get up. I fret about the car, pick a fight, and build a very silly sandcastle (my first!) with Boy.
Yesterday: Car goes in.
Today: I am poor. I consider screaming at the Staples rep today, because he has the uncanny knack of calling only when I have already been pre-pissed-off. He asks the same thing, every time: Are we enjoying our paper? Is there any big order he can help with? Are we cheating on him with another office supply company? YES, I want to tell him, YES, it’s Office Depot, and their paper is bigger than yours, thicker than yours, and I like to run through the office with it pasted to my naked body, YES!
Something always stops me, though. I think: this guy’s just doing his job, which is probably not that much fun. He probably has kids, and a mortgage, and he goes to work to put in his time so everything will even out at the end of the day – hopefully – and maybe, once in awhile, he gets to do something fun. And then I bury the frustration away, thinking, “He doesn’t deserve my ire: I’ll just wait until another telemarketer calls my cell phone.”
I dream about cleaning, and wake up happy. Is that weird?
I often day dream about selling the names, addresses, and social security number of spammers to other spammers, and making them sit in movie theaters with people who talk, and putting them on freeways with rubber neckers, and throwing squishy, staining fruits at them. It is not hate: it’s justice.
I often think about Curt, and how cute he looks while he sleeps. He’s sleeping now. I can go over there and poke him, if I wanted! I’m gonna – sshhhhh! Brb.
Mission accomplished: I’m a fiend.
It’s 1:33 AM. I have profounder thoughts than these. The question of whether or not I am happy is quicker to answer, but harder to explain, so here is the short version – Yes: but I am tired.
And I am now – to bed!
Much love to you, monkeys.
