Lights Are On But Nobody's Home

I have a horrible memory. Awful. I live in a bubble that is exactly this moment in time only. I dated a guy for seven years and I have no idea what color his eyes are. I’ll forget your name two seconds after you tell it to me even though I repeated it three times. If Beast Master disappeared and I had to describe him to the police all I’d come up with is “He has a very round head”.

When you have a memory like mine every day is full of suprises! Like when I order six items from Amazon and they’re all shipped separately and from different vendors. Last week I went to Amazon, pressed ‘Place Order’ and immediately forgot about it.

Two days later a packaged arrived and I thought that someone had sent me a gift. It was cereal. Close enough to a gift, I really like this cereal. The next day another box arrived and I thought that maybe my sister or mom loves had sent me a gift. They hadn’t and I honestly can’t remember what was in the box. Odds are on more cereal. That same day my Lucky Vitamin order arrived and even with their happy green logo printed on every side of the box I couldn’t remember why I’d placed an order with them or what was in it but I was hoping it wasn’t vitamins. It wasn’t, it was stuff for the dogs.

This week a teensy little box arrived from KV Vet Supply and I absolutely could not imagine what was in it or why someone would send me a gift from there. Nobody did. It was Boppo’s arthritis supplement.

Also arriving this week were two other packages. I don’t remember what was in them or where they came from but it's a little insane sad that no matter how many times this happens my first thought is "Yay! A present! For me!"

Do you see how Amazon fucks with my head?

Every single time a box arrives Beast Master and I have this conversation;

Beast: Whadya get?

Me: I don’t know! Do you think someone sent me something?

Beast: Didn’t you just order stuff?

Me: I don’t know! Did I? What did I order? Wasn’t that, like, last month?

Beast: ... No, it was Monday. Open it.

Me: Squeee! You open it, I’m too excited!

Beast: I’m not opening it. You ordered it, you open it.

Me: Weeeee!I’mtooexcited!Maybeit’sagift!Maybesomebodylovesme! OPEN IT!

Beast: Sigh.

Every. Time.

Why he asked me to remind him about something is beyond me.

Ghetto Spell Check

I spent a good bit of time quietly saying "Save whatever you IS working on" before deciding that Spell Check is just trying get me fired for stupidity.

Back Off, That's My Sunday

Yesterday I attempted a current events cram session while I cooked and then ate my lunch. The only thing this cram session achieved was to turn me into that person who thinks I know everything until Beast Master throws my utter lack of knowledge in my face and I try to deflect the issue by hiking my leg up on the kitchen counter and offering sex.

Once upon a time I read books. I read them from cover to cover, none those sneak peaks on Amazon for me! I read the shit out of whole books! I perused the Huffington Post, the New York Times and scientific journals at a leisurely pace. Back in the day, I didn’t feel pressured to appear like I give a fuck intelligent by posting interesting articles on LinkedIn. But those days are long gone.

What happened? I don’t have kids, I should have time to read. I could be wrong but I feel like this is why my parents forced me to go to school and got me a tutor when I couldn’t read, write or do math in the third grade. The math thing is still questionable. Please don’t ask me to count back change to you, this is what Excel is for so just back the fuck off. Okay?

Not so many years ago I did my nails and soaked my feet once a week. Now, if I sit still for five minutes, I'm bombarded in my brain by all the stuff I should be doing instead of taking care of myself, end up overwhelmed, watching TV while stuffing my face with Baked Cheetos and feeling sad that I’ll always be squishy if I don’t kick the Cheetos habit.

Therefore, I have made a life altering decision. I will no longer work on Sundays! In fact, I will no longer do anything for anybody but myself on Sundays! I will balance my checkbook! I will do my taxes! I will clean the house play with the dogs! I’m gonna do it all! I’m even going to print out a list I found on Pinterest that tells you when to do stuff around the house because there’s a good chance I wouldn’t remember to get dressed if Beast Master wasn't all like "You gonna put clothes on before you leave the house?". If we’re being honest, I just started remembering to turn off the oven when I take the food out of it. Where’s my gold star?

Anywho, I know it won’t be easy to stick with this decision so I've made a plan!

If some selfish asshat asks me to do something for them on a Sunday, even if they bat their eyelashes at me, I’m going to yell “NOOOO!” But I’m going to yell it in German because it will sound more intimidating. Then I’m going to drop to the ground, squeal like a pig and pretend that I’m having a seizure. 

This is what they used to tell me to do if a guy was going to rape me so I feel that it's the right way to handle the situation.

Writing This Made Me Stupid

It took me two weeks to think of a title for this post. Seriously. That's not a joke or an exaggeration. Two weeks. Pulling these words together into one place at one time has caused brain damage. I haven't slept in weeks, I can't focus. I can hear my brain buzzing.

Caution! Read this at your own risk. I cannot be held responsible for stupid shit that might spew from your face when you finish.

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Have you ever met a person and immediately hated them? Their mere existence in the same space-time continuum as you creates such a rage that you feel the need to punt their ass across the state line? Have you ever felt like that about someone? There are words in the English language that make me feel this way. These words will turn your face into a Crap Cannon.

Irregardless. What is this? What the hell is this!? This is by far the most ignorant and uneducated word I have ever come across in my life. NASCAR races and Pumpkin Chunkin’ contests must be rife with this word. It is a double negative, People. A double negative. Why does nobody understand that by saying IRregardLESS they have cancelled out the IR and the LESS and now we’re back to regard which is the opposite of what they were trying to say? People who say Irregardless clearly do not understand the concept of a double negative otherwise they wouldn't be spewing shit like Irregardless from their pie holes.

HeigTHHHH. This is what happens when people pronounce height as if it ends in a TH. It doesn’t. Ever. Stop rearranging letters and making shit up.

Seemingly, the most gratuitous word in the world. Oy, this sneaky sonofabitch managed to get itself into the dictionary. It’s a real word. How did that happen? I hate this word because a situation/thing/whatever either seems to be or seems not to be cute/better/an idiot. When someone says something like “I was faced with a seemingly impossible task” I want to get right in their face and whisper through clenched teeth “It either seemed to be impossible or it didn’t!” Aaaaarrrgh! Why did we make a second word that means the same. exact. thing. as the first word?

Spunky and Spunk are just gross. They are gross words that should never be used in conjunction with statements about children. “Oh that little Susie! She’s sure spunky!” Eiw! What? Who did that to her? Oh my god, find the bastard and lock him up forever! Or “Honey, did you meet the neighbor’s new puppy? He’s sure got spunk” and then she’s all “You sick freak! Why would you do that to a puppy?” right before she calls the police on her husband.

Cloogy gives me that good old fashioned nails-on-chalkboard feeling. It's the latest buzz word in Corporate America. Cloogy is all the rage! The moment the word is shot out of a crap cannon, all I can picture is George Clooney spunkin’ up the place.

Employee #1: “I was working on the presentation all morning and then my computer went all cloogy!”

Employee #2: “Goddamn it, George!”

I've just done you a favor, People. Don't use these words. Especially don't use them if you're trying to impress somebody and if you use them at work because everybody else says them... well, you're breathing my air and that's a problem. Using words like vociferous is impressive. Using nonsensical, made up words like irregardless is not impressive. Are we clear?

On the other end of the spectrum is the best word in the world. Dongle! Seriously, whoever decided to name the thingy that takes data from here and moves it to there a dongle is my hero. Dongle is genius! Think about it. Silly word, world wide corporate acceptance, suckers! The guy who decided to call a dongle a dongle is probably sitting around, dangling a dongle and saying "Do you believe I named this thing a dongle and everybody just went with it?" Do you think anybody was like "Dongle? What are we? Five? That's the silliest word ever!"?

In other news, Beast Master's junk is now called The Dongle. Which, if you think about it, is accurate.

Six Excellent Reasons To Break My Leg On The Way To The Airport

I’m going to Detroit tomorrow for work and I might shit my pants. Seriously. I’m dreading this trip but not because of work. I like my job. I really, really like the people I work with. They are awesome and fun and nice and my job keeps me busy so I pretty much hit the jackpot here. I’m dreading this trip because:

1. I’ve had a stomach thing going on for almost two weeks that involves incredible amounts of horrific, intestine twisting pain and acid gas.
2. I’m allergic to just about every food out there and always starve when I go on trips. Being forced to starve by a world that doesn't give a fuck about food allergies makes me feel stabby. If there’s a chance, though, that starving will cure this stomach thing I'm down wit it. Jiggy. That's me.
3. I don’t know how to sleep while waiting to be murdered in my hotel room without Sidekick pressed up against my back so I will sleep a total of 6 hours in 3 days which will result in me fucking up work, over sleeping and missing a flight because that’s how shit goes down when I travel. Once, I fell asleep in the terminal and missed my flight. The Crumb at the desk said they paged me like 10 times. HELLO! I. Was. Right. There!!!
4. I’m traveling with my own coconut milk in juice boxes (see item #2) which means I have to check my bag which also means that the milk will explode in my suitcase so I wrapped my clothes in a garbage bag but someone will turn my suitcase upside down and the milk will get into the garbage bag and all over my clothes, leaving me with nothing but the clothes on my back to wear until the end of the week. And because the milk exploded I will have nothing to eat but black coffee and dry rice chex all week. I suppose I could put the rice chex in the coffee while I quiet cry.
5. I have anxiety disorder and don’t function without my dogs. I have trouble making decisions such as Pants or No Pants on a good day. This week is going to be a fucking shit show. I won’t remember any of it by Friday.
6. Odds are very good that I will shit my pants in Detroit because this is the sort of stomach ailment that comes with the kind of gas you can’t trust (see items 1 and 2). Am I gonna fart or am I gonna shit? Oh, I see. Both. I’m going to do both. I packed extra underwear and socks.

Advance apologies to everyone on my plane tomorrow.

The Shart of The Matter

72% of shopping carts tested positive for fecal matter according to a report from Faux News. In fact, shopping carts are dirtier than public bathrooms. No small achievement based on what I’ve seen go down in women’s restrooms up and down the east coast. I Snoped it because Faux News makes stories up all the time and 72% seemed like a lowball number. I mean, we’ve all been to Walmart, right?

I thought about this 72% fecal matter today as I drove home from the grocery store. I had a particularly nasty cart with some kind of unidentified brown sticky stuff all over the handle. Was it baby barf? Perhaps it was fruit juice? Personally I’d prefer the baby barf because I’m allergic to fruit but whatever it was it was a sticky germ trap for all the feces on all the hands that came before mine.

I thought about this as I drove home, eating Cheetos and sucking the orange “cheese” dust off my fingers and out from under my nails. My fingers and nails that had just manhandled a nasty, shit laden shopping cart around a grocery store for 30 minutes. For a second, just a second, I was like “OH MY GOD! I just sucked somebody’s shit off my fingers!” But then I thought about all the times in my 38 years that I’ve had shit in my mouth in some form or another and I’m a pretty fucking healthy person. I think I’ve used hand sanitizer all of 3 times in my life and only because some germaphobe made me use it. But let’s go back to the fact that I’ve had shit in my mouth. Numerous times.

Back in high school I was sitting outside with my friends between classes and a bird crapped in my mouth. A bird. Shit. In my mouth. That was the last time I laughed freely under an open sky. How many points do you think that bird got? I’ll bet he got all the birdy ladies after that hole in one.

During college I interned at a zoo. ‘Nuff said. Maybe not if you’re not familiar with animal husbandry so let me explain. I worked in the African Plains area of the zoo. Think elephants, giraffes, zebras, bongos, cheetahs. I spent my mornings shoveling hundreds of pounds of elephant shit into wheelbarrows, up a ramp and into the back of a dump truck. Then we’d drive the dump truck to the other side of the zoo, dump the shit out, climb into the back of the truck and clean out the shit that didn’t fall out on its own. Then we’d go to lunch. I cannot tell you the number of times I’d pull my sandwich out of its baggy, get halfway through it, see my filthy shit covered hands holding the delicate white bread, think “Meh, too late now” and keep eating. I feel confident saying there’s been elephant shit in my mouth.

And let’s not forget about the time the monkey threw hot, fresh shit in my face while I was cleaning the enclosure. Sure it was a tiny Cotton Top Tamarin with a green Mohawk but his aim was true. So true.

Crazy eats copious amounts of crap. She prefers it soft serve direct from the factory but will eat it day old too. We don’t let Crazy kiss us but she’s got that Ninja Tongue action going on and sometimes you’ll be talking or laughing and SLURP!! Open mouth, insert Crazy tongue.

Are we keeping track? Bird, elephant, monkey, dog. Considering the number of times I’ve ripped open a bag of Cheetos on the way home from the supermarket I think it’s probably safe to add human to that list. 

So I’m driving home from the supermarket, sucking orange “cheese” off my fingers that were already sticky from the mystery goo on the shopping cart, thinking about that fact that 72% (minimum) of shopping carts are coated in shit and the fact that I’ve inadvertently eaten a lot of shit over the years and I thought “Whelp. Nothing I can do about that now” and kept eating the precious Cheetos and sucking on my fingers. 

Hell is...

Lying in bed for six hours, staring at the ceiling, occasionally dreaming of a hot guy with limited intelligence and his unfortunate brother with red, yellow, and green glass teeth who – whether exercising on the beach, hiking Roaring Brook Road or hanging around the mansion – will never leave me alone with said hot dumb guy, getting repeatedly punched in the face and stomach by the largest monkey and why do my sheets smell like mildew or maybe the monkey farted.