Tag Archives: shenanigans

Accomplishment Friday

One week after Bastille Day (ce n’est pas Bastille Day), a baby achieved five weeks of breathing. A baby had seen better weeks, what with having the little thing that holds her tongue in her mouth removed and all. Long story, but she did really well, and the people at Children’s Hospital were very nice and simultaneously achieved the desired results while not accidentally killing her. I almost handled the dying for her, because my heart broke wide open from seeing her little head bobbing over the nurse’s shoulder when they took her into the OR. Oh shit, you have no idea.

Clearly her mouth developed improperly because of Something I Did While Pregnant. Did I take a Sudafed? Was it because I came within a few feet of the litterbox? Was it the sushi? See, I am pre-emptively guilt tripping myself. She’s going to have so much more free time as a teenager. Whenever she’ll start with “It’s all your—” I’ll be like “Gotcha covered, kid. See: July 2006, where I walked around with rocks in my shoes as penance.” And she’ll shrug, steal some of my Valium, and leave to go buy a slutty outfit.

We all needed a break on Friday night, so we tempted fate by walking downtown to get ice cream. A baby obligingly fell asleep in the sling, which is great because going somewhere in public with a baby is a bit like handling dynamite. Handling dynamite was covered in a episode of Lost, if you need a refresher. Results were mixed. We made it within a few doors of the ice cream place when a man scurried up to us and said “The guy from Lost in Space is at Gary’s Ice Cream!” We said “Oh,” and he helpfully offered “Not the old guy, the other guy.” Well, whoopee.

So we get in there, and Major Don West is signing photos for a bunch of obese older people in sci-fi themed t-shirts! Wow! He even had a seven-foot-tall replica of The Robot. Why did we leave the house without a camera?

Thus distracted, I made a fatal error when ordering my ice cream. I ordered a scoop of one flavor in a cup, and a scoop of a second flavor, intended to share the cup. But because I didn’t yell “PUT THEM IN THE SAME CUP,” each scoop arrived nestled in its own cup. Mr. H asked them to put the two scoops in the same cup, and panic ensued. The counter person couldn’t process this request, so he brought in the seventeen-year-old manager. “What’s the problem?”

“Um, we want both of these scoops in one cup.”

“What?”

Finally, after we employed hand gestures, switching to two other languages, drawing a crude image on a napkin, and holding Major Don West at knife point, TeenMgr squeezed both single cups into…another cup, single sized. At that point, I ran out screaming and threw the whole dripping mess in the trash.

At least a baby slept all the way home.

No sleep til Brooklyn

It’s amazing how somone under 7 pounds can make two adults with a combined 61 years of life experience feel totally incompetent at times. Mr. H does not know how a kimono works, but the baby forgave him after a withering stare. Or maybe she got distracted by her own hand. We can’t be sure.

On the plus side: “I have a baby” is the world’s best excuse. I got a lame-tastic bridal shower invite today that included the wording “Red Sox attire strongly suggested!” Oh, darn, the baby. Someone wanted me to take a small freelance job. Oh, the baby. I’m going to try that next year at tax time. I can’t pay, I have a baby. I’m going to use this line until she’s at least eight.

There’s no dog, but there IS a baboon!

What a big, exciting weekend. I got the Ren & Stimpy DVDs I’ve been coveting for so long! And then whaddya know, one of my favorite episodes was on TV for free yesterday. Rip. Big rip. Then Mr. H made me go to Linens N’ Things. I guess we need things. He always wants crap like throw blankets. I ran around like a child who has slipped its leash while he evaluated thread counts. Look! They have candy! Do you see! Candy! We left with some candy. You are a true friend, Stimpy.

I’d say more (or less? since whatever I was going to say is hardly substantial. it probably has to do with food.), but I was up all night with a migraine (not related to the candy, honest). And people have started doing that mega-annoying thing where they call all our assorted phone numbers in quick succession if we don’t answer right away, because clearly that will help them gain faster access to Important News. If you want Important News, try CNN. Or the Boston Globe, where they only confuse “its” and “it’s” 50% of the time. The only people here are us firedogs.

Zero tolerance

Our own problems are always the worst, right? I am an angry wolverine, ready to bite the next person who says they’ve had a hard day when what they really mean is “They were out of toasted coconut iced coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts.”

Whatever. At least I can poo, even with a parasite attempting to force all my internal organs up into my left arm somewhere. There are people in this world who don’t poo, you know. Poor kids in China. We’ll always have regularity.

My mother sadistically gave my email address to an aunt, and that aunt has been bombarding me with religious spam. Funny, right after this started, I GOT FORCED OUT OF MY HOUSE. Thanks, St. Theresa. Today’s installment slipped past the junk filter, and it also contains a gem about her grandson’s neck fold staph infection and her son and “his use of coffee grounds to grow beautiful blueberry bushes in his yard.” My cup, my cup, my cup runneth. Over. And around. And through. Behind and before. My cups actually leak now. That’s another problem for another day. The solution is a humiliating system of bra stuffing.

How many more disgusting things can I put in one post? I am dying to see what the sponsored links comes up with to go next to this one. Speaking of which, I am so glad I am monetized. No fair that you get to enjoy my bad mood for free!

Would you rather

A) Sort through three boxes of wires and cables that you’ve dragged along on the past two moves because Mr. H thinks they might be important

B) Deal with a client who says “Lighten this image,” and then turns around and says “No, I want it back the exact same way it was before.”

C) Interview pediatricians

D) Induce a diabetic coma with fun sized Three Musketeers bars while watching a saved America’s Next Top Model episode

Faith, hope, charity, murder

I have a stupid. Ostensibly, I trained this stupid to do something marginally complicated a few weeks ago. The stupid was hired by my client due to professing knowledge in the technology selected for Project X. At the training hand-off, stupid again reiterated vast expertise. I said “Oh, that’s wonderful. Would you like to do the navigating in the tool while I run through the presentation?” I was thinking “Score, this is going to go so much faster.” Stupid declined, clearly not wanting to show off.

I went through the training exercise, and stupid frequently interjected “OH, that’s not how it used to be when I last used this FIVE YEARS AGO” or “THIS looks DIFFERENT!” Stupid sometimes asked stupid questions. I think my favorite was “Why does the company that sells this technology use proprietary markup?”

At the end of the session, I handed over a quick help document I’d written to cover troubleshooting, the manual to the technology, and all the support numbers for the company that makes the technology. I told stupid that the quickest answers would always be found in the documentation, and I was not available for continuing support per the contract the client had selected.

So far, stupid has called Actual Support several times, each time providing incorrect descriptions of the problem stupid created. Support tells stupid something that would work for what stupid actually described. The solution then doesn’t work, since stupid was wrong in the first place. Stupid then calls me. I screen stupid’s calls. So stupid pecks out an email, usually including a hilarious take on what the problem might be. These have ranged from “Maybe I need to clear my cache” to “Do you think the time change had anything to do with X not working?”

The answer to stupid’s problem is invariably the first thing I wrote in the quick help document, IN BIG CAPITAL LETTERS RIGHT AT THE TOP.

I have another pleading email sitting in front of me right now. Instead of cutting and pasting the section IN BIG CAPITAL LETTERS yet again, I think I am going to cc stupid’s boss and tell her that stupid must have broken the flux capacitor. There is nothing to be done in the case of a busted flux capacitor. They’re going to have to close up shop and go home. Sucks huh.

Cats can’t fax for crap

But they can eat the hell out of some tulips. Oh! Oh! They are up too high for you to reach? Why don’t you yell about it and look wistful?

It’s OK, cat, I can’t fax either, and I have thumbs. I put that shit in upside down yesterday. Ghost fax! Casper the friendly blank seven pages.

I shouldn’t be allowed around machinery at this stage of my endumbenment. I am losing a battle with the battery in this laptop.

The condo management continues to send illiterate emails. My favorite: “All owner’s whom wish to rent out their unit must get a 6D certificate.”

Now I’m working on my to-don’t list. There is dumb stuff on this list that I am supposed to do but will leave til the last minute. Do you have to buy cards for First Communions? I think so, but the bodega only has Quinceanera cards (now I know someone is going to be an asshole and leave a pithy comment about Quinceanera that is sure to include a proper n-yay. will it be you? yeah, you thought about it).

Mr. H has jury duty today, so I had to drive poor Dagwood to the butt-earliest train. Turns out the methadone clinic down the block is open much, much earlier than I thought! Did you get that I live in a bad neighborhood? There is a bell outside, and it’s ringing ringing ringing. I think “they” are testing an alarm. I get it. I’m alarmed.

Which one of you maggots wants to take me to Paris

Financial planning has always been a topic near and dear to my heart. It involves less hallucinogens and guilt these days, but I’m still the one who knows where all the bank accounts are, and more importantly, how to extract money from them. My darling Mr. H says “Dee buh dee buh dee?” and gets direct deposit. I am the evil overlord who makes sure his student loans get extracted on the 12th of each month, as opposed to the 12th of never, his previously preferred date.

Normally, our system works well. I improved our credit scores over the years through the folksy homespun wisdom of paying the bills. To allow some illusion of mutual control, he is a guest user on my Amex. It generally doesn’t occur to him to spend money anyway, just as it didn’t occur to him to pay bills. He’s too busy thinking about complicated pieces of code. I don’t spend that much either, since I was brought up by people who believed “Why buy it if you can make it out of chickenwire?” If I must, I prefer to splurge on things I didn’t get in my youth: things like well-made shoes, hotel rooms nicer than my house, and x-rays performed by a licensed technician.

But the other day, I caught him playing with a Bugaboo stroller. This stroller is nearly $900, or about the GDP of Madagascar. It operates on the principles of the Rubik’s cube or a Transformers toy, so after a lot of flipping and clicking, you end up with an amphibious assault vehicle or Optimus Prime or a detachable bassinet. I’d always just assumed that only assholes who live in Park Slope or the aggressively European couple we know would get a Bugaboo, but damned if he wasn’t communing with one. My poor innocent, attracted to the engineering and oblivious to the social status baggage.

The saleslady pounced and demonstrated, including stealing someone else’s kid to show off the turning radius. I’ll admit that it’s lightweight and impressively easy to spin, but it’s still a little SUV-sized and overpriced for my taste. Then again, I spent a lot more than that on the Democratic party in 2004, and I did not get a foot muff for that investment. I got no muff at all.

Now he’s fairly adamant that the parasite should get trundled around in this contraption. The problem is that I had planned on trundling the parasite through Europe in my abdomen, because I want a goddamn last vacation before she starts playing at nonsense like breathing. Once she’s here, I had assumed that she’ll sleep in a file drawer and get carried in a pillowcase with air holes, just like the good old days. I thought about playing the “we have no money” card since he will never actually look at an account, but this will create problems with my recreational goals. So I see that I have no choice but to weave a convincing Bugaboo replica out of chickenwire if I want a chance to eat my weight in croissants before June. Damn you, the Dutch! You and all your industrial designers. Or perhaps I will just go on vacation by myself and leave Mr. H to push the cat around in the Bugaboo. That way we can afford to do both. What would Madagascar do?

Oh, today in cats: Flop-bott of the bottom system. That will probably end up costing an extra student loan payment.

Am terrible person

I woke myself up this morning by laughing at my own joke in a dream. Ha! Haha! It was so funny that the parasite got the hiccups.

I’m doing my taxes, er, filling out the worksheet from the accountant. Did I start a farm last year? Please refresh my memory. I probably should have. This question seems leading.

Also, it’s Valentine’s Day. I have festooned the place with red confetti, and I’m wearing a fur bikini. By that, I mean mismatched socks. But they are pink! Who loves you?

Visa vee

Unsourced gossip: apparently Massachusetts is trying to strengthen seatbelt laws to make being unbuckled a stoppable offense. There is outcry that this will lead to racial profiling, and then some people just don’t like being told what to do. Well, move to New Hampshire and pay higher property taxes. There are no races in New Hampshire (except dirt bike), so that takes care of racial profiling. The legal fireworks balance out the lack of diversity. Anyhoo, seatbelt laws require impassioned speeches about civil liberties, but wiretapping without a court order is A-OK!

I was once helped by a seatbelt! It’s true! Actually, more than once. This morning, some skeez in an orange Tonka truck (Honda Element?) tried to make a left into the lane of traffic. Unfortunately, I was already right in front of her. I used my cat-like reflexes and saved us all, but on second thought, I should have let her hit us. Such destruction would have totally gotten us out of the fucking lease.

Then there was the time my mother turned the mini van over during morning car pool. This was during her storied “I don’t need glasses” phase. The neck injury I sustained from dangling like a bat still kicks up to this day, but I imagine it might have sucked more had my neck crumpled against the roof of the car. The most annoying part out of all of this? A neighbor was driving by and thought it was a good idea to take several bruised and stunned children to school. I got to school on time and took a science test. I had a valid excuse to go home on a silver platter, and I was too dumb to take it. Never again! Today I am going to cancel a meeting because it is snowing. Discretion is the better part of laziness.