Saturday, November 16, 2013

The best part of me...

Lately I feel like The Smooch is getting the raw end of the deal.  He married me for a variety of reasons but I bet none of those reasons were because I am tired and grouchy at the end of the day.  Or maybe he is a masochist and that is exactly the reason he married.  In that case, we shall be happily married forever.  But I don't think so.  Which sucks because The Smooch sleeps later than I do so I don't see him until after work at which time I am normally grouchy and tired.  I am not this way because I hate my job.  It is quite the opposite.  I enjoy my job but that is not to say that I don't have my fair share of work related BS.  I do, who doesn't.  But I sometimes feel that I spend the best part of me at work.  I am refreshed when I get to work.  Little has crapped on my day yet.  The sun is shining.  By the time I get home from work, the sun has long gone to bed, which makes me want to be long gone to bed.  I feel like maybe I get a certain amount of patience every day.  And I feel like I use it all up at work.  I work in affordable housing and our tenants can sometimes be challenging.  That is not to say that they all are.  Some of them are very nice and grateful, but with every yin there is a yan.  For every great tenant, there is one crazy one, for every smiling tenant, there is a yelling one.  I sometimes feel that I use all my patience dealing with the tough tenants.  I use it dealing with the tenant who showed up drunk again...  I use it on the tenant who is asking for the impossible...  I use it on the tenant who feels entitled to things they don't deserve.  So by the time that I get home, I am tired and done with listening to others.  Why do I save the best of me for work?  Maybe because they pay me?  Maybe because it's my job?  This is not to say that all my patience is used on undeserving people.  I am very happy to give my patience to those who really need it.  That tenant who calls with lots of questions.  They are trying to understand a confusing process and I am happy to help them through it.  Better than you yelling at me later because you don't understand something.  I am happy to help people.

How do I save some of that patience and kindness for when I get home?  So that my husband and I can have a fun evening instead of me crawling into my pajamas and watching tv all evening.  I don't know the answer to that.  But for now, I am going to try to be more aware.  Try to be less grouchy with my husband.  And until I figure this all out, I am going to be glad to have a husband who likes curling up on the couch and watching tv as much as I do.

Ironically enough, The Smooch said to me while I was typing this.... "I love you even though you're a bad wife."  Wow, thanks honey.  Maybe I am not the only grouch.
 
 

Sunday, November 10, 2013

I grew up in a zoo...

That may be a slight exaggeration but not far.  I didn't actually grow up in a zoo.  I did, however, grow up at a house with tons of animals.  You may remember from the blog post Random Stuff That Happened This Week - Week of September 9, 2013 that my mother (not my father, even though they live together) has a ton of dogs.  Now it may seem a little abnormal to have 9 dogs living in one household but it never seemed abnormal to me.  I grew up on a farm.  We did some farming when I was a kid but we did not have a big huge factory farm.  Just a small one.

Country life is different than city life.  I guess the same can be said about city life being different than country life.  Both are fine, they both just have their pros and cons.  In my country life, there were always tons of animals around.  Below are a list of animals that we had at our house at one time or another.  We didn't have all of these animals at once, they all over lap.

  • Horse - Just one, Sunshine Jim

  • Cow - Joey.  He made a good burger.

  • Goats - Burt and Ernie.  I was four when we got them.  Give me a break.

  • Dogs - Too many to count.  I do know that we had so many over the years that we had to start reusing names.

  • Cats - When we first moved into our house, there were a bunch of feral cats.  This happens when you live in the country because assholes think that because you live in the country, it is okay to dump there unwanted cats at your house.  It's not dickhead.  That's not cool.  Love your animals.  Anyway, so we had a bunch of feral cats that we couldn't touch.  They didn't like people.  Since we couldn't catch them.  We couldn't remove their reproductive organs.  We did spay and neuter all of the kittens.  But for year's we couldn't catch the original cats and those cats kept on multiplying until they final died.  But at one time, we did have 17 cats.  In the immortal words of Bob Barker,  "Help control the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered." 

  • Hamsters - We had two, Bud and Bart.  Naming was not our strong feature.

  • Guinea Pigs - Just one, Sandy.  We would let her run around the bathroom, not all the times but sometimes.   And she loved to squeak.  That thing about drove you crazy with all that squeaking.

  • Chinchilla - We only had one of these.  I can't remember it's name.  The curse of having a lot of pets is that you can't remember all there names.  But that critter was fun.  We loved to give it dust baths.

We also had a ton of birds.  I am not sure why but there were always birds roaming the property.
  • Guineafowl - Not sure what to say about these.  They are like chickens but not at all.

  • Parakeet - His name was Petey.  Yes, like the parakeet on Dumb and Dumber.

  • Cockatiel - His name was Max.  He loved the blow dryer.  We would give him showers with a spray bottle and dry him off with the blow dryer.  Anytime you blew dry your hair he would go crazy because he wanted a blow out as well.  We kept Max in the bathroom.  With a house full of cats, small animals live in the room with a door that closes tight.

  • Pheasants - Boring old garden variety.  When I was a kid my grandfather* was very active in the local conservation club.  One of the projects they worked on was bringing back pheasants to the area.  Apparently there were not many in the area.  They would deliver hundreds of baby chicks to my grandfather's house and he would put them in this HUGE cage in his backyard.  I can't even describe how big it was.  The cage was bigger than the second house I owned.  Then when they were all grown up, we would round them up.  Each person would take a dozen pheasants or so and release them in different parts of the county.

  • Golden Pheasants - Not sure where we got these but they were pretty cool looking.

  • Quail - Bob White - About as exciting as they sound.

  • Doves - We had one really ugly one that we named Steve Urkel.  He was popular at the time.

  • Peacocks - Peacocks are beautiful but the make crazy noises.  Their screeches sound like women screaming.  When we first got them the neighbors would stop by just to make sure we were all okay.

  • Geese - I hated those things and they hated me. They once chased me through the yard peeking at me the whole time.  They cornered me in the barn until someone came out of the house to rescue me.  This story always gets big laughs but I am telling you, that shit was traumatizing.  I hate geese to this day.  NOT FUNNY.

  • Chickens - We had a ton over the years.  But we did have this one rooster that hated men.  I didn't know a rooster could have those kind of emotions.  But he did and he hated my father.  If my father was walking around the barn, the rooster would run the other way around the barn so he could attack my father at a corner.  That thing was evil, pure evil.

  • Ducks- We started out with 5 but had over 100 in a year.  They would hang out at our house in the spring and summer and then every fall they would migrate, well I guess I don't know where they went but they came back the next spring.  The story of how we got them is also quite funny.  When I was a kid, we had a Schwans Man.  He drove this huge freezer truck and drove around selling frozen goods (pizza, ice cream) out of his truck.  My dad mentioned to him once that he wanted some ducks.  The next time the Schwans Man came around, he had a box of ducks in the front seat of his truck.  I guess he was full service.


* Mutters under breath - Son of a Bitch

Monday, November 4, 2013

It's Time To Buy Lycra Or To Start Working Out

Today I went shopping for clothes.  I have a work conference coming up and wanted to find something a little more professional to wear .  Clothes shopping has lost some fun since getting married because of something that someone once referred to as "Happy Weight."  It is not weight gain that makes you happy but weight gain caused by being happy!?!  Stupidest thing I have ever heard.  So I am on a mission to find some great shapewear.  I would love to hear your suggestions in the comments.

But this reminded me of the last time I was in the market for some shapewear.  This happened just over two years ago right before The Smooch and I got married.  I needed some serious shapewear to go under my wedding dress.  The dress was strapless and I have big boobs.  For you lady readers, you know what a challenge buying shapewear can be, but to find something strapless that still has the support to hold up your girls is really a challenge.  For my male readers, I apologize for the below in advance.

My search took me in and out of many shops but I couldn't find exactly what I needed.  I had no idea how hard it would be.  And the poor Smooch was with me.  I told him it would take about 15 minutes but then the search ended up taking three hours in and out of eight stores.  He was a great sport though.

I ended up at Victoria's Secret.  The Smooch had had enough and went into a different store in the mall.  We agreed I would call him when I was ready and we would meet up.  I went into Victoria's Secret and explained what I was looking for.  No problem, we have exactly what you need.  She found my size and sent me to the dressing room.  I got to the dressing room and examined what I had.  It was basically a small tube with two cups at the top.  Was this the right size?!?!  No way.  I checked the label and the label confirmed my worst fears.  It was my size.  Dear God save me.  I said a prayer but couldn't hear God's response over his laughter.  I disrobed down to my knickers.  I tentatively stepped into the garment.  I got it pulled up to my butt but could not get it pulled over my ass.  Well maybe my ass is to large, maybe I need to pull it over my head.  So I took it off and tried to pull it on over my head.  But I couldn't pull it down while keeping my arms straight above my head.  Hmmmm......  This went on for about 15 minutes.  I tried stepping into it and pulling up, I tried pulling it over my head...  I twisted and pulled but I could not get it on.  Perhaps it was a puzzle and you had to pull and push in all the right places to get it to fall comfortably in place???  Perhaps if I had taken a yoga class or some sort of contortionist class I could have gotten it on???  Perhaps if I was double jointed, I don't know.  It seemed that it was not meant to be.  I disgruntledly put my clothes back on and left the dressing room.

The Victoria's Secret employee cheerily asked me how it went.  I told her that it didn't.  I couldn't figure out how to get it on.  She took me by the arm and assured me that we would get that life constricting girdle on me.  Again, I looked to God.  The laughing was uncontrollable now.  The Victoria's Secret employee was slightly older than me.  Not old enough to be my mother but old enough to have seen it all, to have been there and done that.  We went into the dressing room and I disrobed again.  I am now standing there in nothing but my underpants in front of the Victoria's Secret employee.  I should also add that I am quite sweaty from my first attempt at putting this contraption on.  She said you have to step into it and pull it on.  I had complete faith in her.  Let's do this.  I pulled it up again to my butt and again I couldn't get to it any higher.  Embarrassment is starting to set in.  My lower half is incased like a sausage with the top half of me pouring out of it.  Again, I should mention that I am sweating and am really starting to get hot.  This is only causing my body to expand.  Not a good thing.

She looked me in the eyes and said, we are going to do this.  She told me to grab each of the sides and we would pull it on together.  She then stepped up to me perpendicularly to my body in what I can only describe as a solid stance.  A stance she had obviously gained from years of pulling lycra onto desperate women.  She then bent over and put one hand on the front of the life changing garment and the other hand on the back.  Since the piece was still below my ass, she had to bend over slightly to grab the garment in the right places.  This put her face directly into my naked boobs.  Awesome.  She then yelled "PULL" and together we pulled with all our might and the damn thing slipped on and into place.  It was perfect.  I couldn't breath so I knew it was working.  To get the thing back off, we had to do the same thing in reverse, with both of us pulling at the same time.  Again, her face was in my boobs.

When it was over, we were both covered in sweat.  I paid for my hard earned breath stopper and left the store.  The Smooch found my sitting on a bench outside of Victoria's Secret.  My hair was disheveled, my face was red and I was sweating.  He also said I had a look on my face of complete despair.  He asked me what happened.  I told him that I couldn't tell him.  We weren't yet married and I didn't want to ruin his image of me.  I told him that it started with a workout and it ended with Victoria's Secret employee and I sharing a cigarette.

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Flashback to college

Today I woke up and felt like I did when I was in college.  Hung over.  My body hurt...  my head was pounding.... and I was nauseous.  I am exhausted and I felt like I had been hit by a truck.  And then I found men's clothing on the floor.  Not my husband's.  Oh god...  what have I done?!  I tried to remember but it was a blur.  I was disoriented.  I didn't know what time it was.  I was confused.  I found The Smooch and then reality sunk in.  I asked The Smooch about the night before.  How much did I drink?  About a gallon, he replies... of water.  Water?  Oh yeah.  I'm not hung over, I'm just old.  I'm not 20 anymore.    I didn't have anything to drink last night.  I did attend a pretty awesome party.  The Smooch and I hosted a Halloween Party.  My body hurts partly because I was wearing the wrong shoes and standing all night.  And partly because people kept slamming into me because... well that's what happens when you dress up like a wrecking ball.*  My headache is due to lack of sleep.  I went to bed at 2:00 am.  That is much later than my normal bedtime of 11:00 pm and my abnormal bedtime of 9:00 pm.  Which is what time I went to bed the couple days leading up to the party.  I thought that you were supposed to need less sleep as you got older, not more?  I am nauseous because, like I did in college, I ate Taco Bell at 10:30 am after waking up.  I thought they opened at 10:00 so I trolled through their parking lot like a creeper waiting for them to open.  And the disorientation and not knowing the time can be explained because of Daylight Savings and the fact that we turned the clocks back.

And the men's clothing....  well, things came into focus quickly. 


Pile of Men's Clothing.  Not the Smooch's.



Apparently this guest left the party naked.

So I guess I am not as wild as I thought I was... or maybe as wild as I was in college.  But that's okay.  I had a great time last night anyway.  And as I am writing this, I see that it is almost 9:00 pm.  Which was 10:00 pm yesterday, which is passed my bedtime.  Happy Halloween and Good Night.


*The Smooch was Miley Cyrus.