As we go into hubby's second week of unemployment, and the spring cleaning is finished and the home projects have dwindled either due to lack of money or lack of need; I have come to ponder a crucial point of relationships...
When a couple is dating, the thing that makes the relationship great is the amount of time they spend together. More is better. Talking, dining, dancing, going wherever together, hanging out, lovin'... More is better. You want more of each other. Your thoughts stray wistfully to the other person when you're apart. You surprise each other with a little gift or an unexpected call or some other Hallmark-moment-so-sweet-I'm-getting-a-cavity-you're-friends-can't-stand-you-now-cause-you-drip-honey-and-ooze-sex-OMG-I'm-gonna-cutsie-puke-if-y'all-don't-stop action that says how much you enjoy spending time together and how much you miss each other when you're apart. Yeah, fine, enjoy the fact that this person farts rainbows while it lasts.
Because, my dear, no matter who or when or how, eventually, their shit will stink like every other person on earth. Not amazingly, this is when most new couples break up. You no longer fart rainbows, and you don't go down on me every single time we have sex, and to quote Barbara and Neil ~ "You don't bring me flowers anymore". And here's another truth revealed for the unmarried masses; this is rarely brough about by a Jerry Springer reveal-type-moment. It is nearly never ended because someone is an alien or transexual or having an affair with the cat.
Usually it's brought about by just living life in the hum-drum of day to day life. Such as being wiped out after work and wanting to melt into the couch to watch something mindless and forget that you have a co-worker who's making you fantasize of many many ways to get away with murder in the age of CSI, and not wanting to have to come up with something intelligent to speak about to another person. Even if that person is someone you're in a relationship with. Or not having sex every single night you sleep in a bed together cause, here's a dose of reality, you're actually tired. Or taking the last of the *fill in the blank* without asking the other person if they want it. Or simply not feeling the 'I miss you' gnaw on your soul anymore each and every time you part. You may even forget to call the other person during the day cause you're busy.
If you manage to stay together throughout the mind-numbing-boredom-of-day-to-day-life where you budget and you grocery shop and you scrub toilets and you spend time together in silence, you may have what it takes to get married. It's possible. But realize this; when the glow of newness fades to the gray of 'normalcy', you too will have a more is better moment. Because the bottom line ~ the crucial point of relationships that I was pondering is this:
When you're dating, the quality of the relationship is equal to the amount of time you spend together, and more is better. When you've been married for a few years, the quality of the relationship becomes equal to the amount of time you spend apart, and again, more is better.
Oh Goodie, just what you wanted; another installment of 'Mad As Hell Monday'. This wasn't supposed to be a weekly feature, amazing how it's turning out to be one anyway. The offenders this week are... #1: My external modem. #2: Hubby.
Q: What do you get when you mix a pissed-at-her-husband woman with no way to get online and blog about it?
A: Flashing lights and a story that ends in, "...the defendant is to be held without bail."
OK, so you know I'm exaggerating... it takes weeks to have enough jail-cred to be able to use the computers in cell block C, unless the warden is a fan of your blog... but I digress.
I'm getting close to admitting that I have an electronics curse. Whereby hubby does years worth of research and gets great results with his electronics, I do not. In fact, hubby is so electronically gifted by the ghosts of Edison and Tesla, that if there is a problem with something electrical that he's bought, it will be within the return date and wherever he got it from will have another one or even a better one in stock and that new electronic unit will be happy as hell to go home with him. Just like a puppy that takes a shine to you in the pet store and isn't just faking to get a real home.
He never has to argue about the date or the price or the fact that it worked fine one day and then spontaneously-internally-combusted so that now when we watch Wall-E, the sound and the video are out of sync by about 5 seconds, which is kinda disconcerting, but unless Mommy actually sits and watches the movie with munchkin, instead of going off to do housework when the opening music is going and not connected to anything, you may not realize it for a couple of days. No matter, the receipt in hand, off he'll go off to flaunt his ability to perform the Jedi-Mind-Trick on anyone at the return desk, coming home only (it seems) moments later with the new, possibly better one tagging along and nipping at his heels.
I, however, have never had this kind of luck buying anything remotely electronic. If someone else buys it, I can operate it like I'm trying out for the Electronics Olympics. I usually figure out all the bells and whistles and remote control features in record time and I can hook things up and have them working with lightening quickness too. I'm the kid that used to take apart the cable box just to see how it worked and then put it all back together before my mom could take her nitroglycerin pill...
But, if I buy something electronic... if it's my hand that takes it off the shelf, and my card that goes through the machine at the register... we should just write it off as a loss the second we go from the store to the parking lot. Whatever it is, by whatever bargain-basement or high-priced-name-brand-best-in-the-business manufacturer, bought from whatever high or low end retailer~ It. Will. Blow. Up.
It will stop functioning one day after the return policy expires. It will wait a few months after that and start emitting sulfur smelling smoke. It will seem to be fine for years on end until you wake up one night to find it strangling you with it's power cord and laughing maliciously... And even if it just lays down and dies one day, during the return period, I'll cart it to the store and for some damn-girl-karma-must-hate-you-cause-that-shit-just-doesn't-happen!!! reason, I'll be unable to leave the premises with another one to bring home.
Problem is... I buy electronics so infrequently that I tend to forget about my curse. A few years in between and you think it's safe to buy an external modem. You get all happy cause you don't have to do this bizarre ritual to get online because your internal modem has gone all Rain Man on you. And you forget. So you are actually genuinely surprised when you rearrange your computer (cause you got the entire pit of room where you happen to keep your computer cleaned out so thoroughly that you can fit all three computer chairs and a couple of standing adults as well without feeling crowded in a space that used to become claustrophobic if you dropped a piece of gum on the floor ~ Yay me!!!!!!) and the external modem stops working.
Like now you try to get online and you get an error message that this modem could work faster if it was in a different USB port and it's "NEW" hardware every time you power up and you uninstall it and reinstall it, and that works one time and then won't work the next and it's now Monday and you're pre-coffee and you woke up late and you haven't posted yet and OMFG My Skull Is Going To Implode... because not only isn't the modem working, hubby won't look for the receipt or pay attention to the free-range-munchkin and then informs you that we are all going to return this *bleepedy-bleepin-bleeper-bleeping-bleep-bleeping* external modem even though you've finally gotten online using the temperamental internal modem since you shook chicken's feet at it even though it's now even more difficult to do all the steps in the "get online dance" because how you rearranged said computer on the desk makes it a bitch to get to the back of the tower, but he doesn't want to go alone cause it's over an hour to get there even though it's in the right direction for him to stop watching some 1980 made for TV movie where Hugh Grant actually looks way young and go handle both the business of job hunting and returning my *bleeeeeeeppppp* modem and...
The Q & A at the beginning makes way more sense now, doesn't it? Or is it just me? I'm not above the possibility that I'm just being Monday Morning Bitchy and I need to get over myself. It's possible. Then again, I now have my coffee and the snakes have retreated back into my head.
Here we are on Friday... The day that I became the only winning ticket holder for the Mega Million Jackpot!!! Yeah, I know, the drawing isn't even until tonight... I just wanted to see it in print, OK, so sue me you'll get more money out of a turnip.
So far a week of hubby's unemployment has decimated my schedule. I'm up much longer than usual and now we get up when the munchkin climbs into bed with us and starts patting our arms and Jas-speaking a mile a minute at us... although, c'mon, isn't that like the best mama alarm clock ever?
We've been to the coast once. And I got our bedroom completely cleaned out. My inner-voice reminded me of something I heard a long time ago about clearing out what you don't need to make room for what you do need... I'm paraphrasing. But I'm feeling physically sore in places I didn't know I had, Jiminy Crickets did I forget that I'm WAY closer to 40 than 30 I don't know what I was thinking cause now my body hates me like Jimmy 'the Tulip' hates mayonnaise very motivated after getting that room done. Once I get the office/tool-storage/crap-overload room cleared out the way I want damn near empty, I'll be unstoppable!
Anyway, enough of my boring life ~ on to the FUNNY!!!
Oh y'all, I know you're looking around and wondering where things have gone. Has she decided to change it up again???
Oh c'mon, you know the answer... YES. I've got another wild hair up my hiney, and it's all about change and I'm cleaning out and clearing out and organizing... Hubby has so got his hands full, he's going to be begging to work at a morgue or McDonald's or cleaning Port-A-Potty's by the time I'm finished with this kick I'm on. Poor bugger. I already had him clean out his magazine stack by the bed (five hours later...) and I've got plenty more that I'm determined to straighten up (and out!!!) room-by-tiny-overcrowded-room.
And in the interest of leaving no stone unturned, I will not stop at my hearth and home, but will extend my mid-life crisis need for change to my blog. A lot of things are staying the same this time, some are in the process of change. Anything you miss, will most likely return somewhere else when all is said and done. But, it's not all said and done yet... I haven't sung, so it can't be over!
I've decided to consolidate, and make things easier, more functional, and bottom line ~ scale down. I've had my fingers in too many pies trying to be too many things, and I have had enough. SO, I'm closing things down, like my MySpace page... I simply don't have time. A bunch of the social networks have to go too. Because as it stands, I don't have enough time to be social. I'm simply listed and parked in a bunch of places with no time to utilize any of the benefits that being in these places could provide if I wasn't spread so thin I was translucent.
I'm also giving up most of the advertising. It's not doing me much good, and after giving it a good long try I'm giving it up ~ for the most part. I'm keeping a few things. Few meaning three. I'm keeping adsense cause it's content related so it changes. I'm keeping Amazon, cause dammit, they have everything over there. And I'm keeping Noodle and Boo cause they have great products and donate part of every sale to charity... that works for my philanthropic self.
And as for the tabbed pages ~ they will be back; I can rebuild them. Better, stronger, faster, and I won't even need Oscar Goldman's help...
Who knows, one day I may actually be fully satisfied with how the blog has turned out, and settle on only updating the posts... what a sad day that will be for hubby... time to focus on other things, like what's going on in the rest of the house? OMG, he may not survive if that happens! Then again, I'll have to overcome my less than before schedule which means that where my schedule was loose, now it's nonexistent. So maybe this is my way of trying to restore order to the chaos that is living with an unemployed hubby.
I know I have a lot of readers that are also bloggers themselves, and I have to ask you a question: Did you ever have to censor what you blogged about?
OMG, y'all I'm over here biting my tongue in two and binding my fingers because there are things that I can't blog about. I don't know who or how much or when it will be read, but eventually it will get back to someone who has an opinion that I actually give a damn about. So I have to shut-up. I know my regulars are over there saying, "Damn, she actually has a line she won't cross? Miss Poison Pen 2009 is gonna refrain from land blasting someone?!?" And to you I say, yes, yes I am.
Despite all my rantings and (sometimes funny) psychotica where I go off about this or that, there's an actual injustice or irritation that oh so many can relate to. Besides, I don't usually give names of specific people; companies, yes, but not the actual name of the person I dealt with at the company, so that 5 months from now, when my grievance makes it's way around the universe and gets back to the actual person on the other end of the transaction that I've written about, they are known throughout the blogosphere by name, rank and serial number. I don't do that. Despite the fact that they've irked me enough to blog about it, I'm not out to do the other person damage or harm. That would be mean-spirited and cruel. I may be an angry woman, but I try to not be cruel about it.
That said, can you tell that I'm dying over here not telling you what happened this weekend in graphic, hilarious detail? Let me see if I can censor it...
During a visit by 'name of male or female deleted to protect the person who may or may not have been related to anyone in this family', this person made a couple of moves so completely boneheaded that I, among others in attendance, wanted to do this anonymous person physical harm. I can not go into detail about either the boneheaded moves (plural) or the type of physical harm for either would give away too much detail about both the bonehead and the incidents themselves. All I can say is that they were so over the top that newborn crack babies would have known better.
The other 'piss-me-off' this weekend involved another person or persons altogether but included me falling for some of the same shit from the same person or persons, cause ya know, I want to believe that things change. But then they don't and I feel like a total blockhead for not seeing the same exact situation as several other times and still having hope that this time it WILL be different. Then I want to do the physical harm mentioned in the paragraph above to myself for being so stupid. Luckily, this particular course of dumbass doesn't cost us anything except my own pride being wounded and turning me into a bitch for a little while... and hey, if hubby isn't used to that by now, then he REALLY hasn't been paying attention... At All.
Wow, upon re-reading, there was nothing humorous in either of the censored descriptions at all. If this is how the 50's were, it's no wonder all the housewives were on barbiturates, it's the only way they'd be able to find humor in anything, not to mention toning down the (albeit fleeting) desire to slit-one's-throat that can only be found in stay at home parenting... and relationships... and hey, sometimes life in general...
I don't usually post on Saturday, mainly because I like to pretend that I can make up for all my neglectful-mama behavior during the week by paying tons of attention to the munchkin on Saturday and Sunday. Also, hubby is home on Saturdays, and we get all manner of have-to-house-do's done on Saturday. Saturday is the only day that hubby is home that the garbage dump is open... IE: the only day garbage will go down to the dump... among other things.
But the last 48+ hours have been something spectacular. Not spectacular good, but eye popping and jaw dropping none-the-less.
Thursday, hubby found out that he was out of work as of Friday. The dealership he's worked for for over two years had scaled back as far as they could in the Service Department (hubby was the only mechanic, and there was only one parts guy and a service manager for the entire dealership) but it was still not financially feasible to stay open. They closed the service department. Hubby is now, like so many others around the country, unemployed.
So yesterday, knowing it was hubby's last day, I'm cleaning house and all the other things I like to do when hubby isn't home, since he'll totally be home All-The-Time even though he's job hunting; when I look outside and see scary clouds.
I call hubby to have him check Weatherbug on his work computer even as my brain is saying, "Aria, you've just spent two days in a row watching Twister on blue-ray and you're totally being a weather hypochondriac, chill the hell out!" Except that I get hubby on the phone and he says that Oh-Hey, there's a Weatherbug alert flashing on the screen... and guess what, it's a 5-hour-MoFoing-Tornado-Watch for the county that I happen to be calling him from. YEAH.
So I stop the housework and take the fastest shower of my life, and go outside to make sure that I'm not spazzing for nothing. Cause, to be honest, most of the time when weather type things go down, for some reason we're in the nothing-happening-here-bubble cause we're way location-blessed like that. Not yesterday though. I go out to chain smoke so I don't freak the fuck out check the sky for a few minutes and in my head, I hear my inner voice telling me to get gone, NOW.
My inner voice probably saw the many funnel clouds dipping down out of the big ole super-cell cloud just like they showed on the Special Features of the Twister disc, the one that was a History Channel real-science-not-CGI show about tornadoes. Ummm, Yeah. So I call hubby to say that we're gonna try to make it to where he is, and into a big garbage bag went all the things I felt we couldn't live without in case the trailer got picked up like Dorothy's house and not put back down. The whole time, my inner voice is getting a little squeaky and kinda loud as it starts telling me to, "Move fasterFasterFASTER".
Garbage bag and fully stocked diaper bag go into the trunk, munchkin gets whisked into the car without pants, socks or shoes... I have them, but they're in the trunk. I turn on the car and the radio is spouting nothing but static... on every channel. By now, I'm thoroughly freaked the Eff out. And I have to drive toward what looks to be the worst part of the sky to get to hubby. All my 20-year-old-bat-outta-hell-gas-pedal-to-the-floor-turn-on-the-nitrous-and-break-off-the-switch instincts returned, and thanks to adrenaline, they weren't even dusty, despite not breaking them out since I became a mother over 10 years ago. Luckily I've always been a very strong driver. I may not know where I'm going, but I can drive like a pro regardless.
Normally the drive takes 40 minutes. We made it up to hubby's shop in 25, despite the switchback section, the road construction section and the full-ass-freeway section. Munchkin, God love him, was asleep in the car seat like nothing out of the ordinary was going on. My breathing returned to normal, and I stopped being so concerned. If we were going to get wiped off the planet, at least we'd do it all together. I was OK with that.
About 2 hours later, hubby was done with his last day, so we started the drive home in our respective cars. The weather had headed our way, and while there were no funnel clouds to be seen, there were lightening strikes aplenty along with blind-you sheets of rain coming down. This time the drive took 65 minutes, because even with the wipers slappin' away on high, I could barely see hubby's bumper ahead of me. We made it home, the trailer was still standing and it was even clear~ish here.
I woke up this morning to a thunder clap so loud I jumped awake. Today is just as torrentially rainy, has just as many lightening strikes and shake-the-walls thunder as yesterday's storm, but with one huge exception... no funnel clouds. And we're all home together. I'm not even in the slightest bit freaked out today.
And as far as the job? We'll be alright. He'll either find something better or we'll hit the lotto. That's my mindset, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. I refuse to put negative energy out there about the situation, but if you want to throw us some prayers it would be appreciated. Just Sayin'...
Happy Friday, Y'all! We got some rough news yesterday which I'll go into in another post, let's just say that the laughter is much needed... So, let's get to it!
I know I can't be the only one that has groggily peered out from between sleep encrusted eyelids with the thought somehow floating through the mental cobwebs that it's a Thursday ~ not even really thinking it, just kind of aware of it, and then because you're a stay at home mom who has decided to unplug from the world outside, you don't realize that it's not Thursday but Wednesday when you go to finally turn on Gray's Anatomy only to see Lost...
OK, maybe that last bit about unplugging from the world was just me, but you know I'm not the only one to think it's one day of the week when it's another. Even when I was working full time with a child, managing both of our schedules and integrating it with my ex-husband's schedule, I still did this from time to time, despite being a slave to the calendar and the clock.
So it is, that today is THURSDAY and I'm posting because I didn't post yesterday, my usual Wednesday post usurped by my own inability to keep daily time. I also decided that since I didn't have to post, (being that it was Thursday in my head) I was going to unplug... completely... from the outside world.
No regular TV, even the type of news I can stand, whereby I guzzle down my first cup of coffee watching Matt & Meredith & Ann & Al give me the worst news of the world's happenings in the most tolerable manner, because if my coffee hasn't kicked in yet, maybe I won't process all the bad stuff, my brain glossing it over like it's the parents talking on a Peanuts special. Luckily for me though, I am, even pre-coffee, able to process when something good has happened and they're talking about it. Which is why I get my news from M&M&A&A, because they actually discuss the good stuff happening during the show, not just as a 47-second-time-filler before going off air.
Also, no computer. My homepage will have headlines on it and I'd have to see those to get to my email... So, no computer even to check my email. Because the casual email checking leads to... reading emails, which inevitably lead to going to this site to improve your rankings, or that site to cure your life, which no longer exists because you spend all day every day on the computer... and to answer a piece of flair that I read recently; No, you cannot buy a life... not even on eBay. Amazon doesn't keep 'em in stock either. So then you wind up on eBay, and Amazon, and then twitter and then on your Entrecard Dashboard and then before you know it, 4 hours have passed on your unplug day because you decided to just check your email. So NO computer. I was willing to unplug my surge protector from the wall outlet if need be.
So my OhMyGodAreYouSeriousIt'sReallyWednesday?!? "Thursday" was spent playing Nerf-ball with my munchkin and watching only things that involved CGI horrors instead of real life horrors. I prefer to get my disgust and heartbreak from the magic of computer graphics. And I meditated and I slept and I ate chocolate. It was a wonderful fake Thursday.
I also figured something out. I'm a lot happier when I unplug. When I'm not incessantly bombarded with news or even PBS Kids. Or overloading the circuitry of my brain trying to read every single tip and trick in my inbox and list my blog in every directory on the web and comment on all of the other blogs I follow. Eventually, it just gets to be too much. You wind up burnt up, stressed out, with a fuse shorter than a toddler's attention span.
Despite being a wife and full-time mother and an upwardly-mobile blogger ~ I don't have to do something, think something, pay attention to everything and every detail All The Time.
Sometimes, I can just be. I can tell my brain to shut up and bask in silence. I can turn off the computer and the TV and not feel starved for something to work my eyes and fill my ears. Sometimes sitting on the floor while a two year old runs circles around you is a good thing. Thinking for yourself instead of continually pumping someone else's thoughts, opinions and viewpoints into your skull is quite liberating. Figuring out what you like to do that doesn't require electricity is pretty fulfilling. And paying full attention to the living breathing people around you is both entertaining and educational ~ even when that live person is much, much younger than yourself. I'd turn off my cell phone too, except that I don't have one...
So I encourage all of you to unplug once in a while. Honestly. That includes cell phones... they have an "Off" button for a reason. Use it sometime, the phone will thank you. So will the TV and the computer. So will you... eventually... when you re-plug.
OK, OK, so the last one was on a Wednesday, which only makes me think I'm right a little more, cause it's not just Monday Morning Bitchy, of which I own a controlling interest in stock. Even if I did have a quasi-snapperish weekend, which somehow turned out beautifully despite the fact that I called Jesus a zombie on Friday... guess I'll have to wait for my smiting from that. Then again, maybe I was totally right about that, and so I'm just getting a little irksomness (yeah, another one of my made up words, and I say, "Kiss my everlovin' ass, Spellcheck!") cause all in all I had a pretty great weekend.
But now here we are on Monday, and again, I'm wanting to kick some cyber-butt. Go figure... I think the letter I wrote is pretty self-explanatory about the situation. And yes, this is the real email and the real company I sent it to, any modifications to this letter are in my normal blue-type. I'm starting to see the true value of bitchiness and it's place in society... honestly.
To Whom It May Concern at Jerry Baker:
I have ordered one book from you, and in reading the fine print on the bill, I've discovered that you've automatically enrolled me to continue receiving books that I didn't order so I can "try them out".
Please know that by Automatically Enrolling Me ~ you have lost my business forever. This is an incredibly shady, underhanded business practice that your customers don't know about until they have made the mistake of being interested in one of your products. Compounding the bad taste in my mouth from this unwanted enrollment, was my visit to your website to cancel the UNWANTED series. When I visited the supposed web address in order to waste my valuable time making sure I do NOT RECEIVE these future book mailings, I had to figure out how the hell to cancel, because of course, it's not clearly marked. It's just another sales pitch for the books that I never wanted in the first place. And when I did figure out which of the 'not clearly marked' links it may be to cancel, I got a "sorry this page is down for routine maintenance, please check back Monday" message... Except that this IS Monday.
Somehow, I'm sure that if I go back to your site to pay my balance due for the one book that I did actually order, things would go very, very smoothly. I'm sure all of those pages are marked so clearly that Stevie Wonder would know where to go, and heck, they may even be secure. I don't know that for sure, but I have a pretty good idea I would find myself to be correct. I, however, will not be returning to www.jerrybaker.com to confirm this suspicion, as one dose of scam artist before I've finished my second cup of coffee is quite enough.
Sadly for you though, I WILL be reporting this site to BBB internet division detailing my dissatisfaction with your business practices, because, let's face it, I have too much time on my hands, and you pissed me off on a Monday morning. Which, does not bode well for you. Pity, because I liked the one and only book that I actually did order.
In closing, I suggest that you make sure that I don't receive another book from you people...EVER.
My Customer Number is bibitybobityboocausenoteveryoneneedsthatnumber. Handle it immediately.
SpongeAria BitchyPants (OK, that's not how I signed off, but, it totally fits, doesn't it?)
With that said, I just want to know; WhenWhenWhen will these people learn to not pluck my last decent nerve like it's a harp-string in the morning? Cause be it never-ending comment emails or shady business practices and just-as-shady websites, y'all know I'm going to have to pop-off... my life simply isn't interesting enough to let this stuff slide past the blog... Puh-Leese people!
Happy Good Friday, y'all! In light of the religious nature of this weekend, my original thought was to make sure I only posted "G-rated" pics and comments. Then again, the title of this weekly feature already has the Big-Daddy of all standardized cuss words, so I'm not sure how "G-rated" I could get. I mean it's not like I'm shooting the Easter Bunny, or anything...
However, I do have a highly controversial question for the Pope... John Paul II would have totally been able to answer this one... and besides, it's good to question your faith sometimes...
see more pwn and owned pictures
Excuse me, Mr Pope, *sneezeBenedictwasatraitorduhwecallthataNameFailsneeze*
Sir, I have a very important Easter question for you. If Jesus died on Friday, and came back to life on Sunday, wouldn't that, ummm... technically... make Jesus... a zombie?
see more pwn and owned pictures
Fans always think this, but only a true fan will go this far!
see more pwn and owned pictures
"...so then I comment to the new groomer that this dog has the heart of a lion, and when I pick up Pongo, he looks like this!"
see more pwn and owned pictures
Obviously a development so new and shocking that it required taxpayer money to create a sign, although I'm sure this kind of thing is already factored in the budget in Arkansas... or was it Mississippi? Damn, you know, wherever Deliverance was set...
see more pwn and owned pictures
"Estate Sale" just sounded so hoity-toity...
see more pwn and owned pictures
Jeff was always fearful that he'd be fired if his boss found out about his Dyslexia.
And if you're celebrating this weekend, Happy Easter!
ps. Smart parents make a master list of where the eggs are hidden if they're real hard-boiled eggs... otherwise, one beautiful day in June may become the worst in the life of your nose due to one poorly thrown ball or inquisitive dog... Just tryin' to look out for y'all...
The Bloggess, whom I love to read, cause she's a twisted-nut on her own site... and a toned down twisted nut on the Houston Chronicle blog channel, Good Mom/Bad Mom, has a new blog ~ on PNN ~ called Ask the Bloggess. As always I loved her post, so I left a comment.
At the bottom of the comment section there is a box that you either check (or uncheck, I can't remember now, as it's been a couple of days) to follow the comments. I made sure I did the opposite. If I feel the need to follow comments on any blog, I simply go back to the post comments later and check them. I never, ever "follow comments" cause I detest checking my email, seeing 78 new messages and having 75 of them be the 'hey new comment on such and such a post' crap-mails. I learned that lesson many moons ago when I first started blogging.
Ever since leaving my brilliant comment, I have been on the receiving end of so many 'following Ask the Bloggess' emails from my new nemesis PNN that I finally went round the friggin bend this morning. Here's why... When you click the link that offers to Unsubscribe if you listened the first time you mofo's I wouldn't have to click this friggin link in one of my 789876 following comments emails you from these gnats of the cyberworld; you are redirected, NOT to anywhere that you can modify the obvious glitch on their end... No... You are sent to their homepage where there is no place whatsoever to unsubscribe anything ~ at least that I could find, and yes, I've had my coffee this am.
They do however have an in-site search, so I try that. To which PNN mocked me openly when it gave me pages of options, none of which had anything at all to do with unsubscribing to comments.
After way too much valuable time wasted on this annoying bullshit getting nothing but runaround from the site, I finally located a contact link. I sent off this exact email:
Hey Editor,
If I didn't love the Bloggess, I would never ever return to your site! I added one comment to her debut post on your site, checked (or unchecked I can't remember now) the box to make sure I was NOT FOLLOWING COMMENTS and I've been flooded with comment emails ever since... AND I can not find where to make them stop! I clicked the link in the email to unsubscribe and it takes me to your homepage which is SUPER UNHELPFUL cause there's nowhere to unsubscribe listed. AND when I type in unsubscribe in the search bar, I get a bunch of unrelated posts listed.
So far, my experience with your site sucks big fat donkey rocks. And I'll be sure to let MY blog readers know that if they ever visit this place to NOT COMMENT cause they will be flooded with CRAP-MAILS.
Now that I've made my point Perfectly Clear, UNSUBSCRIBE ME TO COMMENTS!!!
Pissed off and going to be vocal about it~
Aria
So my dear friends and readers, if you would like to read Jenny the Bloggess on her new blog Ask the Bloggess which is BloggessTypical in it's hilarity, despite PNN I refuse to give those annoying SOBs one more linkback, at this point, I'd rather have dental work totally sucking big fat donkey rocks in this capacity you totally have to read the Bloggess wherever you can find her. Obviously though, I caution you, for the sake of your inboxes, don't comment on that particular post. You're better off going back to her personal blog, The Bloggess and leaving your comment there... At least that's my pissy-completely-flooded-email-inbox-opinion.
Updated:
I just got this email reply:
Hey Aria,
I hear you, you're right and I'm really, really sorry.
Shortly after Jenny's debut, we changed the default to unchecked, for Following Comments, preventing what is happening to you.
Again, I'm really sorry -- and I hope you will consider leaving comments again without fear of being pelted.
And I will make sure you are unsubscribed to Jenny's comment stream.
I hope you're a little less pissed?
Leigh at pnn.com
If nothing else, I gotta give em points for prompt attention to email bitchiness. This came in 26 minutes after I sent off the complaint... Well played, Leigh. Well played indeed.
So, Friday night, hubby decides that he wants Chinese. Normally this gets absolutely no objection from me, but...
Thing is, little man, who is now two and testing his boundaries and all that crap, has figured out that if he acts up or gets even mildly loud-fussy, Daddy will remove him from the premises. Hubby's reasoning is that he doesn't want to be rude to whomever else is there. However, in his consideration of others he's destroyed our ability to have a decent meal in public as a family. Mainly because I'm raising a less homicidal version of Family Guy's Stewie.
Knowing that behaving like a troll monkey will get him both attention and give him the control to decide when we leave a place has turned our son into a little bad-attitude dictator. And Daddy falls for it every time. Mama, however has had enough... btw I know I'm right in this assessment cause as soon as we get in the car, demon-child stops almost instantaneously, and the child reverts to angel status.
At this point, you're saying, "Hel-lo!?! Have ya ever heard of a babysitter? (eye roll)" To which I reply, "Yes, we finally found one (two years later, but hey, I'm a stay at home mama out in the country with no one nearby that I feel I can leave my son with)."
However, I promised the new babysitter, (out of an understanding culled from many, many years of personal babysitting experience) that I would always give her a couple of days notice. Therefore, I have reserved her services for this upcoming weekend, because I was not expecting to go out to dinner this past Friday, hubby threw me a curve ball. OK, that explanation out of the way, let's get back to the story...
So, when we left the Chinese restaurant after barely a plate of dinner ~ again~ I was ready to stab them both in the forehead with forks fit to be tied. Because not only had my dinner been ruined yet again, I knew, from prior experience, that I would not be getting my leftovers the next day... they tend to 'disappear' right into hubby's gullet when I'm not looking. Which irks me to no end, cause it's bad enough to have to endure nuked-day-old-Chinese-food, but to have none is simply unacceptable. I mean, where the hell is the courtesy he showed all the other diners in the restaurant when it comes to leaving my leftovers alone? It evaporates in direct proportion to the strength of his hunger, that's where.
Half an hour in the car to get home from the restaurant had done nothing to improve my mood. I was ticked, and determined to get my leftovers this time. When we get there, hubby is still hungry, and proceeds to eat his leftovers straight from the carton. I plate mine up, noticing that it's way too much food, but, as I said, I was still ticked and by now, thoroughly determined to eat my food, so I give it a quick warming and eat the rest of my dinner... all of it.
I calm down after that... for a minute... until hubby tells me that he's going to bed ~ at 9:30 on a Friday night. Mind you, I haven't had more than 5 hours of continuous nighttime sleep in months now. Ticked Off returned with a friend. Turns out my lousy attitude was only out picking up his buddy Self-destructive Vengeance so they could come back to my house and keep me company. With those two bundles of ugly whispering in my ear, I made an egregious error.
I headed for the pan of homemade brownies. I cut a huge swath and poured a very large glass of my son's whole milk to wash them down with. They were de-friggin-licious. No lie. OMG they were good. But I was too full before I ate the brownies... then I angry-ate too many brownies AND washed them down with at least 20 oz. of whole milk. It was kinda the sweets version of Thanksgiving dinner. And I was hurtin'. At least I thought I was hurtin', I had no idea...
No idea whatsoever that my body would say, "Alright woman, these are your internal organs speaking. We have had enough of this reckless eating in quantities that would feed a third-world family for weeks. We are tired of bearing the brunt of your anger and non-existent self-control. Obviously, you've lost your mind. Therefore, we are staging a coup. Maybe a bit of our mutinous behavior will remind you who is really running this show."
And it would say it at 6 am Saturday morning. The spokesperson would be my gall bladder and it has one hell of a commanding stage presence. It is the E.F. Hutton of the digestive tract; when the gall bladder speaks, people listen! I spent the next three hours praying to the Porcelain God. I won't go into details except to say that if the shoes of my grandchildren had come out of my mouth I wouldn't have been the least bit surprised ~ and I don't have grandchildren ~ 'nuff said. However, surprisingly, this is not the worst part of a gall bladder attack. The worst part is the pain. Y'all, I have had two children by Cesarean section. This was worse.
My only saving grace was that hubby wound up with ten stitches a few weeks back and they gave him Darvocet. When the puking stopped, I took one and within half an hour I was pain-free enough to pass out for a couple of hours.
When I emerged from my drug-induced coma, the pain was still gone. But apparently, I'm allergic to Darvocet. I deduced this from spending the rest of the day with a throat so swollen that if I still had tonsils, I'd have suffocated to death. The swelling went down sometime that evening, and obviously, I'm still here.
But then I turn on the news this morning, and hear about the killing spree at the language center in New York State and the devastating earthquake in Italy, and the woman with the flat tire on the freeway in Houston who died after getting out of her car and being run-over several times, and the father in Oregon who killed himself and all 5 of his kids because his wife was leaving him...
I gotta tell Y'all, I am so thankful that all I had to deal with this weekend was a bad-attitude baby, and a harsh lesson from my gall bladder. Considering what was floating around the Universe this weekend, I got off light.
And how was your weekend?
