Category: cursing

It is assault, I tell you!

I have this neighbor. Well, ok, I have a lot of neighbors, but there is one in particular…

Who, let’s be frank, has no taste.

How do I know this?

Well, the neighbor *loves* to crank up their stereo. Yup. They crank up their tinny sounding piece of eeeelectronic equipment loud enough so the whole neighborhood can take part in their musical selections.

A sociologist postulated that when male humans crank their stereos super loud, they are essentially marking their territory. They are forcing people to look at them and forcing all around to succumb to their musical selection.

If so, then my neighbor is a marking fool. He may as well pee on a mile radius.

This fellow (I assume it’s a guy, I’m not sure, actually) likes to boot up his sound gear at about 8:00am on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Just in time to wake me up from a nice weekend doze.

So, what sort of music does this fellow play? Do you have guesses?

Gangsta rap? Screetching metal? Blazing punk?

Nope.

Sixties oldies? Big Band? Yanni?

No, but getting closer.

The music this fellow cranks out across my air space is smooth jazz. Not the good jazz, say Theonius Monk, Charlie Parker or Miles Davis.

Nope. The smooth kind. Plinky plunky. Music that reminds you of sitting in the waiting room at the dentist’s office.

Cranked up loud. Bouncing off the hills and homes in our fair town.

This has been going on for a while now. And the gent has recently taken to cranking his crazy beats around 5:30 in the evening, so that all coming home from work can enjoy his pee-tinged music.

Today, I cracked. Today, I lost it.

Today, he was playing the theme from “Moonlighting” by Al Jarreau at full volume.

Now look, I like Al. He has some fine songs. I don’t resent anyone enjoying the mellow ways of Mr. Jarreau. However…I don’t need this blared out into my world, uninvited.

The acoustics in my neighborhood are funny, but The Good Man and I are pretty sure it’s the landlord of the triplex one lot over, but we can’t be sure.

When I DO find the offender, I am going to deliver a collection of BB King recordings with a note that says, “GET SOME SOUL, mother eff word!”

Style tips you can use!

Today, I learned something about how to conduct my life from a most unlikely source.

Real, powerful lessons I look forward to applying as soon as possible.

So this afternoon, I had the honor privilege task of taking The Feline to the vet. She’s having ongoing ear troubles, so back we went to see the same guy who cut the tumor off her little nose last year.

Needless to say, not really her most favorite person.

But our vet is the owner of nine (yes, nine) of his own cats. He’s got a real firm but friendly touch with my cat who prefers it if you’d never actually *touch* her.

As I wrassled that pet down so the good doctor could examine her, I watched how the feline worked.

First, she simply tried to walk away. Vigorously.

When that didn’t work, she began this low-in-the-throat growl. Very menacing. In fact, I’ve never heard her use this growl on anyone BUT the vet. He’s a very kind man, really, and no one else can cause my normally bulletproof pet to make that sound.

So with the long growls and face-finger* looks, we were put on notice.

Next step was to use her paw to push the vet’s hand away. Firmly. No claws, no biting, just firmly shoving with her paw flat against the palm of his hand with all she had.

Finally, when the doctor persisted in looking in her ears, and after trying walking away, growling, and pushing, The Feline went to code red.

Meaning: The cat freaked the f-word out.

The vet, not a petite man by any account, threw hands up in the air, backed right off, and looked a little skeered, actually.

Twelve point one pounds of fury.

Oh yes.

She never had to get violent. No blood was drawn. I think she might have peed the tiniest bit, but not enough to make a mess.

But let me tell you, that animal was no longer messed with. Nope. We both let her be.

In fact, the meaner she got, the kinder the vet became. He started out calling her “big girl” in reference to her heft. (As a “big girl” myself, I was sort of offended on behalf of my pet!)

By the end of the visit, he was calling her “little one” and practically cooing to her in Peruvian.

See, this is good. The smallest, most vulnerable one in the room got her way.

I can learn from this!

First, if you don’t like it, walk away.

If that doesn’t work, get vocal. Make your displeasure known in a firm but not offensive way.

It that doesn’t work, be firmer. Don’t be afraid to physically push the trouble away. No need to be violent, just be direct.

And if you really, truly have to, freak out! Including a little pee, but only if really necessary.

Once the trouble is over, give everyone a face-finger, walk away with tail held high, and loudly demand food the moment you set paws in safe territory.

I can’t wait to try this at my next mammo visit!

Look at her now…all sweetness and light….hmph!

*i.e. a dirty look. As in, giving the finger, but using your face.

Old habits like these are so hard to break*

It was seventh grade. She was Mrs. Olivas. Typing teacher. A rail thin Hispanic woman with long black hair, parted down the middle, a sour face and an even sourer disposition.

(sourer doesn’t sound right, but Word grammar checker told me that “more sour” was incorrect…so let’s roll with it)

Mrs. Olivas taught my brother, well ahead of me in school. She taught my sister.

And then she taught me.

There we all sat, trembling, at the keyboards of electric typewriters distributed about the classroom. Eyes forward. No looking at your fingers!

Mrs. Olivas would wander the room, shouting letters like a drill sergeant. We would type what she shouted. In unison our keys would strike the paper.

My sister had warned me, with her accent, her “v” sounded like “b” and vice versa. And she graded harshly when you got it wrong.

Mrs. Olivas taught us that after every period ending a sentence, you hit that space bar twice.

End a sentence, space twice, start the next sentence.

One space looked too crowded. Too hard to tell where one sentence ended and the next began.

Two spaces.

No questions. Don’t ask. Two spaces.

I follow this great lady, Debbie Ridpath Ohi, on Twitter (her screen name is inkyelbows). She is a writer and creates spot on comics about and for writers.

So imagine the shock and awe in my world when I read the following re-Tweet:

@inkyelbows From literary agent @Ginger_Clark “Authors: stop double spacing after every paragraph. It’s unnecessary.”

What?!? Sputter sputter. What!?!?

I say…..WHAT?!?!

Ok, to be fair, Twitter itself had me changing my typing habit. Why type two spaces when that takes two of the precious 140 characters? So I figured in the Twitter-verse, it was ok.

But in my regular writing? Stories, emails, blog posts. Can I stop?

Period-space-space is in my muscle memory! It lives in my cells!

Seventh grade was almost thirty years ago! If I don’t period-space-space won’t Mrs. Olivas come haunt me in my sleep like the La Llorona of the Smith Corona?

“Peerrrioood-spaaaaace-spaaaaace,” she will howl outside my window!

I found this bit of explanation online: ” It is generally accepted that the practice of putting two spaces at the end of a sentence is a carryover from the days of typewriters with monospaced typefaces.”

So to do a period-space-space is something of a throwback. It marks me as “old school.” Someone who learned to type on an actual typewriter.

Ok, fine. I’m trying. Every day I’m trying to retrain my obstinate thumb to only tap that space bar once. Just once.

It’s tough! I still have to do a find and replace when I finish any document, including this blog post.

I’m too old to learn new tricks!!!!

Waaaah!

Oh, and:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

*apologies to Hank Williams Jr for bastardizing his lyric.

Coming tomorrow: “Three Grammar rules that are okay to break.” My world is off its axis!

Recycled Conversations

So the conversation goes like this:

“Hey, do we have any WD-40?”

“Yeah, I think so, why?”

“Where would it be? I want to fix the squeak in that [curse word] bathroom door.”

“Oh. Yeah, it’s probably in that same cabinet where we keep the toolbox.”

“Ah, ok.” sounds of digging around “Found it!”

sounds of more cursing, spraying, door swinging back and forth

Yeah, see, this conversation in a similar form took place on more than occasion between my mom and dad.

The ol’ man was hell on squeaks, rattles, and turning off lights when you left a room.

And he was all about the WD-40.

The conversation above? Took place in my home this past weekend.

Only, it was me cursing at the bathroom door, maniacal look on my face as I eliminated the squeak.

So why again is it as you age, you become your parents?

And why again am I becoming my father?

When I start wearing Sears brand jeans and listening to Big Band music, you all have my permission to take me down, Mutual of Omaha-style.

Damn bathroom door is pretty quiet now, though.

The Right Way. The Wrong Way. And my way.

I was raised by rather practical parents. No sissy girls in their house, no. We were up on the roof painting kid of girls. We were change the oil in the car girls. Yes. Self-sufficient, and often creative when it came to fixing troublesome issues.

If you’re country folk, the term “bailing wire and duct tape” is familiar to you. The concept being, with those two items, you can fix anything…MacGyver style.

I’m pretty proud of my redneck ways. Or as my Hispanic friends would call it, rasquache.

I pondered this again this morning as I admired my entomological prevention handiwork.

See, The Good Man and I are convinced our (rental) residence is, essentially, built on an anthill. Not mean like fire ant or anything. No, the annoying little black ants that I talked about in this post. (The Good Man has become a LOT less Zen about them, btw)

Their main port of entry is the kitchen, and since we’re not eager to spread poison around the same place where we prepare food, we’ve been trying a variety of natural remedies (most discovered through research on the interwebs).

So far, the application of soapy water works best. Kills ’em on the spot. But doesn’t really do much to prevent them. For that we try an orange oil product made for ants. It works…for a bit. But they come back, laughing.

Most sites I read said, “you have to find where they are coming in and seal that off.”

Trouble is, we live in an almost seventy year old house placed precariously on a hill in earthquake country, so there are lots of gaps and cracks and crevices those little sonsabitches can exploit.

So in the heat of battle one day, frustrated and exasperated, I reverted to my “duct tape and bailing wire” days and got out the masking tape.

Everywhere it looked like they were coming in was slapped over with tape. TGM kind of laughed at me. He was like “oooookay”.

But you know what? It worked. It didn’t *look* good, but we were without ants for quite sometime. Oh sweet relief!

We left the tape up for a while, then took it back down.

As those ants are wont to do, they found a new port of call in a new area, and began streaming in again. We applied soapy water and orange oil and fought the battle.

While going hand to six-legged combat, TGM said, “I’m going to spray this down with orange oil and then you do your masking tape thing, ok?”

And I did.

And, for the past couple weeks…ant free.

We harbor no illusions that we’re free of them. I’m sure they are just tormenting the neighbor right now (it’s a duplex).

They’ll be back. And we’ll be waiting with a good squirt of orange oil and a fresh roll of masking tape.

“TOP OF THE WORLD, MA!!!” (click if you don’t know the movie reference)