S’long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good byyyyyyye!

Well 2009, here we are.

It’s been fun, you know. Well, sometimes, anyway.

I mean, you’ve provided some laughs and all.

Remember that time we celebrated my wedding anniversary?

How about all the tweets we shared?

The endless blog posts?

Remember that vacation where we laughed in the summer sun?

Yeah…those were special times. Really, I’ll always hold those memories deep in my heart.

It’s just…

Well…

It’s not working out.

You see, despite all the fun, you’ve ravaged my wallet.

In this year, you made me have to *gasp* cut coupons, lower my thermostat and NOT buy this ever so delicious navy blue leather bag with a cute little strap and matte finished hardware and the most adorable zipper front pockety thing.

I haaaate not buying a delicious handbag with a really cute pockety thing!

But I didn’t buy it. I walked away.

And I’m still sad about that.

I’ll always remember that stuff too, 2009.

How you made gas prices stupidly expensive. How you let all those celebrities die. How you let Tiger cheat on Elin.

You have a dark side, 2009. I see it now. I see it so clearly.

I’ve been fooling myself all along

I think it is best if we part ways.

Really, stop trying to cling to my leg.

We’re done.

Seriously.

Fine. You want me to say it?

I’ll say it.

But when I say it, it’s really over.

Ok. Here we go. I’m saying it.

It’s not you, it’s me.

There.

Feel better?

Now get out of here. We’re through!

Have I met somebody new? Well…maybe.

2010 has been coming up in conversation a lot lately.

Maybe 2010 will treat me the way I deserve to be treated.

Let my retirement recover some of its value and help me possibly find another cute little leather bag to assuage my grief.

Until then…to you, 2009, I can only say….

So long.

Farewell!

Auf wiedersehen

Good byyyyyyye…

Tis the Season

Yesterday was a weird day.

Sure, mid-December always gets a little bit dicey when going out to run errands, but yesterday was especially odd.

I had a list of things to procure and not a lot of time, so over lunchtime I started at the top of the list. First stop, Home Depot.

Oh Home Depot, I know so many people love you, but I rarely visit your orangey evil warehouse.

I needed some tools (I have a fun Christmas project for The Good Man’s little sister in progress). Since Home Depot is the Wal-Mart of hardware stores, and I wanted to spend only a little green, I decided to give it a try.

Wow, did you know there is some sort of force field going on in Home Depot? As soon as I set foot in the lumber aisle, I became invisible! It was really instant and rather startling!

The U.S. military should look into this!

The secret to a true complete invisibility shield!

A girl in the lumber aisle.

I found that on the tools aisle, I was only partly invisible. If I said, “hey, I need help!” then they could sort of see me. It wasn’t just me either, there was another woman trying to get help regarding a door knob she was considering.

She got the attention of one male employee who condescendingly answered her question then walked away…though she wasn’t done asking questions.

Oh, I did discover that in the gardening section, by the small pink canvas pruning gloves? They could see me fine.

Something about hardware and lumber.

Weird, huh?

My next errand was to go to the post office. A gift ordered online had arrived. Yay!

Well, it being mid-December and at lunch, the post office was crazy busy. We use a very small postal annex with only two employees, so that makes things an even bigger holdup.

It was a very, very long line.

Well, you know, this is to be expected this time of year.

Except for the cranky old man and the horribly cranky old woman in line behind me.

The old man kept cranking about how he can’t believe the lines and he had been there and hour before and the line was this long so he went and had lunch to wait it out and wouldn’t you know it the line is still long and how can this be!

You get my drift.

Then the lady chimed in.

“There are just too many people these days. Too. Many. People. You know why it is so crowded don’t you? Because of all the immigrants. Obama keeps letting all of those immigrants in. They all want the free stuff so those damn people keep coming in and it is just too crowded!”

Uh. WHAT!?!?!?

Crazy old bat continued on that line of rant for a bit longer, then went back to complaining about the line. She said, “Why is there only one person working, where is that [racial epithet redacted] who works here?”

I was horrified. Absolutely stunned into a horrified shock.

Evidently the “spirit of the season” is discrimination, racism and anger.

Once I picked up my package, I got in my car and made my way out of the parking lot. As I waited to turn out into traffic, I had the audacity to wait for a group of six kids from the nearby high school walking by on lunch break.

Audacity because the evidently impatient man behind me felt I shouldn’t have paused. So he laid on the horn and yelled “GOOOO!”

Well, clearly the spirit of the season has infected me as well, because I unrolled my window and shouted “WHAT THE F–K IS YOUR PROBLEM!?!?”

Tis the season to be assholish, fa la la la, la la la la……

Look at me pass on the season’s cheer….

I think I’ll hunker down at the house for the remainder of the year. It seems better that way.

The why post

I have questions. Lots of them.

Some of those “unexplained issues of the universe.”

I’m sure there are people far smarter than me with very good answers.

But for now, I’m just going to go with a pondering “why?” about the many things I don’t understand.

For example…

Why, when The Feline has finished relieving her bowels and carefully covering it up in the litter box, does she then LEAP from the box and do a couple laps around the house?

I mean at full speed, ears down for less wind resistance, ka-thunka thunk around the place?

Is it because after using the box she feels lighter?

Hmmm.

Why does my next-door neighbor put his trash out a day early every week? Our trash day is Thursday and every Wednesday morning he drags out all his cans and recycling. He’s lived over there about three years. He’s a retired guy at home all day, so this isn’t planning ahead. He knows trash day is Thursday, we’ve even talked about it!

And yet, Wednesday morning, there are his trashcans.

Not that it is hurting anything, but WHY?

Hmmm.

Why is the mailman so cranky everyday? The man never says hi back.

And further, why do I keep trying to say hello when I know he won’t reply in kind?

Hmmm?

Why does my landlord insist on landscaping the yard at my place with only a small hatchet and a chain saw?

No tree, plant or other living thing is immune to his blunt blade approach to landscaping.

Should I send him to bonsai tree school?

Hmmm?

(Then again, the fights he and his son have, in both Italian and English, make for much laughter in my house. The son also doesn’t understand his dad’s landscaping philosophy.)

Why can’t I purchase hotdogs and hotdog buns in the same quantities?

Why are Trader Joe’s Joe-Joe peppermint cookies so gall durn delicious?

Why can’t people figure out four way stops?

Why do the manhole covers in my town blast back water when it rains?

Why do I love coffee so much when it is so hard on my tummy?

Why can’t I win the lottery?

And finally…(thought not the complete list by a long shot)

Why can’t that [curse word] woman in Texas realize that her email address is NOT my email address. She has an underscore in her email address. Mine does not. All the same letters, but she uses an underscore. Big, huge difference.

WHY WHY WHY after about two year’s time has she not figured this out?

Last week I shut down her kid’s account on Disney.com (needed parental verification to open the account). Poor kid.

Why can’t she figure this out!?! WHY?!?!?!?

Grrrrrr!

Oh, I mean…

Hmmm.

So many unanswered questions. So little time.

Today: A Fable

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess…we’ll call her…Karenita. This lovely princess was married to the most handsomest prince in the whole land.

But unfortunately for our lovely princess, every weekday, she was required to go and toil away the hours at the Imperial Tower of Doom. Gray clouds swirled overhead while poor Karenita was tormented by her oppressors.

There was one oppressor who was particularly a thorn in the side of our beautiful princess.

See, our lovely girl arrives to work in the morning tired and in need of something for breakfast. The princess keeps some food in the Imperial Tower office ‘fridge, and also likes a spot of hot tea on the cold gray swirly cloud mornings.

Unfortunately for the princess, there lived in the break room a mean and nasty troll.

No really, this lady is like five foot nothing with a bad attitude and a chip the size of Texas on her shoulder.

For some reason, the Evil Break Room Lady can always sense when Karenita the Princess needs to have breakfast, and makes sure to hustle in there first, blocking the egress for our lovely girl to reach the ‘fridge.

While Karenita is there heating up her food, Evil Break Room Lady makes nasty comments about how people don’t clean up after themselves (despite the fact that Karenita scrupulously cleans up after herself) and self-importantly restocks the paper coffee cups (it’s not her job, by the way, she’s a very high paid executive admin) while dropping hairy eyeballs on the princess the whole time.

And then Evil Break Room Lady takes paper towels and cleans the countertops, sometimes pushing Karenita’s bowl out of the way while she does. Karenita finds this to be very rude.

It’s clear that Evil Break Room Lady doesn’t like Karenita, but Karenita doesn’t know why. The princess was raised to be kind and cordial and always says hello and thank you and excuse me.

Karenita believes that Evil Break Room Lady must be very unhappy with her menopausal lot in life, and all the hot flashes must make her cranky. Karenita thinks Evil Break Room Lady envies her still productive ovaries and plentiful estrogen.

The princess tries to be understanding, but it’s kind of hard when someone gives you the equivalent of the finger with her face every morning. Karenita is just trying to make it through the day.

The princess has tried to be nice, to make conversation, to say “yeah, it’s really bad when people leave water everywhere” but none of this works. Evil Break Room Lady has just determined that the princess is a lesser form of life.

And this doesn’t make Karenita feel very nice as she starts each day.

In other news, the nicest person to Karenita in all the Imperial Tower of Doom is the janitor. The janitor thinks Karenita rocks and will make it a point to wave vigorously from across the room and say hi.

Karenita likes Mr. Janitor. He’s a good man with a sucky job and he does it with life and verve and kindness.

So there’s hope. Maybe Karenita knows she’s not such a bad person after all.

And they all lived crankily every after.