When I rule the world, I have a couple people already picked out to be my linguist authorities, and one of their many duties will be, of course, to police my benevolently-ruled world by correcting grammar and spelling and issuing tickets that will carry sentences like “You shall write 50 paragraphs perfectly, copied from “Eats, Shoots & Leaves.” Now, I am as guilty as the next average-to-intelligent human being, and minor typos, errors, etc., are not cause for tickets. But printing “Mom’s Love to Share!” on the bottom of every fucking receipt? CVS Pharmacy, you are getting a FIIIIINE. I’m serious! It was one of those little stacked group of lines at the bottom of the receipt, reminding you that Mother’s Day was coming, shop for Mom, here are some ideas, and of course, don’t forget chocolate! “Because Mom’s love to share!”

I just shook my head when I saw it. I thought, “Self? We are talking about an enormous, giant pharmacy chain here, and they are printing this error thousands of times a day, possibly in cities all over this country, further reinforcing the concept that, when in doubt, throw in that apostrophe.” And yes, I indulged in an intellectually-superior moment. I did it, I’ll own it. I just wanted to find the person who typed it in and say, “Did you forget the first rule of determining if you need an apostrophe? Let’s try it. Mom IS. Mom is love to share. Does that sound right? OK, no. So, let’s move to the second rule: does Mom possess something? Well I can’t find it. Yes, it’d be “Mom’s chocolate”, but Mom’s (chocolate) love to share? Again we hit the no. So, let’s see. It seeeeeeeems like you’re going for MORE THAN ONE MOM. That means it’s JUST an S. Moms. Moms everywhere love to share. Moms love to share. MOMS MOMS MOMS. “

The other thing I’ll have my Linguistic Authorities work on are new words for things, specifically, a simple way to refer to a person who used to be a really good friend but isn’t a friend anymore, as in, you never speak and you really don’t ever want to run into them again. “Ex-friend” seems strange, like “ex” usually applies to “husband” or “wife”. And saying all that stuff about “used to be but not now” is a mouthful. If you have a good idea, let me know. You might get to be part of the Elite Forces Crew.

Today’s blog has been brought to you by www.m-w.com . One other funny? The spellchecker on Blogger – doesn’t recognize the word “blog”.

I have been on a bit of a shopping spree, it’s winding down, but there are still a couple things out there I want to buy and no, JWo, I’m not buying a big-screen TV. But I want one. My birthday’s July 6, and you always want hints!

Anyhoo, I purchased a new PalmPilot – my old one was a Sony Clie’, and the software wouldn’t sync with Outlook 2003. Grrrr. So I’ve got the Tungsten E, it isn’t overly fancy or crazy but it’s nice & it does sync up. I got a retro cool case on eBay that I’m waiting to receive, very snazzy. I also got a new digital camera, and I’m terribly excited about it – I didn’t go crazy and get the Nikon D70 like all the REALLY cool people have (Bekah, Dooce, our friend Kurt), I got another Kodak, the Easyshare Z740. It’s quite nifty & I do so love my gadgets. I hope to get some of my pictures posted by Sunday!

But what I’m REALLY REALLY excited about? I bought some Charlie’s Angels trading cards on eBay, for the sheer nostalgia of it all. I can still smell/taste the cheap-ass gum that came in the packages of cards. And how we’d all swap and trade to further our collection, and we’d play Charlie’s Angels at recess, roping one or two of the non-popular boys in to play Bosley and various enemy targets. I always ended up being Kate. The smart one. Go figure.

Further adventures in Costco shopping:

Last night, as I’m going back and forth trying to determine if they sell frozen corn-on-the-cob and finally conclude they only sell fresh, so I go back to price it (we’re having a party on Saturday – shrimp & crawdad boil) and I make eye contact with this greeeeeeat big heavy-set black guy who’s working one of the demo stations that I’m about to pass. I love the mid-town Costco because it’s so diverse in the workers and the shoppers, and I’m always bound to get a story out of a trip there, versus the white-bread Overland Park location. Anyway, he had an incredibly expressive face, and despite looking pretty tired, had a smirk about him, and he had a big twang in his voice when he talked. An extra two points to him for looking at me like I might be a cupcake.

“How are you?” he asks.
“Oh, I’m fine, how are you?” I reply.
He starts sauntering in a semi-circle around his station, like a caged bear. He’s pushing some sort of glass cleaner, and none too happy about it.

“You wanna watch me clean this mirror for the (raises voice, heavier drawl) FIVE HUNDREDTH AND FIFTY-THIRD TIME today?”

I am still moving, but I am laughing as I say, “No, no. No thank you, but I do appreciate your style.”

He says, “I’ll let YOU clean it and that way I’ll only have cleaned it five hundred and fifty-TWO times today.”

I have the best times at Costco. Unless I’m in line behind three gay men shopping for New Year’s Eve. That tried my patience.

I love my JWo. You’ll see why in three minutes.
Last night, we went out to dinner, OLIVE GARDEN baby, we live a life straight out of Old School, except we don’t shop at Home Depot, we are Lowe’s People, pass the kool-aid, tie up my blue sneakers. Afterwards, the WoFactor wanted Sheridan’s, which is like crack for people who don’t actually do crack. One of my favorite things about Sheridan’s is that you can smell all the milk and cream, and it reminds me of dairy barns back home. Yes. I get nostalgic over cows. So as we pull into the drive-thru, Def Leppard’s “Foolin'” came on, and suddenly I am all white-trash-beautiful, with a HUGE overbite and hang-loose hands and singin’ and ROCKIN’ OUT. It was an inconvenience to have to turn the radio down to order, dammit.

THEN, we drive over to Wal-Mart, where I drop James off so he can go in and buy BULLETS, YES, BULLETS, and now all we need is a Camaro and his-n-her mullets to make this redneck adventure complete. I actually drove around the parking lot, like I was cruising the three city blocks of my hometown. Then, I called JWo, to tell him to get a big standing fan, and he said that I should pick that out (smart man!) but he added that I would never guess what he was holding in his hand. It was a surprise! Yay!
Oh, do you already have it figured out? I try not to do that, because I love the whole surprise thing. But in case you haven’t deduced it, it was a CD. Not just any CD. DEF LEPPARD’S GREATEST HITS 1980-1995. THE VAULT. I nearly peed with excitement. And I broke nearly every speed limit on the drive home, while listening to “Photograph”, “Bringin’ on the Heartbreak”, and my favorite, “Rock of Ages”.

See, “Rock of Ages” was the song we used for an air band contest in high school my junior year. Offa the album “Pyromania”, I remember this all quite vividly. Growing up in rural Iowa, there weren’t extensive music choices: country or rock. And the rock station included Top 40. Grunge and alternative hadn’t really been invented yet, so I had a healthy mix of DuranDuran and Twisted Sister thrown in on top of my hippie parents’ folk music, Rolling Stones & Dire Straits. This air band competition was awesome because one of the biggest slackers in our class actually got so into it, he made us WOODEN GUITARS and spent a couple weeks meticulously painting them. These were faux electric guitars, with the crazy shapes and bright colors. WE REHEARSED. This was super serious. The Air Band Contest was on “Punk Rock Day”, you know how those homecoming weeks were themed – “Pajama Day”, etc. So there I am, goody-two-shoes/straight-and-narrow girl, honor roll & class president, wearing artfully tied black garbage bags (I hear you can get them in bulk at CostCo now) all over me, with black lipstick & teased out, bright red spray-in color, black eyeliner – kind of a chunky female Robert Smith with red hair. Wielding an awesome wooden guitar painted black & red. (I have always needed to coordinate.) I remember we were lip syncing and I was doing my “solo”, snarling and JAMMING OUT, as much as a sheltered white Iowan girl can do while wearing black plastic garbage bags, and I remember actually seeing our judges in the front row – several teachers and administrators – with their jaws on their chests, staring at me. They expected it from the other band members, but not me. HAH!

I remember feeling that “HAH!” & it’s the same feeling I still get, when someone expects me to fail or thinks I’m not good enough or is surprised that I know obscure things. We all have that within us. We all make assumptions about each other, because it’s a shorthand we learn. But I also know we’d all be a little surprised at the unique, funny things we’ve all done and the stories we have. I’m not embarassed to own up to my redneck love of Def Leppard, because it is tied to a glorious moment, when I didn’t have to be what everyone expected me to be, and I was free & crazy & having the time of my life. I love JWo for loving that bold, awkward, hilarious creature that breaks out of my skin and bites my lower lip and screams along to the lyrics on a warm spring evening while driving just a little bit crazy. And I love him because he knows ALL THE LYRICS to every Def Leppard song on that CD.

And we won the air band contest. HAH!

Ahhhh, you know, the joys of home ownership. They are many, and along with them come things like an ENDLESS STREAM OF MONEY TO LOWE’S every weekend, a twitching fear that something that costs $4,000 will explode, and lots more rooms to clean, or think about cleaning, or forget to clean. But the best, absolute BEST part of having our house? We no longer live next door to Harriet the Horrible, Ogre of Widow Creek, Lonely Bitch Royale, the absolute bane of my existence in the two years I lived in that apartment complex.

This is a long, sordid story. I will not be able to tell it all this morning. But I should start with this fact about me: Just as I can be very fogbanks and in my own world, I can also be very observant. Sometimes painfully so, sometimes paranoidally so. So I noticed, when I looked at the apartment, and the two guys living there were hanging out, that they seemed to share a joke about something. I now know what the joke was. The joke had to go something like, “Boy, sure hope she’s quiet!” (stifled, contained laughter.)
For that was eerily similar to Harriet’s first greeting to James, as he trudged down the long hallway, one of 7,000 trips he would make over 3 days, and he greeted her, cheerfully. Her response? “I SURE HOPE YOU’LL BE QUIET.” We sort of laughed about it and didn’t think anything else of it. It truly was the proverbial shot across the bow, and we failed to realize just how stark raving fucking insane she would turn out to be…..

…..and with that ominous foreshadowing, I must stop. For if I don’t go and shower & get dressed, I won’t get to work on time, and if I don’t work, I can’t help pay for the house, and if we lose the house, I could end up back at Widow Creek. You understand. I’ll post more later today, in this same entry.

Harriet, Cont’d. 11:33 a.m.

We moved me in July. Because July in the South (hey, Missouri feels very much like the South in July) is the perfect time to move. It had more to do with my former apartment going condo and me not wanting to buy it. So I found this place to live, looked at the apartment, it had central air, washer/dryer hookups, a dishwasher – all sorts of amenities I wanted, and was willing to finally chuck the “charming” and “quaint” for. We had friends help us with some of the move, one of whom was my friend Greg, who is actually George Costanza’s twin. The new apartments, I quickly learned, were dubbed “Widow Creek” for all the aged and retired types who lived there. Greg brought a load in and whispered dramatically, a la “The Sixth Sense”, “I see OLD PEOPLE.” Still gets a belly laugh out of me. I just think it’s going to be calm and safe and a convenient stop until we get married, move out, etc., etc.

Imagine my surprise, when I arrive home in late August, and there’s a letter from WC Management. The letter accuses me of banging on the walls twice in one night, date and times listed. I’m pissed. I call the office. They proceed to remind me about “Quiet Hours” (10p-7a). Banging on the walls was apparently a euphamism for having WILD CRAZY HEADBOARD-SLAMMIN’ SEX. The girls in the office were tittering about how I “needed to keep it down a bit more.” Uh. Hm. Not revealing too much, but we did a mental trip back in time, and while JWo appreciated the kudos, there were no twice-in-one-night episodes, and the night in question actually had THUNDERSTORMS, so now we knew we were dealing with an off-kilter individual. If this were a movie, we’d show a calendar flipping past the dates. September 11th happened. A week & a half later was my scheduled housewarming party. We decided to go ahead with the party. At ten o’clock, I shut the door to the entire south side of the apartment, where my bedroom, the bath, the washer/dryer (cue dramatic music! it will be significant later!), the sink, the closets were. Insulation, I figured. We turned the music down, and people were just hanging out, talking. Not even talking loudly. Less than an hour goes by. All of a sudden, tappity-tap-tap on the door. It’s a WC Security Officer, an off-duty cop. I still remember her little badge with the black ribbon across it. She had gotten a complaint about a raging party, and she had to follow up on it. She also told me that she had stood in the hallway for ten minutes and couldn’t hear a thing. (Believe you me. I’m a documenter. I put it ALL in my letter back to WC Management.) Apparently, she was also familiar with the Ways of the Harriet, as she apologetically smiled and nodded as I spluttered, restrainedly of course, I don’t screw with the po-lice.

I could attempt to do a blow-by-blow (I have the letters on my hard drive), but it all really came down to a two-year battle of she-said/she-said, except for the times James was there (and he moved in the second year) but of course, he’s gonna back me. Except when I would go apeshit and bang BACK on the wall at the bitch, because she fired up my temper like propane in a grill. SHE always banged first, dammit. James would tell me to NOT PLAY ALONG. Ugh. Not good at that. I would SING in the shower (after 7 a.m.) and she decided her new complaint was that I was doing laundry at 5 a.m., 6 a.m., all these godawful times in the morning when I could barely move my eyelids, let alone sort clothing. Back and forth, back and forth, I would get calls from security, I would SHRIEK, come over here right now, you can see there is no laundry being done!!!! Finally, I went in to the office (for about the 800th time.) Fortunately, I have a skill that Harriet did/does not. I am a PEOPLE PERSON. I can be extremely diplomatic, and I can connect with all sorts of personalities. And I was connected to the manager. We chatted about her dreams, her future, what she liked to do, etc. And so I went in there, with another letter, and in no uncertain terms accused Harriet of harassment, and that she was using the apartment management as her tool of harassment, and they could move me to another apartment at their expense, or allow me to break my lease with no cost to me, or they could finally take a hard line with Harriet. Because, in one of my pleasurable chats with the manager, which was always spent with me LAUGHING about how silly this all was, she told me it had been going on with every tenant before me. Aha. So there you have it, and that was ALSO referenced in my carefully-worded letter.

Harriet got called in to the office and was told she would not make another single complaint about anyone or anything, or they would consider not renewing her lease. SMACKDOWN. It was awesome when I moved though, because I felt like I was giving her the big F-You, and I even thought about signing her up for loads of things from the Danbury Mint and all those other godawful inserts for dolls and plates and spoons and such. But I didn’t. Because that would be wrong. Seriously. I didn’t! I DIDN’T! Just don’t ask what JWo did.

Thanks Scorpy for the fun quiz link! I was not surprised at all by the results – Upper Midwest is where I’m from, and lived for 26 years, and MissourAH and my best friend Shelley (who’s from Texas) have instilled some ‘twang and drawl’. Sorta like ‘sturm und drang’, but less glitzy. ;)

This is the second Monday in a row that I have actually felt GOOD while getting ready for work. It’s like the 80# boulder I got so used to wearing around my neck got utilized in a landscaping project & I finally got to set it down.

The interesting observation I’ve made is, much like my philosophy on Paper Cuts, is that while I’m very happy, I’m not getting off-the-charts exuberant, because I do have a tendency to act like a giant puppy about things (This chew toy is the GREATEST THING EVER! Look! Butterflies! GREATEST THINGS EVER!) and as I rub my scars from the last employer, I know that every job has its pitfalls and no particular job, or person, or relationship is ever perfect, and there will be stumbles and papercuts, and things that piss me off – but collectively, there is an overwhelming influx of positive energy and the element that was sorely missing in the past couple of years: Hope.

I mentioned to James that I was feeling the heaviness and sadness and hopelessness lift from me, and he said he’d seen the changes in me, too. Like that I was more combative now. When pressed for further details on what exactly “more combative” meant, he confessed that he noticed he wasn’t getting away with as much shit anymore, that I was calling him on things I’d apparently been letting slide for a while, things I didn’t have the energy to deal with.

:smile: New World, NuWo. The sun shines a lot more here.

(NuWo is our last names’ initials combined – it’s what we’ve called our household ever since I named our Sims family that.)

True confessions time – eesh. I can’t believe it, but I’m sitting here watching MTV Hits, channel 256 – the channel actually PLAYS MUSIC, guess you have to get the digital cable to get back to your roots. Anyway. I’m ashamed to say that the new Mariah Carey song, “It’s Like That Y’all” is actually catchy. Ugh. Let’s be honest. Part of the hook for me is she’s got the ever-sultry Eric Roberts in the video, so if I can just time looking at the tv when he’s on-screen, and she’s NOT, then I’d be happy. And I’m actually ok with the song up until – thankfully, it’s late in the song – she starts doing that I’m-Warbling-Like-A-Pie-Whistle crap. And then there’s 30-seconds where one of the featured artists just BUSTS out and it cracks me up. This is on the heels of downloading JLo’s “Get Right” as a ringtone for my phone. I SAID it was TRUE CONFESSIONS, it’s not nice to judge, and I was raised on folk music. Sometimes I just have to have some cotton candy in the form of Top 40 radio.

So I was thinking, geeze, maybe I’m like the next Dick Clark, you know, someone who won’t let go of the poppy top 40 crap, and that’s just the biggest buzzkill, every time I think of Dick Clark, because I met him once, and he was NOT NICE. Apparently, he thinks he’s more important than me. Whatever! I was more interested in my coffee, that his assistant was snatching from me, for fear I would trip and throw a cup of hot steaming java in the face of America’s Teenager, which probably would have melted his very tight face right off the titanium bone structure. And the whole time Dick Clark kept impatiently saying, “Jennifer. Jennifer. Jennifer. What do you want me to write on this Jennifer?” And all I wanted to say was, “WHATEVER DICK CLARK, TELL YOUR FAWNING MANSERVANT HERE TO GIVE ME BACK MY COFFEE.” But I think I just said, “To Jennifer.” And then later, in a fit of flashback pique, I threw it away – so there goes my opportunity to pay off the house someday with that relic. I apparently save all kinds of crap, except Dick Clark’s autograph, and Richard Simmon’s, too, dammit, I lost that one. But I was in junior high and by the time Duran Duran rolled around, I was too busy planning my wedding to half the band, with top choice going to Simon LeBon, to care about meeting a permed-out oiled-up gay diet & exercise guru. Oh, I had an assistant once who INSISTED Richard was not gay. Since I’m confessing, let’s throw in how much fun I had at HER expense over that one. A LOT.

Hey, I just found some redemption. Lindsay Lohan’s on now, singing about Rumors and I am NOT IMPRESSED. Dick Clark can sleep safely, one more night….

Here’s a crazy question for y’all! If you could have ONE band, playing in your backyard all summer, which band would it be? And then – whoa nelly – if you could have TWO bands, because, you know, it would be nice to let that first band rest sometimes, who would the second band be? (And they can’t be dead bands. That would violate reality laws even more than this exercise.)

Last year, I got into Coldplay like nobody’s business, and I turned to JWo at one point and said, “If I could just have them playing in the backyard all summer, that would be AWESOME!” And then we threw out other bands, too – and the winner, for me, for one band, all summer long, would be U2. They can rock it out, they can make it mellow (you know, for when you’re going to bed – you don’t need “Elevation” crankin’ out while you’re trying to sleep) But wouldn’t it be awesome to wake up on a summer Saturday morning to hear “Beautiful Day”?!

Picking a second band gets tougher. James is probably expecting me to say “Snow Patrol”, I’m sure, because I haven’t worn that CD out yet….. I lean towards Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, with my only hesitation being my experience seeing them a couple years ago & while it was mostly the sound system’s fault, it kinda sucked. JWo would want me to pick the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but I’d never get anything done, seeing as how I’d be throwing myself at everyone in the band, all the time. (Boy do they ever put on a good show, though, every time we’ve seen them!) Plus you’ve got to think about balance, what with U2 headlining the backyard.

So, while he’s not a band, per se, I’d have to go with Moby. Li’l Moby, with his ears-made-for-pulling, the techno-genius in a soundproofed apartment, spinning & twisting and making some seriously unique stuff. Plus – and this is TOTALLY breaking the pick-a-band rules – think of all the people he could call up to come in and perform for a day, as a guest artist!

Unfortunately for JWo, that won’t include Eminem……I think he’s gifted, but seriously, I don’t need that kind of anger in the backyard.

I have the most entertaining experiences at Costco. Last night, I went after work – hell-bent on getting a new Palm Pilot – only to discover I should “check back in August, for back-to-school.” Look, Cap’n PUTZ, just because APRIL begins with an “A”, too, doesn’t mean I can just sit back for four months and not hot-sync to all my appointments on my computer. Underneath the chaos you see before you lies a spirit that does love to label things, categorize, create workflow charts and link pages of spreadsheets to one another. So BACK UP, I will buy some other stuff, but I will NOT wait four months for a new organizer thingy. HRmph.

As a I strolled around the section featuring fans, I spied a hoochy-mamma with her white-trash-beautiful boyfriend, looking at the coffee selection. OH, I don’t normally notice everyone at CostCo, but when you’re wearing those giant clunky black platform Mary Janes, with white knee highs, and I can see your legs ALL THE WAY UP to about one inch below your crotch, where your middle section has been covered with a 12″ swath of ruffled Britney-Spears-schoolgirl-whore skirt, and then you are wearing a – folks, I cannot even remember exactly what her shirt was, I was so boggled by the short skirt, all the tattoos, and the chain she wore around her waist. It was basically a tied-up shirt, straight outta “Ooops I Have No Talent Again”, and she had a bunch of piercings on her face, which I avoided looking at more than once out of fear I’d be caught with a judgmental, I-can’t-believe-I’m-going-home-without-my-PalmPilot face. I contemplated buying a camera, just so I could surreptitiously take a picture of them, so you would really be able to SEE the train wreck shopping alongside me. We ended up in line around the same time, and I could see that while she dressed like a size two, she was several sizes up from that, which hey, I’m all for body and size confidence, at ANY size, but I’m also hung up on this thing called “good taste” and so if you can’t really fit into your little sister’s school uniform, then ya shouldn’t be skankin’ around CostCo in it, mmmkkkkay? And having extra adipose around the midsection doesn’t really translate to, “Hey, I’ll wear a dangly shiny chain around my naked exposed waist so EVERYbody looks and then sees all my tattoos.” They bought a ton of garbage bags – four CostCo sized boxes, and they were the big black garbage bags. That was it. Probably gonna have some freakshow cooking oil wrestlemania in the living room. Who knows. All I know is, I gotta get me a new PDA this weekend, I had the nicest service when I was checking out, and I went to Thai Place for carryout, where they noticed I’d gotten a haircut. I think that says I go there uhhhhhhhh kinda sorta a LOT, maybe.