They're Everywhere

OF (Old Friend of undesirable snackage fame) has a sister who's a lesbian...with a wife...they were among the fortunate few who managed to tie the knot during the brief time it was legal for same sexers to marry.  I call them the Sister Wives...not to be confused with the polygamous gang on the reality TV show of the same name.  It just seems to fit...

BS & LS, Big Sis & Little Sis...shortened to eliminate keystrokes, really are big & little.  BS is about 6'15" and her wife is about 4' 2.  I think of LS as the Mighty Morphin.  I don't know why the Mighty Morphin thing pops into my head every time I think about LS.  I know there's a cartoon about Mighty Morphins but I've never actually seen one so they could be the complete opposite of what I picture in my mind...what I picture is sort of a little whirling dervish...maybe the Tasmanian Devil would be a better fit for LS...at least I know what that looks like.  The weirdest part is I don't even like cartoons, but cartoon characters pop into my head all the time.  Every time I see a group of old people, which would be my friends and I, I see a Far Side cartoon in living color.  OF thinks we're not old...she's wrong.

I could probably ask LS why cartoon characters pop into my head...she's a shrink...but I'm always secretly worried that she's analyzing everything I say...and if she's not, I don't want to encourage it. The first time I met LS she was sitting across from me on the couch and said these exact words to me..."I don't chit chat"...I didn't know how to respond...I can't even remember what I said...probably something brilliant like "oh".   Being a chit chatter, I didn't know if I should say "nice meeting you" and leave or just stare silently at her.  But if I stared silently, being a shrink, she might start asking me questions about why I was staring silently at her and try to analyze that.  If I deliberately tried not to look at her, she might want to know why I was avoiding looking at her and try to analyze that...either way, I lose.  I don't really need a shrink to tell me why I'm a chit chatter...I already know...I'm shallow...and perfectly content to remain shallow.  I'm much happier making fun of myself and others than trying to be Serious Sam all the time...especially with people I don't know.  It seems kinda rude and creeps me out when complete strangers ask me personal questions.  Why do they, "they" being strangers, want to know personal things about me? Ewwww...

BS is the complete opposite of LS...she's easy going, laughs at stoopid shit, and...chit chats...thank God! They're like night & day.   Even in the world of Lesbos, opposites attract...who knew?  BS calls the world of Lesbos "the church"...she'll look at someone and say "she's a church member".  I went to a horse clinic with OF & BS and there was a woman sitting next to us with a dog.  OF looked at me and said "she belongs to the church"

Being something of a doubting Thomas, I said "no she's not...how do you know"?

"You can just tell"  BS said, adding "look at her hair, it looks like she went to a barber shop".

With that comment OF said "you can't really tell like that when they're horse people." Looking down at the frayed hem on my jeans and filthy boots I  was inclined to agree with OF.

Still BS insisted this woman belonged to her "church".  So then I find myself looking at women with crappy haircuts and wondering if they're all lesbians.  They couldn't all be lesbians just because they have a crappy haircut, could they?  Have I been surrounded by lesbians all my life and just never knew it?  Are they everywhere?  What about all those years of being taught not to judge a book by its cover?  Should I have just assumed that all women with short hair that looks like they chopped it off themselves, dressed in work clothes and boots belong to the "church"?  Or that all men with girly man voices and flitty hands who dress immaculately are gay?  Okay...if I'm being honest, I may have assumed it about the men...but probably not about the women.

On a side note, BS may be on to something about the hair...every time I get my hair cut really short, one of the Old Chix always says to me "I don't know why you do that...it just makes you look like an old lesbian."  I don't know why I like her.

I wanted to ask the woman with the dog if she was a lesbian just to see if BS was right.  But really, how do you walk up to a stranger and ask something like that?  Guess I'll never know about barber shop chop lady.

OF said she's never sure how she should introduce LS to people...should she call her BS's partner...wife...what?  I'd probably wonder too.  What's the right thing to say?  Because in these politically correct days of easily offended masses it's hard to find something that won't offend someone.  I'm now worried that I'll slip up and call The Husband's car the Homobile in front of BS & LS.  I really like them both and wouldn't want to offend either one of them.  Would they even be offended?  I don't think BS would.  I think she'd think it was funny...not so sure about the Mighty Morphin though...she might want to analyze why I felt the need to name the car in a way that may be derogatory to certain persons.  Oh God, please don't let me slip and mention the Homobile around the lesbians.  Like Lucy, I'll have some 'splainin' to do.  (Remember Ricky & Lucy???...I Love Lucy???...get it???)  I hate having to be careful about what I say.  Maybe that's why I don't like being around strangers.  Yet another thing for me to worry about LS analyzing....it's the stoopidist thing.

P.S.
I think OF should just introduce LS as her sister in law...problemo solved.

P.S.S.  Note to self...must remember to eliminate the term "lesbos" from vocabulary when lesbians are present.

A Cause For Celebration

I need to mark this day on the calendar.  It's definitely a cause for celebration...maybe not for everyone, but for me, it's a day to shout "hallelujah".  I went in to the bathroom tonight and there was a new roll of toilet paper on the roller...unused...the end still glued down.  I'm still kind of in shock about the whole thing.  Hard to believe, I know, but this has never happened before.

So, what happened was, The Husband went to bed early and a little while later, I went in to the bathroom to pee.  Lo and behold, the new roll of toilet paper was placed on the roller...with the paper, still glued down, coming over the top of the roll like it's suppose to. I'm fairly certain this last part was an accident.  I couldn't even wait until after I peed before checking to see if The Husband was sick or something.

Not caring that he was sound asleep I threw open the bedroom door.

"Are you okay" I asked The Sleeping Husband loudly enough to rouse him...okay, I shouted...(he's a little hard of hearing which he refuses to admit...which is a whole other story).

"Yeah, why?" came the startled reply...in hindsight, I probably scared the old guy and made him think I noticed he'd stopped breathing or was having a seizure or something.

"Because" I said  "you put a new roll of toilet paper on the roller".

The Husband made sort of an unintelligible grunting noise from the bed in reply...he doesn't think I'm nearly as funny as I do...it's the stoopidist thing..


P.S. Sadly, this is the sort of thing that I consider a highlight in my life....

The Old Guy

From as far back as I can remember I've been in love with horses. When I was a kid I lived and breathed Walter Farley and Marguerite Henry books. I've never met a horse I didn't like and to this day I can find something good about the worst of them. If money were no object I'd take in as many abused, neglected and old broken down horses as I could just to let them have a little peace and comfort...but unless I happen to win the lottery, it's probably not gonna happen. The old broken down ones tug at my heartstrings the most.

I'm not in the horse rescue business because horses are expensive to keep.  God forbid I should end up being like one of those hobo's ass rescuers who show up in living color on the Fugly blog.  I have three of my own and I don't need any more equine mouths to feed with the price of hay being as ridiculously high as it is. Not to mention vet bills...I cringe every time I have to call the vet. 

There's a couple of different roads I can take to get to and from work.  The flow of traffic usually determines which way I go which means I always choose which ever way the booberdoober in front of me isn't going.  I just don't have the patience to follow someone who wants to drive ten miles per hour under the speed limit.  The first way is definitely shorter in distance but the other way offers me peace of mind and keeps me from intentionally ramming the poor schmuck in front of me who has no idea he's become the target of my road rage.  The long way led to the old guy.

Like most horse owners, I always look at horses pastured along the road when I'm driving.  I do try not to drive off the road while I'm doing this.  Does anybody really keep their eyes "on the road"?  I don't think so.  Anyway a local rancher has a barn and corrals alongside the road and I always look to see if horses or cattle are in the pens.  The first time I noticed him there weren't any cattle in the corral, just a big ol' gray horse munching on a pile of hay.  The next couple of times I drove by, I could see that he was a little ribby, but since he always had a pile of hay in front of him, I never thought too much about it. 

For the next month or so my life was relatively booberdoober free so I didn't have to take the long way by the barn.  When I finally saw the old gray horse again, all I could think was "holy shit he sure went downhill fast".  He looked like a walking skeleton...munching on a pile of hay.  I immediately wished I hadn't seen him. 

The following day was booberdoober free but I drove by the barn anyway, mostly to see if the old guy was still alive, silently praying I wouldn't see him laying there dead. To be honest, I'd really rather have the Disney version of life where everyone lives happily ever after and the little rabbit always makes it to the hole in the nick of time leaving the bobcat scratching his head and finding his chow somewhere down the road out of my sight.   I prefer to avoid the harsh realities of life whenever possible.  Until I felt myself sigh when I saw he was still standing there I didn't know I'd been holding my breath.  On the rest of the drive to work I start wondering if the guy who owns the barn would give the old guy to me.  I know the barn owners last  name but what would he think about some strange woman calling and asking he'd give away his horse? 

As soon as I got to work I called my friend, D, who's pretty fearless, knows everybody, and more importantly, is a fellow horse lover.  (She has ten by the way...not that she's a hoarder or anything...really.)  I asked if she'd seen that old gray horse by the barn.  D said she hadn't really noticed him so I told her how he'd gone downhill pretty fast and asked if she thought the owner would give him to us.  Notice how I said "us"...I pretty much guilted her into helping by telling her how pathetic the old guy was and in the end, I think she agreed to call the owner just to get me off the phone, probably thinking the owner'd tell her to go pound sand.  Bless her heart.

(FYI, I wanted to call the Barn Owner, BO, but it made me think of stinky body odor, then I thought about calling him BM, for Barn Man,but it obviously made me think of bowel movements, so I simply left him an unnamed "he" most of the time....just thought I should clear that up.)

D called me back after she talked to the barn owner who said he'd be happy to give us the horse but he'd have to clear it with his dad.  The next day when he called her back he asked D if we were sure we wanted the old buy?  He said the old guy was twenty-nine, couldn't be ridden, and was pretty much on his last legs.  Since the younger horses were pushing him around, the old guy ended up in the corral by himself so he could eat as much as he wanted without being run off from the feed.  He wondered why would we want him?

"We're just a couple of crazy women who like old horses" D told him.  He didn't get it.  Most people wouldn't.

Yikes!  Now I had to call OF (Old Friend of undesirable snackage fame) and ask her if I could put an old horse in her barn.  OF said sure...we could put him in what she jokingly calls the "medical unit"...which is basically a stall with mats and a gate.  Bless her heart.

I went to the barn that afternoon to pick up the old gray horse.  D was supposed to meet me and she wasn't there yet, but the barn owner was there.  I recognized him from riding with him years before, shook his hand and introduced myself.  He's a really nice guy who figured either nature was gonna run its course or he was going to end up having to shoot the old gray horse.  He kinda laughed when he asked again if I was really sure we wanted to take him.  I laughed and told him I was sure.  He still didn't get it.  Most people wouldn't.

When I led the old guy to the trailer he seemed a little stiff and wobbly on his feet.  Holy shit, I thought, what if he can't step up into the trailer???  He sniffed the trailer floor...another holy shit moment...it never occurred to me that the old guy might not load well.  This was obviously not a well thought out plan...I mean, how much pressure do you put on an emaciated horse to get them to load?  At what point is he better off with a bullet?  Thank God I didn't have to find out.  After a little sniffing, he managed to haul himself up and in.  After I got him loaded, D showed up and we both thanked the barn owner for giving us the old guy.  On to OF's place...with another mouth to feed.

Please God, don't let him die in the trailer.  That's what I'm thinking all the way to OF's place.  I didn't want to leave the old guy loose in the trailer because I was afraid he might need something on each side to lean on.  I tried to go really really slow around the curves in the road.  D followed me and was probably shocked at how slow I was going.  How come I never noticed this many curves in the road before?  Jeeez...can't they build straight roads?  Why do they have to have all these curves?  I finally hit a straight stretch and got to speed up a little.  I just wanted to get there before he died in the trailer.  I started to relax a little in a short straight section of road.  It was a brief respite.  I shouldn't have sped up...up ahead was a four way intersection with a traffic light and the intersection had a giant hump in it.  I knew this hump was there because many a time I've felt like my car was going to go airborne trying to make it through the intersection before the light turned red.  Yellow light...go very fast (Remember Starman?) This was a fairly new intersection, and you'd think they could have done a better job leveling it before the final paving, but nooooo, they left that giant hump in it.  I know it sounds like I'm exaggerating here, but really, I'm not.  The light at the intersection turns yellow.  Please God, the prayers continue...don't let him die in my trailer.

I was in a quandary...do I stop or do I go?  There's nobody to tell me what I should do.  D's the one who I'd usually ask about all things driving related but she was in the truck behind me.  I didn't know if I should slam on the brakes and throw the old guy against the trailer wall or speed up and make a mad dash through the intersection?  I didn't know what to do.  Which would cause him more problems?  I had no idea.  If I went flying over the hump in the road will the trailer go airborne?  Will the horse go airborne inside the trailer?  Would all four feet go in the air and, more importantly, would he land on all four when he touched down?  I'd never thought about this.  I'm guessing it'd be the horsey version of an E Ticket ride.   "Please God", I prayed, "just don't let him die in my trailer"...as I gunned it through the intersection.  Why?  Because I just wanted to get there before he could die in my trailer.  I know...it's a stoopid reason.  But it worked.  He didn't die in the trailer...although he was a little wide eyed and sweaty when we got to OF's place. So was I...

God love her, D laughed about the intersection debacle when we got to OF's house.  "I didn't know if you were gonna go for it or stop"..."and then you went".  Looking back, it was pretty funny.

After a couple of days, OF said "I think we should call him Earl"..."it fits him".  And so the old gray horse got new name.  At first he didn't seem interested in soaked pellet mush, until we started adding a sweeter senior mix to it.  Seems old Earl has a taste for the sweet stuff...don't we all.  The first time I heard him nicker for his food was a couple of weeks later.  It made me smile inside.

I'm so friggin' grateful to have friends like OF and D who, without any hesitation, said yes to some scatterbrained idea to try to help an old horse out.  They get it.   Most people wouldn't. 

Most people would think it was the stoopidist thing.


P.S.  Before & after's of Old Earl.  He's now 29 and lives entirely on a diet of soft senior pelleted feed. 

I'm A Moron

Like many people my age (oldsters), I'm forced to wear reading glasses.  Anymore, I can't read anything without them.  I used to try.. okay, sometimes I still do... reading a number out of the phone book sans visual accouterments.  Mostly I just get annoyed that I've wasted time trying because I end up needing the glasses after all.  I don't know why I still try this but I do...and yes, I do know the definition of insanity.  Sometimes it seems like if I hold the book at a certain angle in direct light, I can still make out the numbers I need.  So there I'll be holding the book in front of me, angled away from me, with my head tilted up, looking down my nose at the book...trying to decipher the blurry print.   It's kinda pathetic that I still feel the need to try, isn't it?

I used to have reading glasses everywhere.  Being a sucker for a good deal, or at least what seems like a good deal at the time, I've purchased several sets from TV shopping networks.  How I manage to lose them is a mystery...they're like socks...they just disappear.  Am I unknowingly putting them in places so I don't lose them?  Am I going to move a carton of ice cream in the freezer and find a pair of glasses that I don't remember putting there?  Who would put glasses in the freezer anyway?  Old people, that's who.  Why?  So they wouldn't get stolen of course.  Who would want to steal reading glasses anyway?  Oldster burglars?  Please God, don't let me find reading glasses in the freezer.

So far I've managed to avoid the dreaded "old lady chain" that holds the glasses around my neck, but I know it's coming.  The problem with my aged eyes is that I have to use the readers to see print, but I can't walk with them on.  Oh sure, I can leave them on the bridge of my nose and walk around with my head down looking over the top of the glasses but they always feel like they're going to slip off, and besides, it looks weird.  If I put them on top of my head they get stretched out.  I need a chainless solution.

Yesterday I had to take a packet of papers to a woman in another office.  I'll call her "J".  I know when I get there I may have to read something so I throw a pair of glasses in my jacket pocket. Always be prepared...that's my motto...I have many mottos...I get them from The Husband who has a motto for every occasion...his favorite is "A working woman's a happy woman"...technically I'm not sure this qualifies as a motto.  Anyway, back to my journey of delivering papers...J is on the other side of the building so I have to wind my way through aisles of cubicles, a maze of hallways, and locked doors that need a magnetic badge pressed against them to open. I like to call them magic keys...I know they're not really magic.

I'm thankful I had the foresight to put the glasses in my pocket since I had to try to actually see what J was showing me on the wad of papers I shoved in front of her.  After we talked about work, we started chatting about non work stuff...killin' time on the government dime.  While we're talking my glasses fell out of my pocket.

Me:  "Oh no, my high dollar reading glasses just fell under your chair".

J:  "Well I don't want to move 'cause I'm afraid I'll roll over them"...I think she thought I was serious about them being "high dollar"...which they aren't.

So I bend down and start looking around but can't see them.

J:  "Maybe they went under the drawers".

I look but the drawers sit flat on the ground.  I see a metal clip under her chair and start to think maybe that's what I heard fall.

J:  "Let me get out of the way so I don't roll over them" as she eases out of her chair with a move that would make any contortionist proud...and the chair doesn't move...I'm impressed.

We're both hunched over and can now see under her chair, and plainly, there's no glasses there.  I can't figure out how they could have bounced so far away when J turns to me and says:

"What's on your face?" as she busts up laughing.

Okay, so I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer...but really???? I'm wearing the glasses that I've been searching the floor for.  Yep, right there perched on the end of my nose.  I look at J who I've only recently met and who now, rightly so, thinks I'm a moron and start laughing.   There's no reasonable explanation for what just happened other than the fact that I'm now "officially" an old fart. I expect bright orange pin curls are just around the corner.

All the way back to my office I keep laughing.  Then I start to notice that strangers are looking at me as I walk along the halls laughing.  I'm sure I looked like a crazy person hearing voices in her head and laughing at what they were telling me.  People avoided me and got out of my way.  Nobody wanted to make eye contact with me and I could see some of them elbowing their partners and not so subtly nodding their head toward me.  "Watch out for the crazy lady" was written all over their faces...which started me thinking...

Next time the grocery store's crowded I should try looking at the food in my basket and laughing out loud, all by myself, as I push the cart toward the checkout stand and see if people move to another line to get away from the "crazy lady".  I wonder if it would work?  Never in a million years would I actually do this, but I really want to.  I know...it's the stoopidist thing.

Anal Spice

I went to dinner with some of the Old Chix last week. Only four of us could make it this time. Me, Em, Cee & Lo. All of us are well on our way to sixty...and, unfortunately, not in dog years either. We went to a different casino this time that had a brewery. I don’t like beer but fortunately for me they served other adult beverages so I had my fave....pineapple grapefruit juice with vodka. It doesn’t have a name...trust me on this. Every time I order it the cocktail waitress asks me what it’s called and I just repeat the ingredients “pineapple grapefruit with vodka”...it’s not a Greyhound...that’s just grapefruit and vodka. I found this out the hard way...by believing the cocktail waitress knew what she was talking about when she said “Oh, that’s a Greyhound”in her chipper little size 0 voice with clothes to match. Finally, I thought, my drink of choice has a name and I was just too stoopid to know it. I nearly gagged when they brought me a chimney glass filled with plain grapefruit juice and vodka. Now when the cute little waitresses try to tell me a name, I just make sure they know I only want half grapefruit and half pineapple with a healthy dose of vodka for good measure. They can call it whatever their little heart desires.

Remember the Spice Girls?  Well, I thought about calling the Old Chix the Old Spiceters.  Why you ask?  For the sole purpose of renaming Lo..."Anal Spice".  Kinda sounds like a candle fragrance in a gay porno shop, doesn't it?  The new name is a perfect fit for her....even she would have to admit it...then she would have to spend hours analyzing why she feels the need to analyze everything. Fortunately Lo, aka/Anal Spice, and hereafter referred to as AS, has a wonderful sense of humor and can laugh at herself...unfortunately she is also compelled from her innermost being to analyze everything in the fucking world.  AS has moved on from the familiar phrases like "your plate is too full" to "she keeps long accounts" or "you're keeping short accounts".   Huh????  What happened to simplicity?..."she has too much to do" or "she holds a grudge"?  AS is good natured enough to laugh with us when we mock her about this...which we do...at lease Em & I do...but we're kinda the assholes of the group.

I can totally see AS reading self help books.  It seems like every time someone reads the latest self help book, new catch phrases roll off their tongues to make them sound like they've got "it" all figured out.  But every one's version of just what "it" is, is different, isn't it?  Talk about a boon for the self help writers!  They get to define "It" for their latest book of invaluable information which will change your life forever...yes forever!  And you'll be able to feel oh so much better about yourself once you realize that the new "it" is the one you've been searching for all your life.  The previous self help book you read had "it" all wrong.  Alas, you must read the newest book to find that the forever life changing "it" from the old book wasn't "it" at all, and everything you thought you learned about the old "it" was now pure hogwash.  But just read the newest book and your life will change forever....It's a vicious cycle, isn't it??

Fortunately for me, I read mostly for entertainment.  No self help books here.  Oh sure, occasionally I read something because I need technical information about something I'm trying to do...usually horse related...or gardening related...or cooking related....but generally I read strictly to be entertained while I'm lounging on the couch eating fattening snackage.  It gives me a reason to sit on my ass and basically do nothing but live in a fantasy world.  Sometimes I feel guilty about this, sitting around doing nothing when there's always chores that need doing, but not often enough to keep me from doing it...sitting around reading I mean...not the chores.

Never, not once have I felt the need to analyze what I've read.  One time the wife of a work friend wanted to share books, so okay I thought, we're just going to trade books.  I knew she was kinda cuckoo before I agreed, but I didn't realize she was going to want to "talk" about the books after we read them.  Boy, was I surprised.  I was trapped by a crazy woman telling me how a certain book made her feel "all dark" inside. (It was a fucking murder mystery.) I started hearing the Twilight Zone theme running through my head.  I did a lot of smiling and nodding.  We never traded books again.

I would never last in a book club where everyone read the book and then had a little get together to "discuss" the book.  Because frankly, I don't care.  It doesn't matter to me what anyone else thinks about the book.  It's enough that I was entertained for a few hours.

I've never felt the need to peruse the shelves of self help books at Barnes & Noble.  If I wasn't stoopid, I might worry about why bad things happen to good people.  I don't spend much time wondering about the "why" it happened.  It just happened.  It's the stoopidist thing...

Saturday At Costco

Saturday is not the day to go shopping at Costco if you don't like crowds...unless you can get in and out in a hurry when they first open.  OF(Old Friend of undesirable snackage fame) and I chose poorly.  We braved the Costco crowd to get stuff we could have lived without.  My necessities included dried mangoes, almonds, Asian pears, cat food, cat litter, and bread.  OF's list was half & half, t shirt, skort, beer, cat litter, strawberries, and some kind of healthy looking pre-made salad...she looked for her favorite humus dip but alas...they were out of it...for the second time in a row.   All of these things we could have waited to get and my frustration level wouldn't have reached a near all time high.  Every time I choose poorly like this I swear I'll never do it again...but I do...over and over and over...obviously I'm insane.

I can't get over the fact that so many of the shoppers are completely oblivious to the people around them.  Most of them don't even have the decency to apologize or even look sheepish when their loitering at the snackage stations forces everyone else to wait on them.  Have people always been this rude, obnoxious, and self centered or do I just notice it now because I'm old and impatient?  Am I'm just being self centered?  Being forced to wait for all the snackage seekers blocking the isles to move on to the next free snack is really not going to throw my life into complete chaos...even though at the time it feels like it.  Maybe its expecting too much to feel that people should be considerate of others.

Most of the time I don't sample the snackage items offered not because I don't want to try them, but because I'm afraid I'll get food stuck between my teeth.  Then I'll be walking along, fat, dumb, and happy, smiling at people only to find out when I finally look in a mirror that I've got wads of bread, chips, or whatever the sample  happened to be, packed so full between my front teeth that it looks like I was trying to caulk the spaces along my gum line with snackage bits...it's truly disgusting.  I know other people notice because food stuck between someones teeth is one of the first things I notice about people when they smile.  That and spitlette crusties in the corners of their mouth...I also notice when they accidentally blow spit bubbles and have spit strings between their upper and lower lips.  It makes me want to wipe my mouth continuously.

I watched one woman get trapped in a main isle in front of a snackage sampler who had the audacity to leave her cart halfway in the isle while she stood in line at the snackage station...she was there for a really long time...I think she took more than one sample...isn't there a rule against that?  The flow of traffic kept this poor woman from going around the loitering lady's cart.  I only noticed her because I was trapped behind the same woman's cart. I was immediately impressed with how patient she appeared...and I wondered if she, like me, was inwardly raging and wanting to do serious bodily harm to the woman blocking our path.

One woman even managed to block an isle without a cart...she just stood there talking to another shopper forcing everyone to make detours through other isles.  I actually waited in front of her for nearly a full minute hoping she'd step aside but noooooooo....she never moved her fat ass a single inch.  The guy she was talking to didn't say anything either...he could have pointed out that nobody could get around her.  His lack of action  made him a target of my anger as well...fortunately for them it's been drilled into me since birth that one must always be polite.  Someday I'm hoping I can overcome the dreaded "Good Manner Syndrome" for just one day and see what it feels like to tell people exactly what I'm thinking.  I'm sure I'd end up regretting it when the "Guilt Syndrome" kicked in...then I'd feel like shit for hurting people's feelings...but just once it would be nice to know how it feels to say whatever you think.

On the way out of the store, when we were in line to have the handy receipt checkers look at our carts to make sure we hadn't stolen anything, I accidentally bumped the woman in front of me with my cart.  This bundle of joy was probably in her late twenties, early thirties, about five foot six, wearing a baggy yellow t-shirt hanging down to her knees, and jeans...I'm guessing she weighed in at about 250 lbs.   She was a chunky monkey to be sure.  The baggy yellow t-shirt only enhanced her humongous waist length, and unfortunately, bra-less boobage (that would've done any pasture animal proud by the way) laying atop her protruding girthage.  When she turned to glare at me I couldn't help noticing the sloped forehead and low, heavy brow bone clearly indicative of her Neanderthal lineage.  I couldn't tell if her knuckles would drag the ground since she had her hands on the shopping cart handle...but I bet they did...in fact, I bet they were covered with callouses.  The stink eye she gave me, in spite of my profuse apology, kinda scared me.  Good thing I suffer from "Good Manner Syndrome"...she might have whupped me if I'd said something like "quit holding up the show fatso".

Maybe the "Good Manner Syndrome" that my parents drilled into me isn't such a bad thing after all.  Could be I've survived all these years simply because I've been taught to be polite instead of saying what I think and pissing people off...wouldn't that be the stoopidist thing...

P.S.  OF calls shopping carts "buggies".  I've never heard anyone  call a shopping cart a buggy, have you?  Just another "stoopid thing"...

Sleep Deprivation

I don’t sleep as well as I used to when I was younger. I don’t know if it’s just because I’m old or if there’s some other reason. It’s annoying though. Little noises wake me up when they shouldn’t. But not regularly enough that I can say I’m a “light sleeper”. One night I fell asleep on the couch and The Husband came in through the noisy, squeaky back door, wandered around for a while before finally going to bed...and I slept through it all. If he’d been a serial killer, I’d be dead without even having put up a fight. That actually made me feel a little creepy...the fact that someone could be walking around me while I slept and I was completely oblivious to it. I can only pray that he didn’t take photos of me drooling while I slept and is waiting to put them on some kind of Xmas or Birthday card as a “surprise”....please God, say it ain’t so.

Here’s a weird thing that wakes me up. When the electricity goes off in the middle of the night, the sudden silence wakes me up. What’s up with that? How does no noise wake a person up? I can see enormous thunder claps waking a person up, but insta-quiet? Does this happen to everyone or is it just me?

Sleeping with another person adds countless trials and tribulations to getting a good night’s sleep. Snoring interferes with my sleep...not my snoring...The Husband’s...duh...even his breathing can make me lose sleep.

It’s not so bad if I fall asleep first, but if The Husband manages to conk out before me I’m doomed. Unfortunately for me, The Husband can lay his head on a pillow and be out in twenty seconds. I lay there for a while, toss & turn a little, then finally drift off. Not him....he lays down and sleeps like a baby...and it annoys me to no end that he can go to sleep so easily. I know it’s really immature of me to get so irritated by the fact that he falls asleep before me, but when I’m laying there, trying to fall asleep, I just want to reach over and hit him... because even the sound of his breathing annoys me. Have you ever tried to synchronize your breathing with the other person you’re sleeping with? Well, let me tell you, it doesn’t work. You think it’s all going well, you think you have the rhythm of the breaths down and then suddenly they move or shift a little and their whole rhythm changes rendering your feeble attempt at breathing synchronization useless.  I know I’m fighting a losing battle but I still keep trying to make the whole synchronization thing work. (And,yes, I’m aware of the definition of “insanity”.)

Snoring is another obstacle to overcome when you have to sleep with someone. Sometimes The Husband snores like people in cartoons snore. Like Brutus in the old Popeye cartoons... I swear I’d see his lips flapping every time he exhales if I suddenly turned on the lights. I’m ashamed to admit it but when I’m really tired and he wakes me up because his snoring is so loud I elbow him viciously in the ribs. Okay, viciously is probably too strong a word. I don't intentionally break ribs or anything like that..sometimes he does let out a little grunt of pain though. What’s even worse, and I know this is wrong on so many levels, is I get an intense feeling of satisfaction just knowing I’ve cause him some discomfort. The sad part is, it only stops the snoring for a few seconds then we’re right back where we started.

Every time I see one of those commercials on TV advertising a miracle product that cures snoring I beg The Husband to buy it. “I don’t snore that much” he always says, or “I only snore when I’m really tired”. Well I’m really tired too, but I don’t fucking snore...in fact, I can’t even get to sleep because someone else’s snoring is a major contributing factor to my sleep deprivation. Why do people who snore never believe they do?

Gas is another thing that can send me into orbit...figuratively speaking, of course. And we’re talking The Husband’s gas...not mine. If you go to sleep all fat, dumb, and happy, and the stench of another persons flatulence is so putrid that it wakes you out of a sound sleep...your only recourse is to leave the room and go sleep on the couch. I know whereof I speak...Oh, sure, you could try the vicious elbow trick, but when they grunt in pain, they’ll only squeeze out more putrid farts. There’s been more than one occasion when The Husband has gone to bed before me and when I finally decide to go to bed, I open the bedroom door only to become engulfed in a cloud of fart stink so foul I’m sure there’s some kind of dead animal in our room. He thinks this is funny when I tell him about it the next morning...really. I, of course, don’t see the humor in it like he does...but then I’m the one suffering from sleep deprivation...not him.

I have to admit, under normal circumstances I can’t help but laugh when someone farts. Just last week at work, The Princess and I were talking to one of the men we work with, I’ll call him “D”, when all of a sudden he let a little popper slip out. D walked away from us really fast...maybe there were lots more where that one came from, I don’t know, but he definitely am-scrayed into his office pronto. D’s the sort of guy who’s usually really proper and would never dream of farting in front of us deliberately so I’m sure he was mortified. The Princess and I looked at each other and tried not to laugh because we didn’t want to embarrass him, but you know how it is when you try not to laugh and you start making all kinds of weird snorting noises through your nose??? We intentionally turned our backs to each other hoping that would stifle the laughter, but then one of those nose noises would happen and we’d start laughing again.

Things are always funnier when you’re trying not to laugh at them, aren’t’ they? Why is that?

It’s the stoopidist thing...