Penguins from Mary Poppins

Penguins from Mary Poppins
Image by Disney

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Nerves? What Nerves?

My nerves are shot. Truly gone. First of all, this find-a-decent-job-and-support-the-family thing isn't going so well. Frankly, it sucketh. I've only sent out about 120 copies of my resume and filled out nearly that in general applications. I've had one interview. I'm telling ya, this place has too many highly educated people. But, relocating is out of the question right now. Why? No money! Duh.

Secondly, my daughter, Goddess love her, wants to rescue and save all the little creatures of the world (except the creepy ones). To this end, she "rescued" an abandoned baby bunny the other day. Poor little thing. It just loved her, too. But, we didn't do something right or something because it died on us last night. Right in her hands. We both cried for hours. Even King Rat was emotional. Poor little guy.

Also, I got an email the other day from a classmate I haven't spoken to in almost a year. She and I had three classes together my third semester here and barely ran into each other since. However, I must have made an impression on her, because she has invited me to appear on stage doing my little comedy routine in not one, but two different venues. One is an open-mic night thing sponsored by one of the bars around here and the other is called No Shame Theater or some such. I'm still debating on whether to do it or not. As she explained it to me, I need to be prepared to give as short a routine as 5 minutes or as long as half an hour. Uh huh. Right! I consider myself funny, but I also tend to piss people off and swear...a lot. I know sailors who have cleaner vocabularies. The real problem? A long time ago, Wendy was over with some friends to my place. We were all inebriated...well, plowed to the ground...and I did this amazing routine standing my my entertainment center. We all ached the next day from laughing, but for some reason, none of us could remember much of the monologue. The bits we have recalled do not add up to half an hour, and most of it is so disjointed, I'm not sure I could have a functional 5 minute set, much less one that would get laughs. I don't know. I"m not sure if I'm brave enough to do this shit. Being funny with my friends is one thing, being funny in front of a crowded bar full of strangers? Ish. Tho, I still berate myself for even considering not going because how will I ever know if I don't try? Grr. Snarl, hiss, and growl. What a mess. My friend keeps telling me that I've shown more nerve than most people she knows already just by what I've done so far with my life, and that all this takes is nerves. Yeah. Easy for her to say.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Doom on Me

For writing two posts in one day, to begin with. The rest of this...well, you'll see.

A lot of my friends like to compliment me on my inner strength. I appreciate it. I can see why they believe that. Sometimes, I even believe it. However, even Superman has weak spots. In an attempt at cyber honesty (ha ha), I'm going to share some of my unreasonable fears.

1) Flying. Wendy and others are privy to this information already, but I am deathly afraid of flying. If I had been meant to fly, I'd have wings. Guess what? So far as I know, none have sprouted recently, so on the ground I stay.

2) Sharks. Bear in mind I have never seen the ocean. The closest I've ever been to a shark were ones at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha, NE in this aquarium thing. And they were awesome to behold. But there was also this sign that read, "Be quiet, please. The sharks can hear you." Uh huh. I don't think even the dead were as quiet as I was walking through that tunnel watching the sharks appear out of the depths right next to me with only glass between me and them. Yes, I managed not to shriek, but it was a close thing. As for the ocean, I would love to visit. Swim with dolphins? Anytime. Manatees? Sure. Even sting rays. Yes, even after poor Steve Irwin's tragedy. I've even eaten shark once. It was quite tasty. Very tender. It was years ago. I can even watch Discovery channel shit on sharks and be fascinated. Nature and all it's creatures are sights to be held in awe. Besides, I love trivia stuff I learn. All seemingly normal right? Wrong. See, I was "forced" to watch Jaws shortly after it first came out in the 70's. I think I was 5 or 6. I wouldn't take a bath for weeks afterward. I still don't like adding that blue colored shit to my baths. And I hate swimming in rivers and lakes. Yes, because I'm afraid of sharks. Swimming pools are okay. Natural bodies of water, no. And all these victims of shark attacks? I feel for them and their families, I do. But I also agree with Carlos Mencia: if you're swimming in the ocean and get eaten by a shark, you have no right to be surprised, after all you are swimming in their kitchen. Look at the ocean? Love to. Swim in it? Probably never. I don't want to end up on the menu.

3) Chickens. I hate chickens. The only good chicken is one that is dead, plucked, and cooked or in my deep freeze waiting to be cooked. They're ugly, they're noisy, and they're vicious. And, they don't die quickly enough. Any animal that can still run around the yard for five minutes after losing its head is not right. It's borderline demonic and it frightens me. Chickens frighten me. I would rather pick up a snake, and I'm not fond of reptiles. Lizards are okay though. Turtles. No chickens. I like to eat chicken. KFC is a favorite of mine, especially since I couldn't fry a chicken to save my life, but live chickens? Nope. They're evil and should be treated as such.

4) Grasshoppers. Again, they're ugly. They can jump really long distances and they can fly. They also spit. They have these little claw like things on their feet. They live all around my house which makes mowing the lawn very entertaining for my family members when it's my turn to mow. We are also infested with praying mantises (manti?) but they don't bother me much. I'm sure the two critters are related somehow, but the mantis has an interesting habit of eating her mate. Therefore, at least the female mantis has redeeming qualities. Grasshoppers, so far as I can discern have none. They exist merely to terrify me. I have no idea why they scare me so much, but they do. At least chicken has nutritional value. And, no, I do not want to hear how full of protein grasshoppers are. Chicken is protein, too.

5) The dark. Yes, I am afraid of the dark. I have horrid dreams if I sleep completely in the dark. I sleep with my tv on and the light above the sink in the bathroom on. This is especially helpful since the bath is right across from my bedroom. It drives my husband crazy. He needs dark and quiet. Aside from the fan running, of course. Not me. Going through a dark room gives me heart palpitations. Being outside at night is okay so long as the moon is out or I have a dozen flashlights. Even in my own yard, when I go out at night for anything, I turn on the porch light and take a flashlight.

6) Basements. Basements are creepy. I've been in a few that were nicely finished and did not creep me out. Mostly though, a basement is a basement. I don't like them. Our only shower is in our basement. So are the washer and dryer hook-ups. Ish. I don't like going into the basement in general. But our tap water is so awful, I refuse to take tub baths here. And, sometimes I need clean clothes. Yeah. I can handle doing the laundry during the day. Mainly cause I'll talk to a friend on the phone the whole time. At night, I hate going down there. It's well lit. Just extremely creepy. So, I either shower during the day as quickly as possible and with someone home or I take someone into the shower with me. Right now, it's either my husband or my daughter. She's almost 10, yes, but this shower is next to impossible to operate without either freezing your tata's off or boiling yourself. Plus, she simply hasn't gotten the knack of washing all the soap out of her hair yet. So, it's a win win situation. She gets help washing her hair, we have lots of girl talk (mostly about when she'll get boobs), and I have company in the creepy basement shower. And before anyone goes having a fit: we're both girls, I'm not molesting her, she's not molesting me, and I believe nudity between members of the same sex in the family is no big deal. It's not like she's showering with King Rat or her teenage brothers. So, no morality commentary.

Okay. That's about it. Those are my major weaknesses. Well, besides chocolate and Sean Connery.

I Don't Remember This Being Part of the Wedding Vows

Man, oh, man. Has King Rat done it this time. I love him, I do. But he's out on a medical leave with a fuckered up knee...and has been since August 5th. Keep this factoid in the back of your head for the rest of this post. Trust me, it's great perspective.

I can hear his knee crunch and grind when he's just moving his leg around next to me on the couch. This tells me, along with the profuse swelling whenever he walks or stands for longer than fifteen minutes, that something is definitely not right. I wish I could fix it, but that's what the orthopedic's dude is for later this month.

At any rate, knowing his knee is not in great shape, what does my wonderful husband decide to do this past Saturday? Jump off of our porch roof and onto the trampoline. He says "It looked like fun." Uh huh. He also says, "Well, the boy lived through it." Again...uh huh. "The boy" happens to be our 15 year old son. Who, at least got a small bounce out of the trampoline when he did it. King Rat, did not bounce. Not even a smidgen. Nope. He hit it, collapsed, and began rolling back and forth on the mat groaning, "That was stupid...that was stupid." I agree.

On top of it, he refused to go to the doctor until Monday. Yup. I had to take him to the ER, where he planned on lying and telling them he fell off the roof. I did not let him lie. The doc there was quite impressed with him, actually. Apparently, broken ribs do not generally show up well on X-rays. My husband's did...nice clean break. The rib he broke also lies over the area of his spleen, so they had to do a CT scan to make sure he hadn't lacerated, biffed, or otherwise injured it. He hadn't, thank goodness. But, the ER called shortly after we left to tell us they did notice a small spot on his liver. Whafuck? They also said to just have his regular doctor follow up on it, along with the rib injury, within the next few days. Fine. We go tomorrow to get this followed up on.

Am I worried? Some. But I'm not panicking. What I am trying to do, however, is figure out how much sympathy he really garners from this. I mean, he's in an awful lot of pain. He spends most of his time in bed because sitting up makes his ribs hurt terribly. And there's only so much one can do while lying in bed with a bad knee and a broken rib. But, aside from his knee, the pain he's in is his own fault. I tried to convince him that jumping off the roof was not a good idea. Of course, silly me, I was thinking more along the lines of him completely trashing his knee, not of him breaking a rib and injuring internal organs. All I know is, I don't remember anything in the marriage vows (either time) requiring me to provide sympathy for stupidity.