In which two people I haven’t seen in at least five years are going to drop by.

Six years ago, my grandfather was dying in the hospital. My mom called and said I needed to go out to Walla Walla and see him one last time. She offered to fly my boyfriend out, too.

So Bread and I rushed to the airport and flew to the west coast, where he was absolutely inundated with my family. They loved him. He loved them. He fit right in.

We got to see grandpa. The next night he died. The night before we left to come back to Iowa, Bread proposed.

That was the last time I saw my uncle Gale.

The following May, we got married and my aunt Kathy came to the wedding and stayed here at the house. That was the last time I saw my aunt Kathy.

This is a brief picture of my aunt Kathy:

Way back when my folks were still married, we were all at the Hall’s for some holiday. Kathy, who works with retarded and autistic people, told a joke with the word ‘retard’ in it. My dad said, “‘Developmentally disabled,’ Kathy, you can’t say ‘retarded’ any more; it’s not PC.”

She cackled and said, “Please. They are retards! They use the word ‘retard’ themselves! They know they’re retarded.”

Kathy’s way cool.

And today they’ll be dropping by! I have no idea what they’re even doing all the way out here, but it’ll be totally exciting to see some relatives! Bread’s out to lunch with his mom, but I imagine they’ll be here soonish. I’d better go tidy up. The house is a stone cold mess, but at least it can be an organized mess.

In which I can’t believe it’s still for sale.

You might be interested in knowing that

COCKONTAP.COM

is still available. Have at it!

*rofl*

In which I observe something.

Last night, I watched The Producers. It was a laff-riot. Two characters signed something during the course of the action, and so I discovered that both Will Ferrell and Matthew Broderic are left-handed.

That is all.

In which I lament the lack of good content here on the ‘box.

All I ever do anymore is bitch. Gone are my scathingly funny posts about the quirks of life in rural BFE and my amusing observations about my favorite subject, me. Remember when I used to post about tanning (“If you’re gonna be fat, you might as well be tanned!”), and my amazing manicures? Those were the days! I bet you loved me then. I know I did.

Heh. Ahem.

Well, lately nearly my entire awareness is on the negative. I’m broke, I’m bummed, my dogs have fleas, I got pulled over last night because my car’s so dirty from driving on gravel that my license plate light is totally obscured, and my cat is a full-on kitchen murderer.

[Meaning he does murder IN the kitchen, not that he does murder ON the kitchen. I’m not certain that you could kill a kitchen. They’ve got lots of sharp, blunt, and nasty implements in them and might beat you at your own game.]

The cop didn’t believe me when I said the light probably wasn’t out, but was just dirty. He took my license back to write me a fix-it ticket, and actually checked. Yes, the light’s there, it’s just that the cover is a quarter inch thick with gravel dust so the light doesn’t shine out. I got pulled over a year ago for the same reason, I explained. He bid me have a good night. Nice boy… for a cop. I mean, I guess I don’t generally mind them as individuals, but as a group they get sketchy and do shit like eat donuts and kill people.

Now, where the hell was I? Oh, yeah: I just balanced my fucking checkbook:

Hubby has the debit card and used it once too often; I forgot to cancel the damned TMobile Hotspot account so they just charged me $39.99 I don’t have; the vet clinic is going to want another ~$200 when I go to pick Stella up this afternoon; and I just realized I forgot to make the truck payment this month. Paying the truck payment, combined with whatever pittance I give the vet, will leave me with… nothing. Even though friends and family gave me $300 in the past few days.

If there was any order in the universe I’d be flush.

Oh, AND our latest cell phone bill was astro-fucking-nomical. I called Cingular, and it turns out that not only did we go crazy bad way over on our minutes, but they’d been charging all three lines for services like “roadside assistance” and “*08 voice,” none of which we ordered. The CSR removed these services from the account, but wouldn’t refund me the amount already billed.

I told BoSe, and he got all up on the phone about it with the store where we bought our phones, and now apparently I, as the account holder, have to call customer service back and request to speak with a manager and demand they give us our money back. My phone just died, though, so I have to go get the charger…

Hey now. Lest all this whining should give you the idea I’m a big fat complainer, you should know that I’m actually a card-carrying glass-is-half-full person. Really. I am. But I’ve never been this broke in my life and it’s really beginning to freak me the fuck OUT. I checked on my UI benefits an hour ago and the automated system still reports zero benefits — which means they haven’t corrected the severance pay error yet — thus no check in the mail for moi this week! Argh!

The cell phone company rep nicely agreed to credit the charges back to the account, so now we only owe… $265.03. Christ. And yes, before you suggest it, I did increase our plan to the next level to avoid this kind of utter bullshit next month. Christ! How could we all have forgotten to check our minutes?!

*bangs head on desk*

Good thing I’ve an indominitable spirit… and that my superhero power is the blessed oblivion of napping. A power I may just go indulge in right now, because one has no problems when she’s asleep.

In which I don’t know who it is!

Some sweet soul used Paypal to send me a few bucks, but I don’t know who it is. I mean, the notification has a name, of course, but it’s a real name, and apparently I only know his online name! Ack! Thank you, PF!

Oh, and my mommy said she sent me an early Christmas check. I think I’m gonna cry a little. Then I’m gonna go down to the mailbox and see what Netflix has sent me to watch!

Update: I figured out who it is. Whew!

In which some things are just a plain ol’ Pain. In. The. ASS.

Yesterday I called Iowa Workforce Development’s convenient toll-free number to file my second weekly unemployment claim. When I was done pressing 1 for yes and 9 for no, I checked on the status of my benefits payment.

And the automated system politely informed me I that had no benefits pending for the week ending August 5th.

Well, fuck me running.

Today I went into the office and talked to the nice bird-eyed lady. She was hell bent on explaining to me, in great and gory detail, the delicate inner workings of unemployment benefits. After much falsely-eager nodding and even some vehement sentence-finishing (I actually know a lot about this stuff because I used to work in the industry, thank you very much), I finally got her to say that, yes, in fact, my claim is fucked up and that what I needed was a letter from my prior employer — on company letterhead! — to unfuck it.

I jumped in the jeep and buzzed over to the Jade building on fumes and found CZ, the payroll dude. I explained that I needed a letter containing certain details on company letterhead, yada yada yada, and he kindly complied. It only took, oh, about 40 minutes for him to provide me with my three-sentence letter… and then he kept me longer interviewing me on my freelance web authoring skillset. I finally busted ass back over to job service… but the lady was gone. Of course. So I sat there and surfed the Ottumwa job listings until she got back, and triumphantly presented her with my prize.

“Yes!” she enthused, looking over my letter. “This is exactly the thing! It even has your social security number on it!” (That had been my own brainchild; she hadn’t specified it earlier.)

“Will you be able to correct my claim now, so I can start receiving benefits?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” she said. “I can’t do it here. I’ll just give this to the other guy, and he’ll fax this to Des Moines! Probably not today, though. It’s nearly four, you know.”

“Okay, but then they’ll fix my claim?”

“Oh, yes, dear. It won’t be fast, though,” she beamed. “You know how these things are!”

I had foolishly been expecting my first check this week. After all, it’s well past the 15th. It wouldn’t be much, of course, but it would be something.

Now I’ll have to make due with the pittance in my checking account. After I buy milk and cat food, I’ll probably have enough left over for three gallons of gas and maybe even a few packages of ramen!

Whoo. Hoo. Can I get a hell yeah. *rolleyes*

I’m seriously considering applying for foodstamps. Just for a week or two. I’m broke enough that they might even give me emergency benefits, which means they hand over some tickets before you even walk out the door. That would be so cool! Because then? THEN I could go irresponsibly buy a whole cartful of TV dinners, soda pop, and sugary breakfast cereals! Hah!

I was briefly on foodstamps once before. I only needed them for a couple of weeks. Getting them cancelled, though, was another ball of wax entirely. I went in to the office, I called, I even sent them a letter, but they kept sending me booklets — with a note in each one explaining that accepting assistance you didn’t qualify for was fraud and punishable by law — until my benefits ran out. I think I started giving them to my little brother because they kept coming and I couldn’t get them to stop.

Anyway, I have an interview on Monday at perfectpitch.com for a position labelled “Office Assistant/Warehouse Manager.” I was supposed to go in Wednesday morning at 10:30, but when I called for directions to the office they rescheduled me. This either means that they really need help, or that they’re woefully disorganized and it would drive me apeshit to work there. I’m afraid they’ll love me and will offer me, like, seven bucks an hour and I’ll have to agonize over refusing the position. I can refuse and still keep my benefits because that’s considerably lower than my most recently hourly wage, but with the job market the way it is? I don’t know if refusing anything at this point — even if it pays total shit — would be wise.

Compare & Contrast

I loved college. Loved it. Would be a professional student fo’ evah if I could find me a sugar daddy to foot the bill. And now, in a fit of excess free time, I’m doing a little writing exercise for our mutual edification:

• Good: None of the dogs needed to have ear surgery this week!
• Bad: All of the dogs have fleas again. So does the couch. And both of the futons. Which means I’ll be a flea powdering, laundering, vaccuuming monster tomorrow. Go, me.
• Good: AmmZon fed me dinner twice this week, Monday and Thursday, bless her tall blonde heart. The first night, she grated zucchinni and sauteed it in garlic and butter, and served a bed of it topped with a medley of perfectly seasoned stir fried veggies! OMFG, people, seriously. And the salad she served with this amazing entree was a mouth-watering cucumber/tomato thing with vinegrette and feta. The meal was amazingly good and fresh and delicious and filling, and she’d actually grown half of the produce her very own self.
• Bad: As I drove to her place for dinner that first night, however, I passed a cat that had just been hit by a car and which obviously had a broken spine. There was a woman crouched next to it, crooning while it thrashed in an attempt to walk. As I inched past, I said, “Did someone hit it?” “Yeah,” she replied, “and they just drove off!” “Damn, that’s awful,” I said, and continued past. I hope she got help with it. That scene bugged me for hours.
• Good: A friend has a little accounting-oriented side project he wants to pay me $15 an hour to handle for him. It sounds like an only mildly tedious piece of cake.
• Bad: I’ve called him twice to hook up with him, but he hasn’t gotten the paperwork together yet.
• Good: I’ve been getting a lot of sleep lately.
• Bad: I’ve somehow gotten on to this weird split-shift schedule, where I do half my sleeping in the middle of the night, and the other half during the middle of the day.

If I were truly clever, I’d’ve written little mini essays, but I’m not so I didn’t.

In other news, my aunt and uncle will be stopping by on Sunday the 27th. My aunt’s been here before because she came to our wedding, but my uncle’s never been here. I haven’t seen her in five years; him in six. It’ll be cool to catch up on all the family news — this aunt is the geneologist so she’s always got interesting stories. Sadly, the farm looks pretty poorly because it hasn’t been mowed in months and this is Iowa so it’s about four feet deep in weeds and locusts. Maybe I’ll grow some farmer balls next week and figure the tractor out. I mean, I once did my own valve lash adjustment, so how hard can it be to drive a tractor? They only go six miles an hour!

Except I don’t know how to make the mower thing work. I’m guessing there’s some PTO-type situation involved there. Plus: gas. I can barely keep gas in my jeep. Well, we’ll see.

Oh, and It’s Coming. The curse. The courses. The stuck-pig bleed-a-thon. The week of evil. And my fucking boobs hurt like hell.

And finally, as a reward for reading this inane dribble, a dumb joke:

Q. What did the gay midget insurance adjuster {insert any occupation here} do?
A. He came out of the cupboard.

In which there’s breakfast.

Bread tried to wake me up at the asscrack of dawn today, because he’s a morning person. *shudder* I ignored him and slept ’til 11:30 like any self-respecting and hung-over night person.

When I got up, he and BoSe had gone to Kroeger’s and Bread was cooking. I had a cup of coffee, a cheese & tomato omelet, hash browns, veggie sausage, and rye toast handed to me the very moment I emerged from the bedroom! And if all that weren’t enough, there was cheese danish too.

Last night we went to Broad Ripple and had dinner at the Broad Ripple Brew Pub. I had mediocre falafel with chips, and a sublime raspberry mead. We had appetizers and salads. Bread had a gorgonzola-stuffed steak with fried jalapenos, mashed potatoes, and vegetables. SF had the shepherd’s pie, and BoSe had the pork medallions. It was delicious and fun, and I ate more at that one meal than I’ve eaten all day for the past couple of weeks. (I’ve been eating like a girl since Bread’s been gone, and probably lost five pounds or so by now.) My stomach hurt for about three hours after we left the restaurant. Soo. Damn. Full.

After eating, we walked around the neighborhood. It was packed and very New York-like. The Midwest Music Summit was going on, too, and there were bands everywhere — in every bar, club, and parking lot. (It’s so hard to build a band with that certain something. I didn’t hear anything that made me think, “Oh, there’s a comer!” or “that’s a unique sound!” It’s really hard to build That Sound, but it’s pretty easy to be in a band that sounds like everything else you’ve ever heard.)

Anyway, we ran into a couple of guys we knew from the previous roofing company and stepped into a bar for a few rounds, then rolled back to the apartment around midnight. I kept Bread up until past three talking his fucking head off about what I want and need to save our marriage.

Speaking of the apartment, I just did the dishes (because I’m a guest and someone else cooked and that’s what you do).

Three observations:

1. I love a small kitchen because you can clean the fuck out of one in minutes.
2. I love dishwashers!
3. I love garbage disposals!

At home I have a giant kitchen with no dishwasher and no garbage disposal. It’s got WAY MORE COUNTER SPACE, of course, but damn I miss those modern conveniences. I haven’t had a dishwasher or a garbage disposal in at least eight years. They’re so fucking HANDY!

SF is off having his meeting/s, and wants to roll back to Iowa tonight. I’ll probably get home around midnight-thirty. Such a whirlwind tour!

In which I suddenly take off.

Bread called yesterday, said, “SF’s driving out this weekend. You could catch a ride with him if you wanted.”

So I did. I parked the jeep in front of BoSe’s house at ten this morning, collected his wireless router, jumped in SF’s Mercedes, and we sped on over to Indy. Now I’ve just configured BoSe’s router so both guys can be on the Internet at the same time, and am blogging. Of course.

SF’s has a meeting tonight, and is driving back to Fairfield tomorrow. Bread’s mom is doing dog food duty tonight and tomorrow morning. Crazy, eh? I hope we eat something delicious somewhere tonight.

Bread & BoSe’s apartment is fully furnished (there are even framed pictures of children above the kitchen sink, and dishes, and linens) and smells exactly like a hotel.

In which I do a do-over.

I had written an introspective, pensive post about my life as I know it… and then I opened the Iowa job search db in another tab and Firefox crashed, taking my whole damn post with it. The gist was that I actually had some guests out here last night, quite spontaneously and quite by accident, and once again I’m suffused with gratitude for my friends.

It went like this: Buzz dropped by on his way home from work, and then Rockstar and Gorgeous came out to walk BoSe’s dogs, and then Raybo stopped in on her way back from ScrOttumwa, and I had people over visiting me in my own home for several hours running! It was amazing, really, to have actual guests over, especially since I’d cleaned yesterday and was ready to have actual guests over. The dishes were done, and I’d washed the blanket that covers the couch and even dusted. (The bathroom continues to be an ongoing observational experiment in entropy, but at least the two main rooms were presentable.) I was even able to offer the guys beers because there are five or six kinds in the beer fridge left over from who knows when!

Gorgeous has listened to me bitch about cleaning this place for years. She told me my living room was ‘immaculate,’ but it was dusk so she couldn’t see the monster (formed of dog hair and sticks and toads and dust and spiders and moth wings) that was snaking its furry arm out from under the rocking chair toward her ankle. Luckily, she stepped away before it wrapped its tentacle around her flesh and sucked her into that scary, dark break in the concrete that I artfully keep concealed behind an old dresser. Whew.

After awhile it was just Raybo and me. She didn’t have to get up in the morning, so she stayed late and drank the last of my vodka with me, and we tried a lemondrop-with-rum experiement that wasn’t brilliant but was at least drinkable. She is so fantastically wonderful and awesome; I feel like we’ve been friends for years but it’s only been months. Every so often I squeeze her and squeal, “I’m so glad you moved here!” and she grins and squeals “Me too!” right back at me. A good friend is a precious thing.

Bread called me yesterday to report the latest sales figures (which are encouraging!) and to inform me that he and BoSe have rented a furnished apartment in Indy because it’s cheaper than any motel they could find.

Now I’m all for frugality, of course, but I have to admit the news made me strangely jealous. He’s living in a neat little furnished apartment in a metropolitan area — which is exactly what I want out of life! — and I’m here, in the country, in this clapped-out old farmhouse with the bills in the mailbox every day and the flea-infested dogs and the toads and spiders and the 26-mile commute! What the fuck!

Yes, I’m petty and ugly, but I’m woman enough to work through it. And I did. The truth is that I’d rather be here than in Indy selling roofs. All my stuff is here, my band is here, and all my friends are here. I don’t really like Indy all that much, and calling it a ‘metropolitan area’ is actually a compliment. The jealous pettiness was just a momentary blip but it threw me and I had a why-am-I-always-the-one-doing-the-responsible-thing? pity party for an hour. Seriously, though, I bet that if Bread had his druthers he’d be here handling the domestic shit while I was off in some city pulling down the big bucks. He’d love to be a farm husband even more than I’d love to be living in a tidy little furnished apartment in a city somewhere. The weirdo.

Too bad I have yet to realize, codify, and market whatever skill it is that I undoubtably possess that would enable me to be the one living in the furnished apartment in the metropolitan area and pulling down the big bucks. Maybe this Xactimate training thing will pan out. Maybe I’ll figure out how to become the systems streamlining expert like Snow suggested. Who knows. My problem is that I know a little about a lot of things, but I never specialized enough. Even in all my years at the ISP I never bothered to take any certification tests. Hell, I never finished any of my college degrees either. (Yes, I spent five years in college and never got a piece of paper.) (Oh shush, it’s not like a degree in voice or literature or history would do me any good.)

I’m over-qualifed for any and all office positions short of upper management, but I’m under-qualified for management because I’m not degreed in business. I’m woefully under-qualified for most geek positions, but over-qualified for geek entry level jobs like tech support. On the other hand, I’ve worked myself out of more than one job by streamlining it until I had nothing to do, and in every office position I’ve ever had I’ve ended up taking on more and more responsibility until I was doing a manager’s job with an assistant’s title and salary.

Suffice it to say, I haven’t gotten any calls for interviews yet.

I have band practice tonight, and afterward I’m not going to karaoke no matter what Gorgeous says. Tomorrow Stella gets the tube out of her ear.

In other news, I spent $70 on Frontline for all the animals yesterday, and put it on them as soon as I got home. I have observed no relief from the fleas in the past 24 hours. My conclusion is that Frontline no longer kills fleas. I’m going to try to contact the company that manufactures it and let them know. Maybe they’ll send me a fucking refund.

In which I’m totally not dead or anything.

I haven’t read comments yet, but I see that there are quite a few and I imagine you’re all wondering where the hell I am. I’m here! Sitting at my desk in my office at home, listening to my three miserable dogs squinch themselves endlessly because the fleas this year are FROM HELL. I’ve dipped them, washed them, sprinkled flea powder all over every soft surface in the house, vaccuumed like a demon, washed all the rugs and blankets, and they’re still infested. It fucking sucks and I feel like the worst dog mom ever.

Thursday I went to karaoke at Gorgeous’s insistence. I hate karaoke. I’m a professional singer, and listening to drunk amateurs ‘sing’ hurts my ears. I ended up staying until the end, though, because I got a little drunk and wasn’t willing to drive home in that condition. Gorgeous conferred with the karaoke guy and made me sing the last song of the night. The six people who were left danced while I did so. I can no longer say I’ve never sung karaoke, and to tell you the truth it rather irritates me. I liked being a karaoke snob, damn it.

Friday morning at eight I took Stella to the vet again. She’d developed a second hemotoma in her other ear, and had to have a second surgery. I went grocery shopping and ran a few errands and returned home, where I napped. I picked Stella up just before five and took her home. I stayed in Friday night. (I’d texted some girls to see if they wanted to come out, but no one responded.)

Saturday morning Gorgeous had a total meltdown — she and Rockstar broke up last month and it had finally hit her that It Was Over, and she was sitting in her car drinking a 40 and chain smoking at 10:30 in the morning — Mother and I became a sort of tag team emergency crew and got her into her house, fed, and snuggled in for a nap. Then I returned to the farm, dipped Shiva again, did more laundry, and napped.

I’m all about the napping.

Saturday night I went to Iowa City with the whole crew to check out the new sushi restaurant. It sucked. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. The service was polite but awful, the miso was served luke warm and with way too much seaweed in it, the drinks were excruciatingly slow in coming, and the sushi was average at best. After dinner, we went to The Summit for a few hours. I haven’t been to a dance club in a really, really, really long time and the experience made me feel old and fat, but the boy-watching was pretty good considering we were still in the Midwest. I drank pretty heavily: two Jaeger shots and four vodka-cranberries. We left around one o’clock. Gorgeous fell asleep in my lap on the drive home, and I crashed at her place because she didn’t want to sleep alone. She’s a fiery blonde Italian and her resting body temperature is about one hundred and ten. She’d be great to sleep with in the wintertime.

Sunday I went home and — you guessed it — took a nap, then got up and went to band practice. After band practice I sat in PK’s yard and had a nice long chat with him. He offered to lend me cash if I need any, which was incredibly sweet. I said I was good for now, but he said it can help to know there are options, which is true. Love that guy.

I haven’t gotten any calls from any of the jobs I’ve applied to through Workforce Development, but Bread and BoSe are trying to fly me out to Indy to teach a day course on Xactimate to the MR ROOF sales team. I’m going to have to build an outline and see how much I could cover in one 8-hour day, and then figure out how much to charge for it.

Gorgeous has decided to go to Hawai’i for awhile and urges me to come along with her. I’ve never been; it sounds divine. I promised her I’d consider it, but honestly I’m so deep in debt I can’t see it actually happening… the idea sure sounds amazing, though. After the total shit that has been the past couple months of my life — marital issues galore, financial problems, the stress of travel, dog health, jeeps without tires, borrowing money, losing my job, etc. — a month on a tropical island, stressing the fuck down for awhile, sounds almost too good to be true.

Today I’ve eaten a mango and a handful of cranberry-chocolate chip trail mix. I have not gotten dressed. I have watched Amadeus and done laundry and given Stella her pill. I’d better go call and make my Target VISA payment before they send me to collections. Ciao, babies.

Update: So I called Target to make payment arrangements because my account was 113 days past due. This lovely boy called Brandon lowered my interest rate, took a reasonable payment today and set up a 6-month $25-a-month payment schedule until I’m, as he put it, ‘back on my feet.’ He also encouraged me to apply for work at Target, and sent me to jobsinminneapolis.com to check out all the Target openings. Isn’t that cute?!