This is still really damn funny.
Brett found he was having brake problems and had his truck taken apart when I got home last night. He told me he’d need a ride to work with me this morning.
When we got ready to leave this morning, Brett walked up the hill toward his truck. So, sleepy and trying to be helpful, I put the Jeep in reverse and backed up the driveway.
Brett has the crane and dump trucks parked pretty much in the middle of the driveway, so I had to veer off into the woods a bit to clear them. I hit a tree and knocked off my passenger side rear view mirror. The truck is old and the plastic is brittle and it just popped off, the damn thing. I felt like a dumb ass, and I figured I’d get mercilessly laughed at for my bad driving and juvenile mistake. How embarassing. Hitting a non-moving obstacle in my own damn driveway.
I manouvered the Jeep away from the tree and continued backing up, then got out to look at it. Brett approached and then – it was really weird – he proceeded to pretty much lose his fucking mind, wanting to know (in loud tones) why I’d do something so stupid.
I told him it was a mistake, an accident, and that I was sorry.
“That’s a hundred dollars right there to fix! What the hell were you fucking thinking! You’d usually never do anything that goddamned stupid!! Why didn’t you wait near the fucking house!!” He went on and on, hollering at me. He was totally fucking pissed off over a mirror when he breaks shit much worse than that for fun when he goes 4-wheeling!
He put the hanging mirror in through the wing window and got in the passenger’s seat, yelling at me all the while like I was some recalcitrant and expensive teenaged daughter, and I began to drive off the property. “Go the back way, so you don’t fucking hit something again!” he yelled.
So I pointed the Jeep at the back driveway and began my morning communte while Brett kept going off on me.
About twenty feet later I started going off right back at him. “Dude! What the hell is your problem! It was a mistake, an accident! Jesus, you break shit all the time yourself! I didn’t fucking mean it! It’s just a mirror!” Fifteen seconds after I started to dish his own shit back at him, he grabbed the shifter – while I was fucking driving! – and put the Jeep in neutral and yelled, “Stop, stop the fucking car right now!”
When I did, he got out of the Jeep and stomped off in a missive tizzy. He was smoking pissed off, and he’s told me before that when he gets that mad he walks away and shouldn’t be followed or he’ll end up hitting someone.
Well, screw that. It’s not my fault he lost his temper over nothing! I got out and asked if I was supposed to leave or to wait for him. He couldn’t be bothered to reply and just kept walking away from me, so I drove out the back driveway and into the front and walked up the hill to where he was tightening the lugs on his wheel with a four-way.
“WHAT!” he yelled when he saw me.
“I came around to get you. You need a ride to work.” I said.
He dropped his truck to the ground with a hard bounce and yanked the lift out from underneath it, then stomped past me to the house. Stella and I followed him, then stayed outside for a bit. When he didn’t come out, I went in. He stomped out past me. I followed back him out. By now I was finally beginning to get pissed off at him.
He proceeded to gather the compressor hose together and yelled, “You can go!” and then dragged the compressor up the hill.
I stood and watched his back, murmuring, “What the hell is your problem, dude?”
So I drove to work by myself, and he drove his truck (with no brakes) because apparently he was either angry that I’d made an idiotic driving mistake or that I’d flipped his own tantrum right back at him. I mean, we’ve been getting along great the past few days, and nothing in his routine has changed that I know about, so I have no idea what it was that really set him off. Oh, those enigmatic red heads and their hot July tempers!
I’m curious to see how he handles this tonight. Will he still be in a snit? Will he come home late after hitting a bar and pass out on the couch without talking to me? Will he start in on me again for a trivial side mirror? Or will he be sweet and sunny and pretend it didn’t happen?
Hell, will I get home late after a stop at the bar? Only the Shadow knows!
I told my girlfriend recently that coffee has more caffeine than espresso. She did not believe me. I said, “A latte has a shot or two of espresso and the rest of it is milk. A cup of coffee has more caffeine.” She gave me a look. “Swear to God,” I said, and changed the subject.
Today I did a little surfing. Apparently the idea that coffee has more caffeine than espresso is looked upon by some as a net legend or something, while others confirm that espresso does indeed have less caffeine than coffee.
So I guess the measurements are wonky, depending too much on beans, grind, and preparation to really say how much caffeine a shot of espresso contains.
All I know is this: if I get a small or medium cup of joe and drink it, I’m more wired than if I get a tall or venti latte.
Generally, the serving size of a cup of coffee is 8-16 fluid ounces, while a typical espresso serving is only one or two shots (about 3 ounces). So even if the espresso itself has a slightly higher caffeine level, there’s still so much less of it in the cup that it’s remains milder than a cup of coffee.
Want to waste an hour or five? Visit the ever-so-interesting Wikipedia.
Behold!
Joe bought hisself a bona fide Brit chopper! Oh, the endless discussions I’ve been overhearing this past day about tank shape! fenders! oil bags! exhaust pipes!
Such happy, happy red heads out in my yard making big noises. Vroom! Blat-blat-blat vroom!
Yeah, so, Joe bought a bike after work last night, and brought it out here to play with.
He and Brett pushed it into Brett’s tool storage building thingy, and then the two of them absolutely geeked out on chopperdom until way past their bedtimes. Every time I wandered up there to see them, they were chattering about this or that possible change and how to accomplish it. So cute.
The stock dash was off before Joe even unloaded the bike. No more than an hour after I took the pics linked to above, they’d pulled off the rear fender and were experimenting with a stock Norton fender for line and length! They were in chopper heaven. They drank a couple pitchers of iced water and a few cans of Bud, and mostly squatted and looked at the bike and chattered. If they were any less butch, I suspect they’d’ve been giggling like girls!
I love it when my men have fun. (Especially when it’s in an outbuilding and not in the living room.) Brett’s been an automaton for a long while now; all he does is work or rest. He’s done very little socializing, hasn’t been shopping much, hasn’t been on a vacation for a couple of years… everyone needs to geek out on something they love with a like-minded friend every now and again.
Now our couch is covered in Brit parts catalogues and Brit bike magazines! Hah!
So. My vacation.
I don’t know how to write about it. There was the surface stuff, i.e., We went out for sushi. And the non-personal stuff, i.e., I only slept 7.5 hours during the first three days. But so much of it was internal, interior. One doesn’t just go see her satguru and come back the same, you know?
One also doesn’t just say in public that her personal Jesus is alive and in the middle of a world tour, with a three-day break to visit the world parliament of religions thank you very much. It just isn’t done. Budda, Christ, they’re fine – safely dead thousands of years. But to admit someone a thousand years dead was cool is very different from someone “in this day and age!” wandering around being clearly better than the rest of us.
So I haven’t posted on my blog yet about my vacation, which was specifically and entirely for and about seeing Mother for as many minutes as I could.
Hmm.
The most important thing in my life, and I don’t even write an entry about it?
If you’ve ever seen a site run by Movabletype (uh, like the one you’re reading now), you’re probably familiar with the famous folks who built it? Anyhow, I was reading a post in Mena’s blog in which she talks about blogging “through the responsible lens of emotional and personal distance,” and realized all bloggers, no matter how trivial their audience, have to deal with these issues of self-censorship: How much do I say? and Who won’t get what I do say? and Am I willing to weather the storm the non-getters may cause me?
In other words, if you really want to know about the personal (read: spiritual) part of my vacation, you may, just this once, visit my very secret blog here. It’s been up a long time but I stopped linking to it because such a small percentage of my bandwidth would ever get it… and/or I’m afraid the people who might get it might wig me out if they decided to share. My post isn’t done yet, but it will be.
If the other girls on the trip had blogs I’d point you their way too, for a three-dimensional view, but oddly they’re all blog-free… even the geekiest one among them. I think it’s weird, considering that anyone can sign up for a free TypePad or Xanga blog in about 8.6 seconds.
Or maybe not everyone is ready for this new(ish) communication: once upon a time, a communication was less confusing. Either it was for a terribly small group (the person you were talking to, or the small group you were talking to) or a terribly large one (the great American novel) and it was directional: a letter goes to the address it’s mailed to. There wasn’t this stress of not knowing who your audience was.
Blogging’s a roulette: who’ll see this entry? And when? Can I count on it that s/he won’t see it until it’s become a cold potato?
Maybe being blog-free is the best approach to blogging. But I’ve had mine for so long!
——–
I just read this review of the remake of The Stepford Wives and just wanted to say this: I am so tired of pissed off bitches.
I am certainly against crimes being committed against women! Yet I’m also against crimes being committed against men. And until our modern day pissed off bitches (er, sorry: feminists) can stop seeing the world through the eyes of victimhood, we’re just going to keep turning men more and more into what we’re accusing them of: shallow, simple, selfish jerks.
Continue reading »
Chicago was great, Amma was awesome (in the literal sense of the word) as always, I ate sushi, and I’m glad to be home!
Your friendly neighborhood Administratrix is going on vacation, starting today. See you all next week: same bat time, same bat channel!
