Blown Fuse

He could have at least cracked the window.

This is when having possesion of your spouse's valet key comes in handy - when he leaves you sweating in the car like a bad dog.

Wow. That's so nice. Thank you.

It's a few months early to be deliberating this now, but I'm really turned off at the idea of having a baby shower thrown for me...or at me throwing one for myself, for that matter.

For one thing, I'm sure that subsequent babies won't get the same attention. This is my own theory - if your experience has been different, let me know. I just happen to know for a fact that there are approximately 1,487 pictures of my older sister from birth through Kindergarten. I have maybe 5. Part of that problem is that even then I didn't like having my picture taken because someone behind a camera always tried to make me smile and pose. Anyhow, my mother claims that my pictures were lost when they were "moving" or in a "great flood" or something. Bullshit. I was number two - second girl at that. I was the newer model that came out when the older one still had less than 100,000 miles on it.

I digress. Yeah. Baby showers. I just don't want that kind of attention. For one thing, Scott and I have a hard enough time agreeing on paint and furniture without bring other opinions up in the mix. I don't want people buying us shit that neither of us like. And that's pretty hard to do. I tend to be the kind of person that will take the gift and wear it anyway because someone I care about gave it to me. Even if it's ugly as shit.

But we're talking about a baby here. We've got to furnish an entire room and closet, and seeing as how the probability me of taking a massive pay cut in the next couple of months is about 99.9%, I wouldn't mind a few generous, unsolicited donations...but stuff I've already picked out. Does that make sense? We're the ones who have to use the crib, changing table, blah blah for the next two to three youngun's afterall.

I just can't see having to tolerate a bunch of people in my house when I'm thisclose to popping. I'm sure my family fall back on the old-standby guilt trip and call me "ungrateful," but how can I be ungrateful if I don't ask them for shit at all?

Fuck it. I'll just have to finance my own private shopping spree courtesy of my credit cards and some crap in the closet that can be sold on eBay.

Pinch 'em blue.

You know what? I am the perfect fucking customer. When I go into stores and the cash register is down because it just decided to reboot itself for the hell of it I stand there patiently and wait without comment or scowl. Know why? Because I've spent hours in the server closet at work pulling cords and cables trying to get ornery computers to work. No kid making $6.50 an hour ringing up shoes and sandals is going to know how long its going to take for the register to come back up. To start with, they're terrified that you're going to curse them out without provocation.

When a foodservice preparer puts tomatoes/onions/whatever on my food even after I requested for them not to I keep my mouth shut and eat it anyway (that chopped steak incident being the one exception). Know why? Because I've had that job and it sucks. Even if you rarely make mistakes, there are some customers that are never satisfied. Like the ones who go into Ben & Jerry's, order the fat free yogurt, taste it, and say, "Can I not take this? I don't want it," and then leave it on the counter. That's eight onces of ice cream that goes into the trash that some pissed off shift manager has to log on the day's inventory or else be chastised by the shop manager that their crew has been overscooping (or else stealing ice cream).

When I leave work to go to the doctor at a certain appointment time and end up waiting an hour in the reception area, I wait patiently and play a little solataire on my PalmOne. Medicine is unpredictable. No way in hell is your obstetrician going to be there for every appointment on her calendar. BECAUSE SOMETIMES SHE HAS TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL TO DELIVER SOMEONE'S KID.

In general, I think that the thing that makes some consumers so miserable to deal with is their fucking patience problem. The rudeness stems directly from that. You know why I'm so damned patient? Because my grandma made me go to a church where the pastor would speak at least an hour each Sunday. The full service lasted from 11:30 am to at least 2:00. That's a long damn time for a little kid to be sitting still in an itchy dress. And if I didn't sit still, my grandma would pinch me so fucking hard on my arm that I swear she broke some nerves. It would feel like she was cracking a walnut between her fingers - better not cry, either.

I say we bring back pinching. Let's start with those "adults" who walk into places and say "Give me [insert commodity here] NOW. I'm in a hurry."

I didn't order country-style nuttin'

Okay, so here's the deal with the "Chopped Steak" query. We went to O'Charley's on Sunday for dinner, and that's what I ordered thinking it would be tender steak steak cut into strips and served over taters.

It was hamburger. I was pissed. Not only was it hamburger, but it was underseasoned hamburger.

Needless to say we didn't pay for it.

More room in the driveway

The buyer came to pick up the Honda while I was at work. I'm a little sad. I didn't think I would care. When I had to get rid of my Cavalier, decrepit piece of junk that it was, I really, really felt guilty for getting a much newer car (with air conditioning). I still miss that car; it was my first, after all.

Even though I had either car for about the same amount of time, I just seem to have more memories riding around in the Cavalier. What did I ever do in the Accord? Oh yeah. I drove to work. Pbst.

Oh well. I'll miss the leather.

Damn, I needed that.

Via Karsh. List up to ten (10) things you want to say to ten (10) different people. Do not state who these people are. Do not confirm or deny any 'comment speculation'

1. You don't need any more sneakers.

2. You're really not doing anyone any favors by offering that for a salary. The hints I make about how expensive gasoline is should fuel some thought about how much my and my assistant's salaries suck. It further bothers me that your yearly company" car payment is half my salary.

3. I don't listen to my voicemails because, ta da!, I have caller ID and I KNOW WHO CALLED ME!!! I don't need to hear anymore whining about why I won't speak to such-and-such. She knows why. If she pretends otherwise, she is not only a stingy strumpet, but also an idiot.

4. It's my baby, damn it. If I want to leave him or her at an in-law's house for a month during the summer, try and stop me. Further, if my half-white kid ends up sounding like Hillary Banks from "Fresh Prince," I expect nothing less than you telling me how cute it is.

5. Just because you're standing 6 feet from my desk doesn't mean you need to have a conversation with me. If I do not specifically make eye contact with you, do NOT ask me what I'm doing, or what I did over the weekend. Further, do not ask any follow-up questions when it was obvious from my tone of voice that I don't want to be harrassed. That's not my dry, witty humor coming out. That's my pisstivity. Move!

6. STOP CALLING ME TIFF! Continuing to shorten my name in any way will cause me to change how yours is spelled on all the company literature. That way, when random-ass people call in for you, they'll ask for you by your new "stage" name.

7. Stop asking me about the details of my sick days. No, I didn't have the flu. No, it wasn't allergies. When I say, "JUST SICK," that means that I'm too prudish to say that I was hungover, or else that I'm pregnant and don't want you in my business.

8. Quit trying to get me to coconspirit on work revolts. Stop logging things via email and forwarding them to like I'm going to print them out and keep them in some book. If you have a problem with certain coworkers, either confront them professionally or voice your concerns with the boss. I hate to be the one to tell you, but everyone you talk to about this thinks that you're incredibly paranoid. At the same time, while we feel there are grounds for many of your complaints, you don't express them the right way - don't try to drag other people down with you. We may be trying to leave, too, but we want to leave with clean references. I can't do anything for you - I'm the office manager. I shuffle paper. I pay the bills. I do the payroll. I don't want to organize your revolution. See #2 above - I don't get paid enough for that.

9. When you poop in the box, you have to take your little paw and cover it up with a little bit of the litter. See, let me show you. Just like that. If you have issues with the quality of your litter, please see the man with the wallet.

10. I feel sorry for whatever woman marries you, if you can find a woman that dumb. You're probably one of the most trifling individuals I've encountered in seven years.

Tell me if I was wrong.

Just out of sheer curiosity, if you were to see "Chopped Steak" on a menu, what would you think it was? To put it in context, it was served on top of a bed of "smashed" potatoes with mushrooms and carmelized onions.

One chore down, 167 left to go.

I was going to comment on how my weekend was so short but then I realized that, duh, it's already fucking Tuesday.

I put an ad on cars.com as soon as I found out that the title was safe in hand. By Saturday we had a winner. Unfortunately, state law requires that both buyer and seller be present before a notary to sign the title to transfer the vehicle. Because my grandmother, the official seller, is 84 and doesn't do highway driving, on Sunday I woke up early, drove to Suffolk to pick her up and brought her back. I put her up at the Sheraton for the night, which I'm sure she thoroughly enjoyed. I took 3/4 of my day off work yesterday to handle the rest of the business of getting she and the buyer together at a bank.

He has his key and title and I have my check. I did have to drive my grandma back home last night. I got home at around 8:45 and was in bed by 9.

So, Honda go bye-bye. Now my next major task on hand will be to open the stack of bills on my desk I've been avoiding for three weeks. Maybe my paycheck will be decent enough this month that I can pay some stuff off without feeling like I've been shafted by "the man."

Just my luck.

Explain something to me. Why is it that the one time I wait a week to watch a movie that Netflix has shipped to me is one of the times that when I finally do open it, it's BROKEN? It's The Pianist, so I was waiting for a good time to watch. You have to get yourself in the mood for movies like that, you know?

Now they probably think that I've watched in six times and broke it from overuse.

To make matters worse, we found a potential buyer for my Honda who, understandably, wanted a mechanic to take a look at it. So, I took it back to the dealership. If you recall, I was there two weeks ago where they told me that the ABS needed to be resealed and muffler B-pipe replaced? Those were about $800 in repairs. I had them write that crap on the invoice to show what work I'd declined. Wasn't good enough, I guess.

Well, today they came back with a completely different number. $2500, because suddenly I need a muffler, and some other stuff they didn't catch two weeks ago. So, ... yeah. Basically, I could give the car away and feel like I'm coming away with the same profit, because nobody's going to give me $4,000 for it unless they have a hole in their head.

Postal Etiquette

Just in case you didn't know, let me explain what those automated postage machines at your local post office is for.

They're for people who have one, or two at the very most, envelopes or packages that need to be shipped that do not require special services (i.e. insurance). Under no circumstances should you come in with a BOX full of parcels to send and decide that you want to use that machine unless it's midnight.

They're for people who have some knowledge of automated systems and can anticipate what the next screen will say. Prior ATM use is a prerequisite. Under no circumstances should you decide to take your time and PRACTICE on that machine when the counter queue is so long it's out the door and there are an additional five people behind you waiting to send one package each.

They're for people who AREN'T BEING DISTRACTED BY CELLULAR PHONE CONVERSATIONS AND ARE THEREFORE TAKING THEIR SWEET TIME.

I feel better now.

Gah! Shoo!

The pregnancy homone Iritatin* causes normal phone conversations to be cut short from increased annoyance on the part of mom-to-be.

My mom called earlier to demand her Mother's Day salutations and handed my brother the phone for a second to talk. He's 14, so half of what he says when I'm not pregnant pisses me off. Imagine that nothing has changed. We had a short conversation as such:

Him: "The baby's going to have my nose." [And what a nose it is...]
Me: "Doubtful, seeing as how you have your father's nose and we don't have the same father."
Him: "Well, it's going to have my eyes."
Me: "I just don't think that's likely."
Him: "Have you started walking like a chicken yet?"
Me: "..."

If my mom hadn't be sitting in the front seat of the car within earshot of the cellphone I would have cussed him up and down.

Furthermore, my paranoid mother is convinced that my mother-in-law will take over every major aspect of my child's life fully overshadowing any other family that exists. I used to get yelled at because I'm "sensitive" and tend to "overreact." How can you not overreact when people say stupid shit like that?

*not a real hormone

Stupid People

I don't answer my home phone unless I recognize the number. Not even then, sometimes. I just let the answering machine click on.

Our answering machine makes it quite clear who lives here:

"Please leave a message for Tiffany or Scott after the tone."

Tell me why we repeatedly get idiots leaving messages for people other than Tiffany or Scott? Once time, this woman called three times leaving messages demanding that her daughter come home from whoever's house she was at. Scott picked up the fourth time and told her she had the wrong number. Some kid got their arse beat that night for giving out a bad number, for sure.

Today, some lady calls and says: "This is a message for APS. This is XXX and XXX. We have installed a new security system and will no longer be using your services. Thank you."

Um....I was tempted to call her back and tell her that she's going to be incurring another month's charge because, like the answering machine said, this ain't APS. But I didn't. People need to stop going on autopilot when they're dialing phone numbers.

Edited to add: did a google search on the caller ID name. This chick's a lawyer? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Too cute for words.

How cute is it that Puffy follows Bodie around so she can take a nap with her? Bodie is annoyed. Puffy is oblivious.

Chill, Nancy.

I accidentally stumbled upon Court TV's broadcast of the sentencing of Daniel Biechele for his role in the Rhode Island nightclub fire. I was simply curious of how the sentencing would lay out so I was watching it on MSNBC. All of a sudden their sound feed went wonky, so I turned it to Court TV.

I've never been so pissed off with a "news anchor" in my life. I'm referring to Nancy Grace. I recognize that a lot of the sensationalist journalism that's on the air today either leans conservative or liberal. Being dead in the middle and considering myself moderate, I tend to prefer the slightly liberal stations because they're more likely to play Devil's Advocate and put both sides on the story (whether they're diggin' it or not).

In other words, I like my news the way the did it in the olden days - you know, back when t.v.s had cranks. I want them to say what happened, and get off it. Nancy Grace was so inflamed about Biechele's sentence that I thought that if I watched close enough, I'd see her angry spittle hitting the camera. I think that if the news personality has their own show, it's okay for them to have a "theme" (a la "I'm a jackass who tries to make the experts fight each other"), but if they're simply sitting on a special report, they need to keep their emotions to themselves. She got all loud and...well, bitchy.

She got me turned off with all that "That's not fair" and "That's not right" bullshit. Who is she to make commentary? The on-site correspondent and the guy in the studio were very calmly trying to explain to her that Biechele was sentenced for the crime he committed (i.e. illegally lighting a pyrotechnics display on the ok of the club owner) and not for the outcome (100 people dead). She went on some slippery slope tangent about drunk driving and "running little kids down." The freakin' reporters looked like they wanted to say "Fuck you, Nancy," and leave.

I think this woman should be stripped of her two-piece suit collection and sent home to prune her roses. Hotdamn she pissed me off. I was looking around on the Court TV website for the name of a producer or someone to email about this nut, but realized that they're probably perfectly aware of how nuts she is.

Ooh, she has a Wikipedia entry.

How 'bout reading before answering?

I just emailed some woman at corporate to find out some information about a certification exam. I asked her very pointed questions so that she would not refer me back to what I had just read on the website. I actually asked for clarification of what the website said because it had conflicting information.

What did she do? She copied and pasted information from the website into my email and then referred me to the website for more information.

That irks the shit out of me.

So yellow.

One of my coworkers had the audacity to tell me a couple of days ago that my legs are even more pale than those of a certain very white coworker.

Unfortunately, it's true. I get a pretty good bake from chest up from the car window, so in general I never look like dough all over, but I haven't had a reason to expose my legs yet this year.

For one thing, getting into the shower after brushing my teeth is already an invitation for nausea to crash the party. Although pregnancy makes my body hair grow so fast that I can't keep up with it, it's rare that I have the energy to shave. When I do shave, I get this weird five-o'clock shadow immediately afterwards. So, it just seems pointless.

Anyway, I shaved on Wednesday because I had a doctor's appointment (that's what we women do). I was wearing my stretchy capri-length gaucho pants because they're roomy in the waist. Ms. Thing, made her curious observation and then I was on a hunt to find somewhere to go to put my feet into hot sand for a couple of days.

Because I'd snagged a great deal for a business-related hotel stay for someone last week on Hotwire (a three-star room worth $118 for $32) I went back there to find something on the beach. Any beach. I searched as far north as Virginia Beach (too expensive) and as far south as Myrtle Beach.

I did find a three-star room in Myrtle Beach right on the beach for $62, so we decided to book a three-day weekend on the weekend right before things get expensive. So, in three weeks I'm going to tan myself black. Or as close to black as yellow can get.

Yip!

*eye twitches uncontrollably*

I've told my coworkers no less than ten times that I don't like being called "Tiff." I don't like having my name shortened at all. That includes "Tiffy" and "TP" and whatever else. It's bad enough being a full-grown woman named "Tiffany."

For the love of whatever you worship, STOP CALLING ME "TIFF"!

Moving on.