Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

The girls came back home on Monday and the 1 year old hasn’t let me put her down for more than 30 minutes yet. She woke up yesterday at 6:30 am and didn’t take a nap all day long. We finally got her to sleep around 11 pm. The whole time she was on my lap, save a morning nap I took and the hour I went to buy a new sewing machine.

She keeps pounding on my chest and I’m in awful pain, and I don’t feel like I’m getting the support that I need. What’s a girl to do?

Yesterday I was listening to the radio while sewing and heard an ad for a new club that’s opening in the Warehouse District. The formerly hep Sixth Street is no longer where it’s at; now all the cool kids go to the Warehouse District. Anyway, the commercial mentioned that Saturday night, DJ so-and-so would be spinning.

DJ so-and-so was a pretty good friend of mine about 10 years ago. He was always a bad boy; when we met he was under electronic surveillance as a condition of his probation. He spent some time in jail later on for credit card fraud. He was tall and very well dressed and very handsome and I had a Thing for him. Since he had that electronic surveillance thing on his ankle, he couldn’t go out at night so I would go hang out at his house and we’d play Tetris until the wee small hours. No, that is not a euphemism, we’d really play Nintendo games until 3.

Later on, he asked if I could put a friend of his up for a while until he found his own place. I agreed, and said friend ended up robbing me and cleaning me out of every damn thing I had that was small enough to fit into a car. A blender. A sleeping bag. Beer from the fridge. Everything. The police couldn’t do anything about it (they said) because the fingerprints would be inconclusive since the friend was staying there. Doesn’t matter that he asked the garage apartment neighbor for a ladder, claiming he lost his key and wanted to go in through a window. This all happened the week before I moved to Austin and on the plus side, I was able to rent a smaller U-Haul and I had much, much less boxes to pack.

DJ so-and-so and I remained friends for a few years. Eventually I told him to jump off a ledge, after the umpteenth time that he stood me up or let me down or used me. A few years later I ran into his little sister at a party. She was just as nice as always, and I was glad to have seen her.

As for the burglarizing friend, I got an anonymous phone call from a girl that he had done wrong by, saying that he was the one who took the stuff and what pawn shop it was in. I told the police, who didn’t give a shit. 5 or so years later I saw the guy at a club. I was too upset to say anything to him, and he didn’t know it was me standing in front of him, but I did manage to step backwards and dig a spike heel into his instep. Oops.

I noticed on publicdata.com that he’s serving jail time. That gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

Speaking of cops not doing anything, that reminds me of the time that I heard my car alarm going off at 3 am, ran out to see that someone had broken the window, called the cops, and waited… and waited… and waited… for an hour and a half. I called them again, they said they might get someone over that night, maybe. I told them not to bother since nothing was stolen. At that same apartment complex there would occasionally be a bum who would camp out in the courtyard and snooze at night. The cops were pretty slow in getting that taken care of as well.

And don’t forget that you can’t spell “stupid” without “UTPD“. Right?

Dear asshole,

That number that you keep calling? It’s our home phone number, not a fax number. Here at our home, it’s almost three in the morning. You, calling with your stinking junk fax at this hour, can go straight to hell. Asshole.

P.S. Junk faxes are illegal, asshole.

(I bit the very tip of my tongue straight off while eating dinner earlier.)

I’m three weeks post-op today, and still in a good deal of pain. It comes and goes; right now it’s pretty bad and the pain pills aren’t even taking the edge off. I don’t want to be on these damned pills forever, or even very much longer because they’re addictive and who the hell needs that? The whole bottom of my boob is like hamburger and at this point I’m just hoping that I’ll have something left after all this is over. Apparently the reduction basically killed the blood flow there, so it’s not healing right, so the tissue is dying and there’s also a great big dent.

It will be ironic if I end up having to have an implant after having had the reduction. This sucks.

Do not read this entry if you’re eating.

Remember when I said that my boob was making sloshing noises? Well today I lay down on the floor of the office to try to convince the baby to take a nap with me. Hub came home and saw me there and told me to go up and sleep in a real bed. I stood up and noticed a huge red puddle on the floor. And my shirt. Horrified, I ran upstairs to see what the deal was (leaving a trail behind me like a wounded animal). I had sprung a major leak. My boob’s not sloshing anymore. Between all my bloody clothes and the floor, it looked like someone had commited a murder in the house.

I had my doctor paged and he called me back and said everything was ok and apologized profusely for this happening, like he was somehow responsible. He said he planned to take care of the extra fluid in my office visit tomorrow (think big needles). He’s such a nice guy, I really like him.

I have had gross things happen with my body before. Once I bent over and saltwater inexplicably gushed out of my nose. Once I coughed and a pellet came out. Recently I pulled out a stitch that had been there for 10 years. I have to say that this was the topper.

Am I heartless because I don’t want to read any more “Inspiring Tales of Americans Triumphing in the Face of Woe” stories? I mean, everyone has a story. You could make tragic copy out of any unexpected death. To me, the whole September 11th thing loses cohesion when I look at individuals. I lose sight of the forest for the trees. I think I’m better off viewing it as an attack on America, rather than an attack on Americans, if you dig.

This is September. September is still considered in the summer season, at least until the 21st. Summer means hot. It means school starts and football season starts and Labor Day and the last swims in the lake. It is not even a little bit cold in September. Sometimes there are hurricanes, which show up in the summer seasons. Daylight savings time is in effect, and it stays light until 8:30 PM and you have to go out and water the yard and fight off the mosquitoes and wave howdy to your neighbors who walk by in their shorts and t-shirts.

September (at least the first 75% of it) is not even fall yet. Trees do not turn colors in September. Grass still grows fast, cicadas still screech at night, lightning bugs fly at dusk, kids play in the back yard and sell lemonade on weekends.

I feel compelled to mention this because inside of Michael’s craft shop, it is full-on Christmas time. They have out the Christmas decorations, they’re playing Christmas music, they even have out the Christmas-scented pot pourri.

Christmas is over 25% of the year away. Christmas is two seasons away. Christmas is a blasphemy when it’s 100 degrees outside and school just started and we haven’t even had Halloween yet, for fuck’s sake.

I love Christmas because it is special. It comes once a year, when it’s nice and cool out and gets dark early and there are corny songs on the radio but it’s ok because you know all the words and you don’t mind singing along. When you start Christmas over three months before the actual holiday, it is no longer special. It is passe. It is boring, and it will be crusty and smelly and old by the time December 25th actually gets here.

We spent this weekend at the ranch, doing general ranchy stuff like drinking (good lord, we played quarters, even – haven’t done that in 10 years), taking rides (one night we got very close to an alligator that was swimming in a tank), shooting lots of guns, fishing, eating good food, and basically unwinding.

We did have a couple of uninvited guests, though. This young lady was out on the sleeping porch, and had a relative on the back porch as well as one in the cow skull on the patio. We let her live until just before we left on Monday, when we went round and sprayed them all. Beautiful and deadly.

This strapping girl was above the woodpile and had a nightly feast of grasshoppers and crickets. Her body length alone is about 1.5 inches – adding her legs into that, she’s bigger than your palm. We left her in peace, since she’s non-toxic and eats lots of bugs. She had a smaller friend on the air conditioner nearby.

There was also a scorpion scuttering around on the bedroom wall which I calmly whacked with a shoe but neglected to photograph. On our way out, we saw a yellowjacket nest that was probably at least 6 inches tall on the side of the house. We didn’t see any rattlesnakes this time, though.

Y’all city wussies don’t know what you’re missing.