Anyway.

It’s 0800 and Miss Squish and The Ginger are BOTH still in bed. This isn’t all that unusual for The Ginger, though I don’t expect him to be sleeping much longer. He’s usually up around 0900. Miss Squish got up and talked to her Eeyore or her dolly at around 0330 this morning and then started talking again around 0600. I put her binkie in her mouth to keep her quiet while I got her bottle ready and she went back to sleep! Almost 2 hours later and she hasn’t made a peep. Guess she wore herself out playing in her saucer (by playing, I mean chewing on the seat and staring at the toys) and trying apples for the first time.

And THIS is where I start my bitching.

I find it incredibly annoying when people don’t remember that this isn’t my first go round with a baby. I mean, if someone doesn’t realize I have a 10 year old cuzz they’ve never seen him (like at church), then I don’t get annoyed when people offer me advice as if I were a first time mom. Sometimes I tell them that I have a son and sometimes I don’t, depending on the time I have. But, when people either know I have two kids or actually PHYSICALLY SEE both children and STILL pretend like I don’t know anything about raising a baby, I get annoyed. And, truth be told, if this is something that repeatedly happens, I tend to get a little pissy. I’ve come incredibly close to telling people that I’ve managed to keep one kid alive for over 10 years, I’m pretty sure that I can figure out how to keep the new kid alive for at least that long. I’ve held my tongue, though, cuzz when it comes to kids, my sense of humor seems to not work. For example, I was with someone at a store, I can’t remember who now, that told me to be careful cuzz they thought I didn’t have a good hold on Miss Squish. I smiled and said, “That’s ok, they bounce,” and laughed a little. The looks I got from the people around me ranged from appalled, as if I actually thought that dropping the baby would be ok cuzz she’d just bounce back up to me like a ball, to rage filled. Seriously?! Anyone who sees Miss Squish, even in passing, can tell that she has never been dropped or anything even remotely close to that, but go ahead and judge me random fucking strangers, cuzz you know that I’m completely serious when I’m obviously making a joke.

Assholes.

Something else that’s been pissing me off is the new time frame in which to start babies on solid foods. Seems there have been studies that show that starting solid foods at 4 months causes the babies to become obese and children and/or adults. Hmm… Yeah… I’mma call bullshit on that. There are PLENTY of skinny people that were started on solid foods at 4 months old. You want to know why there are so many fat people now? Cuzz we are LAZY and we eat HUGE portions. Sure, that salad is better for you than the giant cheeseburger, but when you eat a ginormous salad with shit tons of dressing and other things added, welp, you’re gonna be putting away the calories. And I’ve been saying we cuzz I include myself in this. I will eat a salad over most anything else (unless there’s cow involved. I LOVES me some cow!), but when I do, I eat a GINORMOUS salad with all sorts of things in it. I will throw all kinds of veggies in a salad, which isn’t a bad thing. But I also put things like cheese, eggs, BACON and chicken or some kind of meat. I’m not really into tons of dressing so I dip each bite into a side of dressing and there’s not really all that much on the spinach, so I end up eating that actual serving size from the bottle or even a little less. But I put enough shit in my salads that I’m getting WAY more calories than I think I am. Sure, I was started on solid food at 4 months old, but that’s not why I’m fat. If I were to get off my ass and exercise regularly, I’m sure I wouldn’t be as big as I am. I’m not going to venture so far as to say I’d be skinny cuzz, well let’s face it, I’ve popped out two kids and carefully sculpted my Dispatch Ass® for the better part of a decade. I’ll never be skinny again. LOL But to blame my weight on the fact that I ate solid food at 4 months old is a bunch of bullshit.

I also do not like when people tell me that my daughter is going to be allergic to everything if I start her on foods before 6 months. Again, I am calling bullshit. Sure, there are babies out there who have started foods at 4 months and are allergic to everything under the sun. However, there are just as many that started foods at the same time who aren’t allergic to anything. Hell, there are kids who eat dirt that aren’t allergic to anything.

*gasp*  I hear Miss Squish talking to one of her toys! It would seem that she’s gotten enough beauty sleep and would like to join me in the living room.

The next door neighbors have let Greg and I in on the drama happening at their place. I’m so glad I don’t have to worry about going through the same shit they are. I’m not going to divulge what’s happening over there, but suffice it to say that after hearing what they’re dealing with, I no longer feel bad about going off on the douchebag across the street last summer. In fact, I kinda wish it would have escalated to needing the police called out. Well, actually, no I don’t cuzz I doubt it would have helped anything. Meh.

In tooth news, I’m feeling better and can chew again. Greg’s mom brought over this liquid that I can’t remember the name of. All I know is that it’s supposed to be like tea tree oil, but stronger. She told me to soak a cotton ball with it and hold it between my cheek and tooth for a little bit and it would help. I was skeptical, but it really worked wonders! The pain let up enough within a few hours that I could touch the tooth with my tongue and not want to die. The next day, I could chew comfortably and now the swelling in my face is basically gone and I can even smile all the way again. That makes me glad cuzz for a couple days there I looked like I was stroking out.

Still waiting to hear about that job and the status of the annulment. Looks like phone calls and e-mails will be required today. Ugh. I’m hoping that the job people are just dragging their feet about letting the temp agency know whether or not I got the job. I’m not going to be thrilled if I’m not hearing anything cuzz I didn’t get it. From what I was told in the interview, I was the only one with any experience that they were interviewing. I’ve got a nasty feeling that my divulging why I was let go from my last job is hindering me. It’s not like I can’t tell them cuzz it was medically related. I mean, it wasn’t due to poor performance or anything of that nature (and I have a termination letter to prove it), but I think people are leery of it when I explain what happened. Yes, I very well could pass out again, but it’s been a year since I have and I have it under control now, but if I don’t say anything about it and I DO happen to pass out while I’m working, I could be fired for not telling them. Ugh. I don’t know. This shit is so frustrating.

At least I’m not needing to worry about the annulment too much. From what I understand, it’s simply a matter of time and not anything to do with the marriage itself. Being that we weren’t married in a church and nothing was ever approved (that’s not the word I want to use, but I can’t figure out any other way to put it) by a church, it’s pretty cut and dried. I’m a little concerned with the planning of the actual wedding itself, but I think that’s more due to money issues and actually getting things going than anything else. I’m not the type to flip my shit if the flowers aren’t the perfect color or if the table cloths are a specific length or something like that. Mainly, all I want is to look all pretty and girly and to FINALLY get married. We’ve been engaged for YEARS, let’s get this done already! Honestly, my biggest concern is being able to make sure that I can have extensions put in my hair and to have my nails done. Yeah, those are two minor things and if I can’t have my nails all girly, I won’t be heartbroken or whatever. But, if I can’t have extensions, I’m going to be concerned about how nasty thin my hair is and THAT will make me feel shitty. It won’t ruin my day by any means, but I’d like to be able to feel good about it. That probably doesn’t make much sense, but if you’re a chick whose hair is falling out, you’ll get it.

The Ginger is up north with his great grandma for the fourth and he has already called me three times yesterday (which happens to be the day he got there) to tell me how much fun he’s having. LOL I’m glad he’s getting to do something. If he’d have had to stay here, I’m sure he’d have been bored out of his skull and that just sucks. Thankfully, Miss Squish is still too little to really give a shit. Hell, she’ll be too little to really care for a couple years yet.

See? I’ve got nothing! Nothing to really write about. Well, I obviously wrote about SOMETHING, but nothing that’s really all that entertaining or that most people will care about. Even though EVERYONE should care. I mean, I AM full of awesome after all.

In other news, I’ve been a raging bitch the last few days. I feel bad for it, but I can’t help it. My teeth are fucking KILLING me. Well, a couple of them are. A few years ago, I manged to break a tooth eating lettuce of all things. I ended up getting a partial root canal a year or so later cuzz I had an exposed nerve. I’d have gotten a complete one, but I didn’t have a couple thousand dollars on hand. The dentist told me to get in there and get it completed and that she’d work out a payment plan with me so I could and I thought I’d be in there within a month to get it finished. Then a bunch of shit went down and I couldn’t afford to pay a couple hundred dollars a month in order for her to complete the job. I’ve been ok until a couple days ago. I’m not sure, but it feels like I may have cracked the work that she did. It’s either that, or the tooth behind it is fucked up now. THAT tooth had a filling in it until I got a piece of floss stuck up there. In my attempt to dislodge the floss (it was on one of those little handle thingies) I managed to pull out the filling.

I’ve been very lucky to not have had any problems until now. I rinse with Listerine 2-3 times daily cuzz I have a REALLY badly cracked molar on the other side of my mouth that I do not want to get infected. (So far, so good on that one, too)  Now, rinsing hurts. I still do it, but I’m close to tears every time I do, which is saying something. If Greg’s parents couldn’t tell that I was having contractions on our way to the hospital when Miss Squish decided to be born, this tooth pain bringing me so close tears should tell you how bad it’s gotten. My face is a little swollen on that, but not too much. I hope that I’m able to get in to see a dentist that is not only willing to work with me as far as payments go, but will also give me nitrice. I tend to cry uncontrollably whenever I go to the dentist for anything more than a cleaning. I blame that on needing to have a tooth pulled while I was pregnant with The Ginger. I wasn’t allowed to have ANYTHING for that, not even Novocaine. Hooray for dental anxiety! *sigh*

On the plus side, since I’m basically on a liquid diet now out of fear of killing my teeth, I should lose some weight! LOL

Monday, I was able to cut one out after four different attempts. This was after The Ginger came out of his bedroom, holding one of the mats in such a way that I thought he had a mouse and about slapped it out of his hand. (I didn’t want it to bite him.) (Yes, I am incredibly girly when it comes to bugs and spiders, but not mice.) (Unless I’ve had some beer or something, then maybe.) She actually laid on the couch and kinda sniffed me while I did it. Once she felt like there was danger, she’d get up and run, but I actually cut one of the baseballs off her hind end. Greg came home from work as I was getting the last bit of it and asked if I had to sit on her to get it. LOL

I have now been inspired to be done with her “body balls” and just shave all of her fur off. This is going to require a certain amount of finesse, grace and planning. I can do the planning. But I have zero finesse and I am the least graceful person you’ll ever meet. I think of myself as a rhino on roller skates. You know I’m gonna fall at some point, but it’s very comical to watch the process. I have a feeling that my adventure in cat grooming is probably going to get me as close to death as possible without my actually losing consciousness of needing to call an ambulance and go to the hospital.

See, Nala is our skittish cat. She doesn’t like new people. Hell, it took her a couple years to even warm up to Greg and I and she still has issues about being too close to us for too long. When someone new comes to the house, she is no where to be found. Well, unless she’s thirsty. Nala will cut a bitch to get to her water dish.

I’m kinda looking at this as an adventure. I’m going to have to tackle her in order to give her the Calm The Fuck Down Kitty® pills (they’re some natural capsule thingies that I’m gonna have to open and pour down her throat. I’d put it into a can of food, but we don’t have any and I don’t know how I’d get her to eat it without any of the other cats getting it).

Dudes. I think she can hear my thoughts. She’s giving the Kitty Death Stare® from the hallway as I type this. Maybe I won’t be alive long enough to attempt to tackle her…

Anyway.

I’m hoping that the pill thingies work cuzz if they don’t, I’m gonna have to try to shave her while she’s squirming. Somehow I think that might be a little dangerous. Or maybe I’m just being a wuss. Probably.

I’m not sure if I’m going to attempt this tonight while Greg is home, or if I’ll wait until tomorrow when it’s just me and Miss Squish. Either way, I’ll be sure to take a before and after picture so I can share my tale properly. I’m sure it’s going to be rather amusing.

Here I go a wobbling to step on the cat’s toy mouse♪

So, I’ve been trying to walk around more and more without my cane. It’s definitely been an adventure. I’m still kinda wobbly and I have to grab onto stuff to make sure I’m steady, but I’m moving faster. I don’t think I’m brave enough to go out in public without it yet, unless I have the stroller or something, but I’m trying to get there. Having to use a cane is a pain in the ass when I’m trying to carry a baby and a diaper bag or some other giant thing. It’s also become it’s own adventure. The rubber stopper thingie on the bottom decided to run away somewhere, so when I’m on a smooth surface, I have to be extra careful so I don’t bite it. If I could just get rid of the I’m-on-a-boat feeling, I know I’d be steady enough to walk like I used to. Hell, LOGICALLY I know I’m not solid ground, but feeling like I’m on a boat (mother fucker on a boat!) constantly makes me feel like I don’t have my footing. It’s a very annoying thing to have to deal with. At least I have the passing out under control, though I sometimes forget that I can’t just shoot up out of a chair and shit starts to go black on occasion. Haven’t passed out in over a year, though, so AWESOME! 

I had a job interview on Thursday that I’m waiting to hear back about. Hopefully, I’ll hear something when I call the temp agency later this morning. Cross your fingers, people, cuzz getting this job is probably going to be the only way I can help get my family out of The Ghetto. The plans we were making fell through, so now we’re back to square one. Since we need another bedroom, places are more expensive than what we’ve got now, even more so since I want to be able to feel like I can take the baby for a walk during the day. Send prayers, good thoughts, rattle some chicken bones, etc. so that I can land this job.

Summer vacation is in full swing now and so far, so good. Miss Squish isn’t too sure what to make of The Ginger being home all the time, so she hasn’t been sleeping as much as she used to. Well, that’s part of my theory anyway. She’s drooling and chewing on EVERYTHING, so I’m pretty sure teething has something to do with it as well. She decided to gnaw on my finger yesterday (which is not something we usually let her do, but I had just washed my hands and it amused her) and I thought I felt a new little bump on her bottom jaw in the front. If she cuts a tooth here in the next week or so, she’ll be right on track with The Ginger. He cut teeth around the same time.

Wow. Talking about teething. So exciting.

Today needs to be filled with some deep cleaning in hopes of finding Greg’s I.D. and the debit cards. We’re hoping they didn’t fall out of his pocket when he stopped to get sketti sauce yesterday. I called the grocery store this morning and they didn’t have anything turned in, but that doesn’t mean that someone didn’t come across them and keep them in hopes of scoring big. Ha! Sucks to be them if they think we actually have money. I also need to figure out what to make for dinner. There’s not really a lot of options. We’re out of a lot of stuff and actual grocery shopping is nothing more than a fond memory. I’m sure I’ll be able to figure out something with the random stuff we’ve got at the house, but it’s always a crap shoot when I decide to start experimenting in the kitchen. Greg is hella picky and I hate fixing something and having him turn his nose up at it and find something else. I’d much rather everyone eat the same dinner. I guess that’s kind of weird. I mean, as long as everyone eats, then what’s the big deal, ya know? It just seems wrong to me for some reason. And I always feel shitty when he comes home from work and has to make something for himself or wait for me to make him something different. He doesn’t ever do or say anything to make me feel shitty, but I know he works his ass off all day and just having to do that when he’s already tired at the end of the day just bothers me. Maybe once I’m working again I’ll feel differently. Meh.

Welp, I should probably get off my ass and try to accomplish something. I’m still hoping to be able to get the money up to join a gym. I need $57 total by June 30th to take advantage of a promotion that’s being offered by Planet Fitness. Not sure if I’ll be able to swing that yet or not. Damned consumer’s bill keeps getting higher and higher even though we’re using the same amount, if not less, than the month before. I don’t know how they expect people to keep paying the bill when it can increase $100 in a month. How the fuck can you budget for that kind of thing?! It makes no sense to me.

So, yeah. I ventured out of the house on Wednesday to go to the church to discuss the annulment process that I have to go through. That actually didn’t take nearly as long as I was expecting. Seems to be pretty cut and dry. After that, I took Miss Squish to the store to get salad crap. Then, since we had some time to kill, we just went back to the house. Ooo! So exciting! 

But then! Then Bobbi texted me that she was done with the schooling! I loaded Miss Squish into the car and set out on my way. Now, typically, I can find shit downtown. Especially when it’s on the main road through downtown. This time, though, I drove right passed Bobbi and had to turn around. I figured I’d be ok, since I was basically just needing to go around the block. How mistaken I was. See, there’s a lot of one way streets downtown and I managed to get myself turned around. I found the street I needed and went on my way, figuring I’d be over to Bobbi in a minute or two.

I’m tooling along, listening to some metal cuzz that’s how I do, and I began to realize that I wasn’t seeing any of the school buildings. I thought maybe I had stumbled onto new student housing that had gone up. I figured I should probably turn around and started looking for a driveway or something when I realized where I was. I had somehow managed to get my ass down to the arts (?) area (that’s where the museum and the theater and that kind of things are). I went in the complete OPPOSITE direction. That’s when Bobbi decided to text me to see where the fuck I was. I’m sure she laughed loud enough to get weird looks.

So, I finally get Bobbi into the car and we go on our way to adventuring! Again, I thought I knew where I was going. This time, though, Bobbi also thought she knew where I was going, so it wasn’t just me. We’re going along down the road and we start to notice that it doesn’t look all that familiar. We were on a pretty main street, so I figured I’d come across a major intersection soon and could figure out where we were. And I did come to a main intersection. IN THE FUCKING HOOD. Now, I consider where I live to be The Ghetto. It’s a bit rough and tumble, but it’s nothing compared to The Hood. I figured I’d turn right and be able to find my way out relatively quickly. Bobbi saw this and said she thought I should go left. I figured, what the hell and turned left. Good thing, too, cuzz had I gone right like I wanted, I’d have taken us even deeper into The Hood. Like, deep into the north end part of The Hood.

Yes, I am full of awesome when it comes to driving directions. I can get a road crew where they need to go as long as I have a map in front of me, but when I’m driving? Well, not so much.

We figured out where we were and headed to our destination. See, Bobbi said she’d go check out that Planet Fitness place with me. I was gonna go when I went out the week before, but not only did I forget, but I am also a ginormous chicken shit when it comes to talking to people in places. I’ve always been kinda leery to talk to new people, but I used to be able to go into a store or something and be able to talk someone who works there without feeling like a complete asshole and clamming up. Since I’ve been holed up in the house, though, I’ve gotten to a point where I get really anxious when it comes to interacting with anyone I don’t know.

Anyway.

We get to the mall where Planet Fitness is and went inside. That’s when we realized that we couldn’t enter from inside the mall. Kinda weird, but I guess I can understand it. There’s only one check in desk and you don’t want some riffraff, such as myself, walking in and wandering around without a membership. We went outside and found the entrance and proceeded to get a tour and a sales pitch. And? I really want to join this gym. The only thing that I didn’t like was that they don’t like swearing, so I might have a problem. LOL  I just need to come up with the initial start up fee. I want the black (card?) membership and it’s more expensive to start that up, but I get to bring someone with me, for free, as many times as I want to. And be able to go to any Planet Fitness in the U.S. and use the massage chairs and tanning beds. I will NOT get into a tanning bed or hex, so that wasn’t a huge selling point, but the bringing a guest was.

After that, we went to Bobbi’s to wait until Greg let me know he was ready for me to pick him up from work. That is when we discovered that Miss Squish is not all that fond of dogs. And also where she proceeded to take the longest.shit.evAr.

And that ends my tale of adventuring. So exciting, I know. I also kind of adventured yesterday by going to a job interview. Let’s hope I nailed that shit.

I actually ventured outside of the house more than once this past week. I think I spent more time out of the house than actually in it. (Well, awake at least. I don’t count sleeping hours.) I missed my cousin’s open house cuzz Greg didn’t get home from work until there was only a half an hour left, but we did stuff with his mom that evening and then had a full day Sunday. Yesterday me and the kids went visiting before my aunt left the state again and now I get to do house crap until I venture out again tomorrow. One more graduation party on Saturday (this one from college) and I think I might be tapped for the summer.

I had meant to blog about an adventure I had the other morning before I decided to pretend like I had a life, but I got distracted by something and never got around to it. I think I’ll share now. It all started when I decided to do laundry in the morning again and I discovered this looking back at me –

Why hello there. My name is Smokie and I'm an asshole.

Needless to say, I was a bit shocked to find the Forever Kitten® sitting on top of one of the doors for the laundry area. She got up there the day before and tried to kill me with her laser eyes, which she obviously failed at. I’m pretty sure she’s hanging out up there now in order to carry out her murderous plot against me.

Anyway.

So, I stared at her for a minute, trying to figure out exactly how she was able to get up there without smashing her head on the door frame. I couldn’t figure it out and went to start the washing machine when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Anyone who’s been reading my writing for any length of time can probably figure out what I saw. *Fair warning – There might be more swearing than usual beyond this point. Just thought y’all might want to know that.*

There was a fucking SPIDER on my ceiling not all that far from Smokie.

This did not please me, since spiders are full of evil and clown blood. I attempted to get Smokie to slay the vile beast for me, since that’s what cats are supposed to do. She pretty much told me to fuck off without so much as a flick of her little kitty wrist (ankle?) and looked away from me so she could sleep on her perch and dream about how she was going to pounce on my head while I walked by her. I stared at the fucking spider for a minute, being sure to repress the blood curdling scream that threatened to escape my lips. Then I decided to grow some balls.

I began to lift my cane towards the ceiling.

Now, killing spiders ain’t my thang. Not at all. I’ve documented how I’ve gone round and round with a spider for hours in an attempt to get the courage up to smash the living shit out it. I’ve also documented about how I failed and the spider lived in the office, planning my demise, until I was told I couldn’t work anymore and it moved on to another target. The fact that I began to lift my cane to think about killing that thing should impress the shit out of each and every person reading this.

I lifted my cane and got within an inch or two of the nasty thing when I realized something. A little while ago, the rubber tip on the end of my cane came off. It looks like it’s still there on the outside, but if you look at the bottom of it, the whole rubber bottom is missing and all that’s there is a metal circle that may or may not be a Metal Circle of Death®. I’m still running tests on that. At any rate, I was pretty sure that there was no way I was going to be able to play smashy with the spider if I didn’t have something solid on the end of my cane. After a little thought, I retrieved one of The Ginger’s shoes.

I placed the shoe on the end of my cane and returned to the hallway. The fucking spider hadn’t moved. Surely, this was part of it’s evil plan to kill me and dominate my household. I very slowly lifted my shoe-cane to where the spider was. I touched the toe of the shoe-cane to the ceiling right next to it. It stayed where it was, staring at me and imagining what my sweet, pale flesh would taste like. I’m almost willing to swear that I saw little teeny drool droplets coming out of it’s disgusting mouth. Almost. I took a deep breath and readied myself. If I was successful, then I would be full of AWESOME for the rest of the day, if not the rest of the week. If I failed, I was certain to be devoured by that eight legged fucker. I prepared to play smashy when it happened.

The son of a bitch MOVED!

I think I was working on pure adrenaline cuzz I don’t really remember doing what happened next. It was like I was on auto-pilot. It began to dart across the ceiling in an effort to survive another day and to scare the shit out of me by disappearing and not being seen again until it was ready to carry out it’s sick and twisted plot to destroy me. The next thing I knew, I had played smashy and was staring at the mark I left on the ceiling.

I never actually saw the remains of the spider, but there’s a pretty big spot on the ceiling where the spider was. Rather than imagine that it’s still living here, somewhere, figuring out exactly which night it’s going to crawl into my ear and eat my sweet, sweet brain (cuzz all spiders are also zombies), I have decided that the stain on the ceiling also contains the spider carcass. It’s possible to smashy something hard enough that it disintegrates. Right?

So, that’s what’s been going down in my neck of the woods. I’ve been up since 0400 when Miss Squish decided she needed to have a VERY loud conversation with Eeyore. I’ve done the dishes, started the laundry, gotten The Ginger to take out the trash and have drank a pot of coffee. If you include writing this blog, I’ve done a helluva lot this morning. Tomorrow, I get to go adventuring again. Weeha.

I know I’m only talking about it right now, but I’m really excited to get this under way and the sooner the better. I need to drop some weight before I go looking at wedding dresses, so starting now would be optimal. I’d like to get back to what I weighed before I had The Ginger, but that’s 10 years (and roughly 100 pounds) worth of baby fat to work off and I’m pretty sure it’s not that realistic. We don’t have a wedding date yet, but I highly doubt I’ll be able to drop 100 pounds easily. 20? Yeah, I can see that coming off ok, but not 100. I think 100 will be a longer term goal and will shoot for, like, 60 for a short term? I’m not really good at judging how easily it is to lose weight, but I think 60 should be a good number to work towards.

In other news, I am not fond of outside payroll places. There’s an issue right now with direct deposit that has actually been going for over a year now. I feel like I may have made some headway today, but we’ll see. The person I talked to said the issue was with the pay roll people themselves, and that very well may be. Thing is, she didn’t tell anyone what the issue was or that there even was an issue! That puts a lot of the blame on her as well. I mean, if she had let us know there was a problem and what it was, it could have been resolved a long time ago and I wouldn’t be having to make phone calls. I fucking HATE making phone calls. To anyone. For anything. I would much rather text. Unfortunately, that’s just not always an option.

There’s not much else really going on at the moment. We’ve had the air conditioning running, so I have no idea what’s going on with the neighbors. Keeping the windows closed means I don’t usually hear them carrying on in the street. Usually. There have been a few times in the past where I’ve been able to hear everything like it were happening in my living room. Not recently, though. I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing. I mean, it can be entertaining, but it’s also pretty stressful for me. Honestly? There have been times where I’ve been scared. Like the night Greg went to help his dad unpack a trailer and someone across the street threatened to go get his gun so he could “come back and fucking kill you!”. That freaked me out pretty badly. There was also the night when Greg went to go get cat litter and then couldn’t get home cuzz the police had barricaded the street. Seems there was a standoff between the police and one of the neighbors down the street. There’s nothing like feeding you baby, looking out the window you’re sitting next to and seeing 3 cops with their guns drawn and another cop with a rifle slowly creeping down the street. Ugh. I hope we can move soon.

And with that, I declare that I’m going to get off my ass, wash something (other than laundry) and figure out what to do about dinner. Ooo! Exciting. o_O

Since I would like my feet to look normal, or at least like I was able to get regular pedicures or something, I decided to try something that a friend of mine told me about. Seems slathering your feet in Vaseline and wrapping them in plastic wrap over night is supposed to make your feet nice and soft looking. Since I don’t think my feet have appeared to be nice and soft for a number of years (possibly over a decade), I decided to give it a shot. After all, it’s not like it’s gonna kill me or anything. Right?

So, last night around 7, I remembered that I had wanted to attempt this Vaseline thing. Miss Squish was happily kicking shit in her crib, The Ginger was in his room doing… something, and Greg was on the couch trying to find something to amuse him until the Tigers game came on. I figured that since no one in the house needed anything, I should probably wrap my feet before I forgot again. I got the plastic wrap, the Vaseline and some paper towels so I could wipe the sliminess from my hands. I was thinking ahead on that one.

As soon as I sat in my chair, Baby Mae decided to get very interested in what I was doing. Apparently, seeing me sit down with those three items and take off a sock piqued her curiosity a bit. She sat on the window sill looking at me like I was being the slowest person ever born. I found this amusing. I started doing everything super slow, just to see if I could send my normally docile cat over the deep end. She simply stared at me and I lost interest in pissing her off being slow after a minute or two. As I’m slathering my feet at a normal pace, I notice that Baby Mae is ever so slowly moving to sniff the Vaseline. It would seem that my cat thinks as long as she moves like a snail, I won’t see her. She also does this when I’m eating ice cream. You’d think after 5 years of not being fooled, she’d catch on. Anyway, I notice that she wants to smell the Vaseline, so I just hold my hand up to her nose. She sniffs it for a couple seconds and the next thing I know she’s LICKING IT OFF MY HAND. I started laughing and ended up letting a glob fall off my hand. Luckily, I had somewhat anticipated this happening as well and I happened to have some paper towel on the carpet just in case. Yes, I really AM that awesome.

After I entertained myself with that for a minute, I decided to just hurry up and be done so I could go about my business. I slathered and wrapped both feet, wiped off my hands and sat there, wondering if this was going to work. I’m not sure why, but I think I might have been expecting to feel, like, a tingling or something? Logically, I knew I wouldn’t, but logic has been wrong before in my world. My feet felt squishy, but that was about it. I decided to put on some socks just in case the half roll of plastic wrap I had just used hadn’t been enough and decided to venture outside for a cigarette.

Now, I’ve documented some of my smoothness here in the past, so I’m sure there is someone, somewhere who has just pissed their pants at the thought of this.

I stand up and my feet feel squishy. I could actually kinda hear the squishing, too, which made me think of Miss Squish’s Eeyore blankie thing with the crinkly ear and then I giggled a lot. After the giggling, I got my cane and started to move forward. HOE.LEE.WEIRD. y’all. I felt like I was slipping without actually slipping! In order to combat the slipping, I walked around like a little old lady. That only helped a little bit. It was one of the weirdest feelings evAr!

Since I’m blogging, I obviously managed to not hurt myself. I kinda wish I had, though, so I could make another I’m Ultra Smooth post, but alas, ’twas not meant to be. My feet don’t look HALF as dry as they did before this, but they still look dry and you can tell their cracked. I even sanded them down and soaked them in the shower a bit before hand in order to make sure the Vaseline could soak in. That didn’t happen. The only difference is that there appears to be less dry skin if you don’t look hard enough.

I think I’m gonna try one more time this week and if it doesn’t work… Well… If it doesn’t work, I guess I’ll be wearing closed shoes all summer.

Anyway.

I was sitting here, minding my own business and playing some game on Facebook. I was pretty zoned into it cuzz it’s one of those find the shit in the picture kind of games. Kinda like Where’s Waldo, but without the little douche in the stripey shirt. So, I’m drinking some coffee with my face inches away from the computer screen, cuzz getting closer will make me find things quicker, and then I was suddenly staring at a black screen. This pretty much stopped my heart. I immediately thought that I blew up the computer, which would probably get me put to the curb (I tell Greg he’s gonna get put on the curb on the regular, so it’s ok if it happens just once to me). After I started to breath again, I realized that I was no longer listening to the window air conditioner or GMA. I also registered that the kitchen light was no longer on.

Fuck. The power was out.

Right away I started to try to figure out how I could see when I made a payment. I knew it had been recently, like within the last week or so, but I wasn’t sure if Consumer’s Energy (also known as GDE – Ginormous Douchebag Energy®) decided to register that I had given them money. Then I heard a loud BOOM! and the power came back on.

(Side note – I think that I wrote about this in here somewhere, but I am FAR too lazy to go looking through my past posts to make sure, but we pretty much get shut off notices exclusively from Consumer’s. When we first moved into this house, we had to get a stove, but couldn’t buy one right away. Thankfully, my ex-husband’s parents let us have one of the stoves they had used as a replacement when they would have to take a stove out of one of their rental places to fix it. We didn’t realize that the connection to the gas wasn’t big enough and that it was actually leaking gas for about a month and a half or so. Once we realized it, we would only turn the gas on when we absolutely needed to, but since it had been leaking for so long, we ended up with a $700-ish bill for one month. Kinda hard to pay something like that off when you bring in maybe $50 more than that a month and you kinda need to pay rent and other things in order to have a place to need to electricity and gas for. There was also an issue regarding the fact that our meter wasn’t read for a couple months, but that will be an entirely different post.)

Now that you have a little backstory, you can see why I automatically thought that I was going to be on my phone until my battery died, trying to prove that I did actually give Consumer’s roughly$300 just to keep my power my on this month. Once the power came back on and my heart began to beat again, I started to wonder what the BOOM! was. I’ve heard transformers (and possibly Decepticons) explode before and the BOOM! sounded like that, but the fact that the power came back on leads me to believe that that was not the cause. I’ve also heard similar noises when cars have decided to take out utility poles, but again, the power came back on.

I’m probably going to spend the rest of the day wondering what the hell made my power go out. My heartbeat is still a little fast, which makes me feel like I can move mountains right now, so I should probably take advantage of that before I crash and don’t want to get off my couch.