So Wednesday, as I pull in to my driveway and prepare to unload the massive amount of shit necessary to sustain me at work and Bird at daycare, my 10-year-old neighbor, Littel, comes running into the yard.
"You still got my litterbox?"
I don't even have one foot out of the car yet.
"What?"
"I need my litterbox back. I'm getting a new cat next week."
Oh, right. Littel's former cat, Brownie, ran away last fall. Being a sweet kid at his core, he brought over Brownie's litterbox, all cleaned out and ready to receive more disgusting cat shit.
He wanted to know if we might need it for Thomas.
Having used the same litterbox for nine years, we accepted.
"Littel, that litterbox is full of poop. I don't think you want it."
"Can't you just clean it out?"
"Do you have the cat right now?"
"No. My friend has it. I'm getting it in a couple days."
"I'm just going to have to get a new one for you. I'm not cleaning that thing out. Besides, we don't exactly have another litterbox on hand."
You know, since I wasn't aware this was a loan. CAT BOXES ARE NOT LOANER ITEMS in my world.
"Well, okay, but I need that litterbox back."
Littel ran back down the hill into his house. I got my nine bags of various shit plus preschooler plus the day's preschool artwork out of the car.
Two minutes later, he was back, knocking on our door.
"I need my scooper back."
"Excuse me?"
"My scooper. I need it back."
"Littel. I'm telling you. It's covered in poop. I don't think you want it back."
"Wash it off, then. I need it."
"DO YOU EVEN HAVE A CAT??"
"Not right now, but I'm going to. My mama says she can't find that same scooper no more at KMart."
I tell him to hold on. I grab the shit-covered scooper and hand it to him as-is, caked with stinky, vile cat shit.
"There's your scooper. I'll get you a new litterbox tomorrow."
"Well, I'm not getting the cat for a few days."
"DO I OWE YOU A LITTERBOX OR NOT"
Littel shrugs.
I close the door. I tell A. to buy the f-ing kid an f-ing litterbox, and vow never, ever to exchange goods-- even shitboxes-- with a ten-year-old again. And the thing is? It was undoubtedly Crazy M that sent him over to take back his litterbox in the first place. This is the same woman that sent him over to bang on our door at 11pm because someone was parked in "her" parking spot on the PUBLIC STREET, the woman who "gave" A. a pair of sneakers for Birdy, which were ugly and unsafe but which A. accepted so as not to hurt her feelings, and then sent Littel over the next day demanding $10 for the f-ing things. Gah. I could go on.
I know, I know. If we lived in nice, sterile, non-ghetto suburbia I'd still have a crazy neighbor, probably some busybody all up in my business or ferociously wanting to sell me some Mary Kay or wanting me to remove the one-winged gargoyle from the front porch (true) or getting all concerned about my country backyard clothesline*. But I live in a colorful little "emerging" neighborhood, and I have Crazy M and Littel, Drunken Teacher, Big Marvin, Friendly Hispanic Mechanic, and the Flower Sisters. And truthfully, I'll take them over a buttoned-down cul-du-sac any day of the week. Even if it costs me a cat box every now and again, I guess. But I'm going to be pissed off for a while. And it doesn't help that Littel just picked about 8 gorgeous-but-still-very-green tomatoes from my garden.
*Still diggin' the clothesline, by the way. Most people I've told about it seem very excited, though maybe they're just being kind. When a very senior-level person at work heard about it she said, "like, in your backyard?" Like I was slaughtering chickens in a voodoo ritual in the alley or something. Which I am not. Because I am vegetarian, and because I would not risk getting chicken guts on my crisp, clean sheets as they're hanging out to dry.
Showing posts with label Meet the People I Meet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Meet the People I Meet. Show all posts
22 August 2008
19 July 2008
Behold, my laundries:
Look what came to my backyard this weekend!
Finally putting that hot Tennessee sun to work for us.
Love this thing. Just one step closer to living that country life I babble on and on about from time to time.
Want to hang your spouse's skivvies up for your neighbors to admire? One super awesome feature of this little beauty is that you only cement a little plastic sleeve in your yard, giving you the option to pluck the whole thing out of the ground and store it when you're not using it. Also awesome: comes fully assembled. Thanks to my most greenest C.S. for the recommendation. (And to my most helpfulest A. for the cementing.)
***
Conversation with my nine-year-old neighbor from across the street:
Mama:
Dude, did your uncle just drive up and give you money?
Littel:
Man, that's the easiest two dollars I ever made. All I had to do was get up early and pee in a cup so he could take it to work.
***
Conversation with my daughter over breakfast:
Mama:
Birdy, watch out! You almost spilled your milk.
Bird:
Mama, don't freak up.
***
What I saw today down the street at Wayne's Unisex, the haircut place that hasn't changed one bit since, oh, about 1979, and is probably the last place you'd think to take a two-year-old for a haircut, but it is so cheap and just so awesome in there:
Skinny old droopy guy, pretty tall, with paper-white hair.
Cut in the most fabulously long mullet I have ever seen.
A six hundred year old woman was trimming the "party" part straight across, which came almost down to his non-existent old-man butt.
I do not kid.
***
You know, for being a pretty handsome guy, he's not very photogenic. So I picked the most bizarre shot (a little Picassoey with all the legs, right?) to give you an idea of the Bear's new summer 'do and the distinct line between head (not shaved) and body (totally shaved).
This guy, on the other hand, is a bit more handsome. In a crazy, anxious, reclusive movie star kind of way. Tragically handsome, tragically a few horses shy of a library.
This is a somewhat terrible photo of what we like to call "the curler." When Big D gets nice and worked up, like during a thunderstorm as in this case where he nearly tried to climb into the bath with Bird, he curls his ears up in this super bizarre way, like little bat wings. The vet says he's never seen anything like it.
And how 'bout this haircut?
11 March 2008
You Make Up a Title, I'm Over It
First, a Question:
Why is Mary-Kashley Olsen famous?
Next, a Quote:
I swooped Bird up on the playground yesterday at daycare and she yanked the neck of my shirt open, looked in, and said:
"Hey Mama, you got a baby sister in your tummy for me?"
Sigh. I could have replied, "You got an extra eight hundred a month lying around somewhere that would pay for a baby sister's daycare?"
But I replied, "No, not yet. Maybe someday."
When what I kind of wished I could say was Yes.*
Now, a Puzzler:
When we bought our house almost six years ago, my mom bought us a set of sheets with an insanely high thread count as a housewarming gift. They are soft and heavy and smooth. They are (were) perfect. They cost a fortune, as sheets go.
I mentioned once to my mom that I never used any other sheets, as we had become so spoiled by the luxury of the perfect ones. I told her how I just strip the bed in the morning to wash them and put them right back on at night.
That year, for Christmas, we got another set of sheets with an only slightly-less-insanely high thread count, though they were also soft and heavy and smooth. They also cost a pretty penny.
For the next 3 or 4 years I alternated between these two sets of sheets.
This week, we noticed a hole in the fitted sheet of the first perfect set. It was a small hole that turned in a matter of nights into a gaping, ripped slash in the fabric and was the official death of that perfect sheet. I mourned.
No, seriously. I grieved that sheet.
Last night I put our OTHER set of sheets on the bed and noticed four (FOUR! MAYBE FIVE!) smallish holes in the fitted sheet, holes just like the ones that killed my first darling sheet. I know it is only a matter of nights before we will be dragging out the green sheets with their regular thread count and bitching about how it is just like sleeping under sheets of newspaper as we grieve these two hard losses. And in such a small amount of time! It's heartwrenching.
What do you think is happening? Did they have a contagious sheet disease? Could these holes be a result of sleeping on the same sheets for six years? (though the fabric was certainly worn it did not show thin spots or major signs of wear.) What the holy eff is going on in there that took two of the most wonderful fitted sheets in the whole entire world to an early grave in just a week?
And, a Non-Story.
Tuesday during my mediocre lunch at Fazoli's in Clarksville, Tennessee (when will I learn?), I couldn't help but notice the group of middle-aged, NASCAR-moms in the booth next to me. The kind of lady who will wear a Dale Earnhardt sweatshirt with a silk-screened autograph across the back, drive a Chevy Suburban and carry two keys and nine keychain doo-dads with pictures of her kids and her sister's kids and her cat and her husband back when they were in high school, and use seven gallons of hairspray each morning to support a weird hairdo only found in the South. The kind of woman who meets her best gal pals at Fazoli's for lunch.
Please note that I'm not judging. I'm observing.
And what I observed that day was that the loudest hen of the group had a cell phone that just would not stop ringing (which she answered every time), interrupting the conversation four or five times during the meal.
Her ring tone was the theme song from "Friends." And I observed in a strictly observational way what a strange thing it was that this early forties, over-sized NASCAR mom in a medium-sized town in the mid-south SO LOVED this show about fashionable, carefree twentysomethings living in New York City, so much so in fact that her love has continued in the many years since the show went off the air, so much so that she would make sure she heard the theme song at least six thousand times a day, each time envisioning those kooky Friends splooshing around in the fountain and walking into each other's apartments unannounced.
Maybe you don't think that's interesting. I think it's interesting.
*Just to make it unmistakably clear, I am not pregnant.
Why is Mary-Kashley Olsen famous?
Next, a Quote:
I swooped Bird up on the playground yesterday at daycare and she yanked the neck of my shirt open, looked in, and said:
"Hey Mama, you got a baby sister in your tummy for me?"
Sigh. I could have replied, "You got an extra eight hundred a month lying around somewhere that would pay for a baby sister's daycare?"
But I replied, "No, not yet. Maybe someday."
When what I kind of wished I could say was Yes.*
Now, a Puzzler:
When we bought our house almost six years ago, my mom bought us a set of sheets with an insanely high thread count as a housewarming gift. They are soft and heavy and smooth. They are (were) perfect. They cost a fortune, as sheets go.
I mentioned once to my mom that I never used any other sheets, as we had become so spoiled by the luxury of the perfect ones. I told her how I just strip the bed in the morning to wash them and put them right back on at night.
That year, for Christmas, we got another set of sheets with an only slightly-less-insanely high thread count, though they were also soft and heavy and smooth. They also cost a pretty penny.
For the next 3 or 4 years I alternated between these two sets of sheets.
This week, we noticed a hole in the fitted sheet of the first perfect set. It was a small hole that turned in a matter of nights into a gaping, ripped slash in the fabric and was the official death of that perfect sheet. I mourned.
No, seriously. I grieved that sheet.
Last night I put our OTHER set of sheets on the bed and noticed four (FOUR! MAYBE FIVE!) smallish holes in the fitted sheet, holes just like the ones that killed my first darling sheet. I know it is only a matter of nights before we will be dragging out the green sheets with their regular thread count and bitching about how it is just like sleeping under sheets of newspaper as we grieve these two hard losses. And in such a small amount of time! It's heartwrenching.
What do you think is happening? Did they have a contagious sheet disease? Could these holes be a result of sleeping on the same sheets for six years? (though the fabric was certainly worn it did not show thin spots or major signs of wear.) What the holy eff is going on in there that took two of the most wonderful fitted sheets in the whole entire world to an early grave in just a week?
And, a Non-Story.
Tuesday during my mediocre lunch at Fazoli's in Clarksville, Tennessee (when will I learn?), I couldn't help but notice the group of middle-aged, NASCAR-moms in the booth next to me. The kind of lady who will wear a Dale Earnhardt sweatshirt with a silk-screened autograph across the back, drive a Chevy Suburban and carry two keys and nine keychain doo-dads with pictures of her kids and her sister's kids and her cat and her husband back when they were in high school, and use seven gallons of hairspray each morning to support a weird hairdo only found in the South. The kind of woman who meets her best gal pals at Fazoli's for lunch.
Please note that I'm not judging. I'm observing.
And what I observed that day was that the loudest hen of the group had a cell phone that just would not stop ringing (which she answered every time), interrupting the conversation four or five times during the meal.
Her ring tone was the theme song from "Friends." And I observed in a strictly observational way what a strange thing it was that this early forties, over-sized NASCAR mom in a medium-sized town in the mid-south SO LOVED this show about fashionable, carefree twentysomethings living in New York City, so much so in fact that her love has continued in the many years since the show went off the air, so much so that she would make sure she heard the theme song at least six thousand times a day, each time envisioning those kooky Friends splooshing around in the fountain and walking into each other's apartments unannounced.
Maybe you don't think that's interesting. I think it's interesting.
*Just to make it unmistakably clear, I am not pregnant.
12 September 2007
I can think again, now that the temperature is below 145 degrees in Tennessee
A couple of days ago, I finally met Girl, Corrupted and her sweet Mr. Cooper, live and in person, walking toward me on the Greenway. If you don't already visit her in blogland, you should, because she likes to talk about poop, which automatically makes you a gem of a lady in my book. She reminded me that I have a blog, and I think she may have even shaken a finger at me? Hmmm. In any case. Here I am.
So never fear, readers (all four of you), I'm alive and well and mostly holding my shit together. My little mental break from/ at work has passed, and I'm back to busting it during the work week. I finished my very last class last weekend and hosted my in-laws for two nights. We traveled to Southern Indiana for Labor Day and attended no fewer than four major family functions/ events, all involving different combinations and permutations of the same group of people wearing different combinations of clothing. And this weekend is the single most big-assed fundraiser for the organization that pays me, A. will be traveling to Indy to play a sloppy drunken mess of songs with members of our old Hoosier college family, and my parents will come into town to visit/ volunteer for the fundraiser/ soak up as much Bird time as they possibly can. I lost my gigantic bundle of keys and discount tags and was made to pay the Honda dealership seven hundred thousand dollars to replace my huge, electronic car key (it has buttons on it. It is complicated.) My large dog seems to be losing his hair and his mind. Bird is getting tall. I cleaned the upstairs bathroom.
So far, September is kicking my ass.
This is just a bonus picture. She's taking a Bird Bath in the sink.
So never fear, readers (all four of you), I'm alive and well and mostly holding my shit together. My little mental break from/ at work has passed, and I'm back to busting it during the work week. I finished my very last class last weekend and hosted my in-laws for two nights. We traveled to Southern Indiana for Labor Day and attended no fewer than four major family functions/ events, all involving different combinations and permutations of the same group of people wearing different combinations of clothing. And this weekend is the single most big-assed fundraiser for the organization that pays me, A. will be traveling to Indy to play a sloppy drunken mess of songs with members of our old Hoosier college family, and my parents will come into town to visit/ volunteer for the fundraiser/ soak up as much Bird time as they possibly can. I lost my gigantic bundle of keys and discount tags and was made to pay the Honda dealership seven hundred thousand dollars to replace my huge, electronic car key (it has buttons on it. It is complicated.) My large dog seems to be losing his hair and his mind. Bird is getting tall. I cleaned the upstairs bathroom.
So far, September is kicking my ass.
This is just a bonus picture. She's taking a Bird Bath in the sink.
03 December 2006
Hairdo Report
So I went and used my year-old gift certificate and got my hair cut at the fancy salon. (Also a brow wax, which is sort of funny, because my brows are so blonde that they almost don't exist. I could let them go wild and no one would be the wiser.) It was pretty fancy-schmancy. There was a coat check girl.
The hair-doing guy didn't want to talk to me. He didn't even really want to hear how I wanted my hair to look. I started with my usual "Well I was thinking...", and then dug out my wrinkled up magazine pictures, and he was all "uh huh, uh huh, have a seat." When I took it down from the ponytail, he grimaced.
He kept thwapping me in the eye with my own wet hair as he whipped it around, proving just how uninterested he was in anything to do with anything save for the hair on my head, and by even that he seemed slightly bothered.
In the end, we warmed up, he told me he'd just had lipo, and I told him... nothing that interesting. The only question he asked me was "Did you say you have a kid?"
Imagine that in a Paris-Hilton-if-she-was-a-boy voice.
My hair looks remarkably the same, but with better ends.
Snapshots from a Marriage
Me: What time did you get in last night?
A: I don't know, it was late, I had to tear down my drums after the show. I feel really dehydrated.
Me: What a mystery.
A: I know. I don't get it. I drank a lot last night.
The hair-doing guy didn't want to talk to me. He didn't even really want to hear how I wanted my hair to look. I started with my usual "Well I was thinking...", and then dug out my wrinkled up magazine pictures, and he was all "uh huh, uh huh, have a seat." When I took it down from the ponytail, he grimaced.
He kept thwapping me in the eye with my own wet hair as he whipped it around, proving just how uninterested he was in anything to do with anything save for the hair on my head, and by even that he seemed slightly bothered.
In the end, we warmed up, he told me he'd just had lipo, and I told him... nothing that interesting. The only question he asked me was "Did you say you have a kid?"
Imagine that in a Paris-Hilton-if-she-was-a-boy voice.
My hair looks remarkably the same, but with better ends.
Snapshots from a Marriage
Me: What time did you get in last night?
A: I don't know, it was late, I had to tear down my drums after the show. I feel really dehydrated.
Me: What a mystery.
A: I know. I don't get it. I drank a lot last night.
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