Don't Swear in Front of My Kid!!

Okay, so.  Thanks to Hurricane Isaac, we don't have power so I'm sitting at TWH's office typing this.  Everyone is comparing stories of how bad their lives are at the moment.  (Let me digress for a minute by saying not only do we NOT have power, I haven't had coffee in over 24 hours. So now, not ONLY did I have to take a cold shower this morning, I've barely slept, I'm uncaffeinated, and it's SHARK WEEK for me. I win mofos!! I motherfucking WIN!!)

Anyways, I'm set up in an empty cubicle at TWH's office with TB on his laptop in the next cubicle.  From over the wall, I hear some guy telling his tale of woe and he says "Fucking".  For some reason, THIS makes me cringe.  I started to stand up and give him The Death Glare while pointing to TB and saying "My KID is in this cubicle!!"  Because I'm a big ol' hypocrite. Obviously.

I've said before that I write like I talk. EXACTLY like I talk.  I can be heard at my house swearing like a sailor simply because I can't get some schmutz off a dish. Or I dropped something. Or I tripped over one of the Dawgs. Or it's a day that ends with "Y". Whatever. My point is, for some reason, I've decided it's perfectly fine for me to swear in front of my kids but for someone else to do it??
Oh. HELL. NO!!  It drives me batshit crazy.  Don't talk like that in front of my kid!!  I'M the only one that can talk like that in front of my kid!!

Inconsiderate Asshole. Watch your damn language already!!

Hurricane Malaise

Okay, so.  We're STILL waiting on Hurricane Issac.  I've gone from kind of nervous to flat-out bored.  I have dubbed this Hurricane Malaise.  I keep thinking about all the crap I COULD be doing around here with the two free days I have found myself with.

I keep thinking "Hey!!  We could re-hang the mantle!!  No, SHIT!!  TWH's drills are in the storage room."  I know that doesn't sound like any big deal but we piled ALL THE THINGS in front of the door to the storage room.  Then we parked my Jeep in front of all THAT stuff.  There is NO running out and grabbing something.  At. All.

I woke up and told TWH this morning  "Y'know, I didn't prepare for this for shit.  I could have had the cabinets painted, the mantle re-hung, and the shelf put back up above the bench. As it stands, I'm not doing jack shit".  TWH reminded me that he suggested we leave some stuff in the house but none of it was stuff I was gonna use.  I need stuff for NEW projects. Not ones I've finished.

So I have Hurricane Malaise.  I am wandering around the house, trying to find shit to do.  I'm bored out of my skull.

I guess I can go clean the bathroom.  AGAIN.

Then maybe a nap.

This waiting for a hurricane stuff is HARD!!

My First Big Storm

Okay, so. I have a confession to make.  I have lived in SOLA for 14 years and this is my first Hurricane.  I know, I'm a weenie.

Katrina would have been my first real storm.  We lived & died by The Weather Channel that week and I had a pretty good idea of the SIZE of the storm, but had no idea what any of it meant. TWH, who was our resident Hurricane expert having gone through Hurricane Andrew, kept telling me it was no big deal and so I continued on with my life. I cleaned the bathrooms. I did laundry. I fielded phone calls from friends & family. The first one being from my friend Marti who lived in Japan at the time. I answered the phone to her yelling "WHY IN THE HELL ARE YOU STILL THERE!?!?!".  I STILL didn't think it was a big deal.  TWH said everything was FINE.  I tend to take everything my husband says at face value so I thought everything was cool.

Until about 3 in the afternoon.  That's when TWH comes into the bedroom where I was folding clothes and sheepishly says "Y'know... I just got a good look at the storm...  It's a LOT bigger than I thought...  Maybe we should go to Mom & Dads".

I stood there staring at him for a few seconds before I yelled "Pack a bag!!  We have to leave!!"

In hindsight, I could have handled that better.  TB was 6 and kinda freaked out.  He packed his suitcase with nothing but shirts & underwear & I packed like we were never returning.  I checked TBs bag.  TWH checked MY bag.  We finally got everything we needed to leave and jumped into the van.

Out normally 4 hour drive took 8.  We arrived safely in Minden around midnight.  We watched the horror of Katrina on the news.  We swam in the pool when we weren't riveted to the television. We were safe. We were lucky.

Now we're facing down Issac.  We're not going anywhere.  Again, TWH says it's no biggie.  Again I am taking him at his word.  Because that's what I do.  I'm kinda nervous though.

I hope I have enough alcohol...

DIY Meltdown

Okay, so.  We want to sell our house.  In order to sell our house, we need to do some updating.  The key word there being WE.  Not "We need to HAVE some updating done".  "WE need to do some updating".  You see the distinction??

We redid the counter tops in the kitchen. In order to take off the Formica counter tops, we had to take down the upper cabinets because the folks who did the kitchen originally thought Formica would make an AWESOME back-splash and when they were done, they mounted the cabinets over the Formica. They also mounted the cabinets off center for the openings for the stove and refrigerator. So they had to come down anyway.

Cabinets & counter tops GONE

I now have boxes of dishes, cabinets, cabinet doors and everything off the counter tops taking over my dining room & living room.  I just got done cleaning AROUND the piles because the Dawgs still shed like crazy and we still track stuff in the house.

My DIY mess & the Crackhaid Dawg

Yes, this IS in front of my fireplace. On TOP of a newly painted cabinet.

I am about to lose my shit.  I can't really, because this was pretty much all my idea, but still...
AAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!

My bedroom is nice and neat.  Maybe I'll just hide out in there for the next few weeks...

Is it wrong to hope (not really) that a tree falls on my house during the hurricane??  At least THEN all this would be someone else's problem.

I have to go move some boxes now.  I just spotted a small fur drift I need to vacuum up.

There's a Hurricane a Comin'

Okay, so.  I live in SOLA (South Louisiana) and there's a hurricane coming.  I knew there was a hurricane tracking into the Gulf of Mexico but until TODAY, I didn't realize it was HEADED RIGHT FOR US.

We went into the Home Depot once yesterday and twice today and it wasn't until our SECOND trip today, after I saw no less than FIVE people walking out of the store with portable air conditioner units on those little flatbed hand trolley thingies that it hit me.  The Home Depot was PACKED.  So I brilliantly asked the lady behind the counter "Has the Hurricane tracked further west since yesterday??".  She looked at me like I was stupid for a second before she replied "As of 10:30 this morning, it was headed right for New Orleans".  Typically, when there's a storm in the Gulf, I live and die by The Weather Channel but we're STILL working on our kitchen and I had it in my head that THIS was the weekend that I BY GAWD got the upper cabinets painted.  Those fucking things have been a huge pain in the ass and I'm sick to death of plastic cups, plates, & cutlery.  I used a real fork tonight for the first time in a week and I can honestly say I was GIDDY with joy.  GIDDY I say!!

Needless to say, I hardly watched ANY television, much less The Weather Channel.  I of course, hopped right on my laptop when I got home and began looking at the latitude and longitude of the storm (N.O. is 30 & 90 BTW) and all the potential tracks for the storm.  Sure enough, we're right in the MIDDLE of what I term "The Cone of Doom".

As I painted the rest of my cabinets this afternoon, in the bright sunshine, one thing kept going through my head. It was a take of the song the Billy Goat sang in Hoodwinked.

"There's a Hurricane a comin' and I do not feel prepared"

Guess I'll make sure we all have clean underwear & a full tank of gas should we have to get the hell out of dodge.

Like I'm gonna stick around for that shit!!

We're SO gonna spend a week at Camp Grandma & Grandpa lounging in the pool.

I Get the Giggles

Okay, so.  I am not athletic. Every attempt at sports I have tried over the last decade or so has landed me in the ER with some God-awful injury or other.  I am also not a whiner.  I am, however, the happiest ER patient you will ever, EVER meet.  I am a giggler.

I will enter the ER/Dr's office making quips & jokes about EVERYTHING and laughing at my own funny.  Poor TWH has had to explain to any number of Physicians & staff that I am NOT high, nor did I recieve any type of head injury.  That is my coping skill. I laugh.  I laugh because for some reason, it never occurs to me to cry.

I tell you this as a lead in to THIS.

My mutha-flippin' big toenail is about to come off.  It has become a sacrifice to the renovation Gods.  I have NO idea when I actually broke the toenail. I noticed it last Saturday when I got out of the shower.  I was applying lotion when I noticed something was "Off" about my big toe. I bent over for a closer look and noticed it was crooked so I pushed on it.

It. Moved.

I absolutely lost my shit.  I started yelling for TWH who came running into the bedroom to find me giggling and babbling about my toenail.

(Side note: This is # 3 on the List of Things That Will Freak Me the Hell Out. #1: Spiders  #2: My own blood  #3: Partial/Whole loss of a toenail/fingernail.)

TWH has me get on the bed so he can look.  I lay down with a pillow over my head giggling hysterically and trying to be at least 6 inches taller than I actually am so as to put MORE distance between my head & my foot.  It was awful.

T wanted a look too so yesterday I took off the THREE Band-Aids that are holding my toenail on & showed him.

Oh. My. GAWD!!  He was fascinated with that shit!!  He kept trying to fiddle with it until I was SCREAMING with hysterical laughter, sweating, & shaking.

It wasn't pretty.

Now I'm afraid the nail has FINALLY come all the way off.  I think the Band-Aids are ALL that's holding it on.  I'm terrified of taking the Band-Aids off.  Leaving them on until the sticky just gives out is okay right??

RIGHT!?!

I may have to be sedated.

50 Shades of BFD

Okay, so. I know I'm late to the book porn party but I FINALLY started reading 50 Shades of Grey.  I had avoided reading it simply BECAUSE everyone else was.  Everyone was also talking about it nonstop so I almost felt like I didn't have to read it. I had a pretty good handle on it.

My hairdresser read this book on her cruise and foisted her copy off on me while gushing about how awesome it was.  You guys, my first book porn was Ann Rice's* Sleeping Beauty when I was 19. I found it stuffed in the backseat of a used car the guy I was dating at the time had just purchased.  Never one to pass up a free book (or any book, really) I dove right in.

50 Shades ain't* Sleeping Beauty.  This isn't even close.

The book sat on my counter for 2 days mocking me before I sighed in resignation and began reading it.  Almost 100 pages in, TWH asked me how I liked it.  My response was "So far, it's 50 Shades of Big Fucking Deal".  His response "Oh..."

I think he may be waiting for the porn part to kick in.

I can't believe how unrealistically Ana is written.  Never masturbated??  Really??

I'm going to finish this book.  One of my quirks is that I can NOT put a book down unfinished. I will hold on to the thought that it will get better until the very end when I have a total "What the HELL??  That's it??  I spent DAYS reading this book and it sucked from beginning to end??  Sonofabitch!!" moment.

It could always get better...  Right??  RIGHT!?!?


* Ann Rice wrote the Sleeping Beauty trilogy under the name A.N. Roquelaire. (Spelling??)

*Yes, I used Ain't.  I'm Southern. I only use that word to indicate extreme derision. It is NOT part of my daily vocabulary.

Souvenirs

Okay, so.  You go on vacation, you bring back souvenirs.  I personally prefer magnets. My refrigerator is COVERED in magnets I have picked up on my travels.

Sometimes, when your friends go on vacation, they'll bring you back a little something. Just because they saw something they knew you'd appreciate.

My friend Lann went on vacation to North Carolina with his family and brought me THIS:

It's my Travel Chicken!!  My client/friend Michael helped me name it. We named it Oprah. Because as my TC, it's gonna be freakin' EVERYWHERE!!  Much like Oprah.  Lann said we have to pronounce it "Ofrah" with a British accent a la Austin Powers.

THEN, because my friends weren't already awesome enough, Dwayne went on vacation with HIS family to Tennessee,  (Yes, I know a lot of guys. I work in a barber shop for fuck's sake.) and brought me THIS:

Gen-u-ine Apple Pie Moonshine!! Whoo Lawdy that stuff is GOOD!!  He said they're about to start selling at Sam's Club. I may turn into a full-on drunk if they do.

Metal Chickens & Booze.  It's enough to make a gal kinda weepy. If I did that kind of shit.

The Convicts Got My Digits

Okay, so.  A month or so ago, I answered my cell without looking at the Caller ID.  I was greeted with "Hello, this is the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison with a call from (mumbled name). Press 1 to Accept, 2 to Decline, and 3 to Block". I went with option 4 which was Freak the Hell Out and Hang Up.

Yesterday and today, my cell phone rang several times with some random 800 number. This afternoon,  I finally answer (with the intention of giving whatever telemarketer was on the other end a dog-cussing) when to my disbelief, I hear "Hello, this is Blah Blah Detention Center.."  Needless to say, I went with the "Block" option.

I promptly text TWH with "OMG!! That 800 number was ANOTHER prisoner from ANOTHER prison!!"
TWH responded with "You got prisoners with your digits...  It may be some guy in the slammer that says 'For a good time call..."
:D
"You are popular!!!
:D

I responded with "Ummmmmm... Yay??"
"I guess if a Good Time constitutes listening to me Cuss them up one side and down the other for calling me then they got the right number..."

TWH said my fans would be disappointed. I told him I'd pencil in some time to cry about it later.

If this keeps up, I'm gonna be sending A LOT of complaint forms to A LOT of prisons.

Or block half the population of some Cell Block....