Thursday, October 21, 2010

No Poo in this story!

At 4 a.m. I was finally trying to go to bed. Much too tired to shut off the bedside lamp, I rolled to one side and squeezed my eyes shut. My efforts were made impossible because of the cat that was acting tortured on the other side of the bedroom door.

Thanks to the husband, he ruined our cohabitation situation when we moved to the new place. There is no privacy in the bedroom anymore!

Sort of hoping to experience for the first time in all of the years of pussycat ownership a feline-free sleeping environment I'd opted to not invite any of them into my boudoir. It was a little experiment of sorts and then one afternoon he thought, oh my my wife looks like she could use her baby-girls company.

The door opens and in comes..LUNA!

Holy Smokes!

I LOVE THAT CAT. Don't get me wrong. That cat is my heart. She's tattooed just above my heart, I've had her for nearly 12 years now and I can't imagine her gone. I want to clone her. I don't ever want her to go, don't even speak of it!
She's the reason I fell madly deeply in love with the breed and she's the reason that I worked so hard for so many years in attempt to better it.

Luna knows this and uses it to her advantage.

Do you know the old wives tale about how a cat will creep into a baby crib and snatch the breath of a baby, murdering it.

I'm the baby and Luna is out to kill me - but only because she loves me.
She wants to crawl inside of me and share the same heartbeat, she wants to taste the food I'm eating using my mouth and tongue. She wants to speak with my vocal cords, and if she could...she would try to make love to my husband. She wants to receive his attention because she's extremely jealous when he touches me, will push her way between us.
Let's just say she's a demanding cat.

All of my years alive I've been a poor sleeper and when I added her to my life I soon started getting even less. She's a comfort to have in the beginning, holding her soft sweet body and feeling the gently rumble of her purrs but soon she creeps and slithers out of your grasp.

Inching up your body, hugging close to you but using her nails to make sure she has a tight purchase..she wouldn't want to lose touch or have someone remove her from the one thing she values the very most in the world!


Oh NO, and if anyone DOES try to take her away from me or the bed she SCREAMS at them.

MEH MEH - she miaows in a way that is comical. mouth wide open, lips curled back a touch to expose those razor sharp teeth and then she flattens her tongue and sticks it out partially...MEH MEH

For the first 2.5 weeks I slept. Not a lot because I just don't sleep a lot, but it was without a cat on my face, without a foot in my mouth, without a tail slapping me in the eyes, without cat litter in the sheets or a smear of crap sometimes finding its way on your pillowcase in the middle of the night and you are surprised by the odor when you roll your face right into it.

Yup, 2.5 weeks I felt like I had a good thing going and then, well, then Luna found her way back into the comfort zone. She forgot she was a 'cat' and she became the bedroom queen again. She comes in and becomes a demanding diva, hogging up space, wanting to be on the best pillow and she'll somehow roll herself up like some sort of kitty chimmichanga in my fleece blanket.

I never know how to unravel her, there doesn't seem to be an opening to where you can safely yank her out and I wonder how the fuck did she get in there to start with?

If I don't open that bedroom door for her she will sit outside of it and start scratching like a dog does to go out to shit. Those 10 claws grating on your nerves and she's persistent and knows that eventually you'll just give in.
I'll tell her "NO" ..."Go Away"...maybe I'll even toss a few things at the door and hope it'll chase her off.

No such luck, because then she'll put her paws under the door with wrists turned so she can get a purchase and then start shimmying the whole thing.

How in the Hell does this tiny old cat that looks like a vanilla bat-Gremlin managed to jiggle a solid core wooden door until I can feel the whole house shaking? Maybe its just my imagination because my nerves are frayed and I'm about to go straight out of my mind.

Grumbling to myself now..swearing..'fucking husband,letting her in and now I have to deal with this shit all of the time... while you sleep through it...'

I get up and open the door just a crack and she comes running in like she's got the Grim Reaper on her tail. Zips passed me before I can even lean over and snatch her up and while I'm trying to get her another one comes in.
FUCK.
While she's running by me she's yelling. MEH MEH MEH. Her announcement that she's in and she's won the battle. Ha Ha Ha human, I'm in and now you can't get rid of me.

Prepare the bed, I'm ready for my slumber. I want a massage as well. Rub my back, stroke my head and ears until I close my eyes and fall asleep. No, not until YOU fall asleep.

Both leap into the bed and get between where the husband and I sleep. This is where the blankets have been jammed into a heap its where I've flung them off of me to go and open the door. Perfect, I can already see the tiny gears working in her head and she's thinking, "my very own dream mountain".

She pile drives into it and somehow is immediately gone, her disappearing act performed before my very eyes and she becomes the kitty-chimmi just like that.

I lay down, curl up and shiver because I've lost my bedding and stare at the wall listening to the snores around me until I fall asleep.
When I wake up I can't see anything because my face is being smothered by Luna tummy.


Did I wake up because I heard something, had to pee or because I was gasping for air?

Sunday, October 17, 2010

the glass slipper

It's cleaning day.

The bleach is murder on my lungs but it is a necessary evil when one has cats and dogs.

One of the cats is a real shitter. We call her poopfoot. It never fails, she must hop into the box take a healthy steamer & get a schmear onto her tail.
She will back up over the heap, bounding out of the sandbox with a mighty leap and zoom throughout the house flinging fecal matter this way and that.

Before you know it she has managed to decorate and leave a trail of dookie here there and everywhere. You will see her 4 toed rear footprints in the most surprising locations, such as: the top of refrigerator or ledges of doors. Mind you, this is a 12.5 lb cat.

Sphynx cats have unnaturally long toes that remind one of gnarled gnomish phalanges. They are also quite adept with them, using them to pick up toys, bring food to their mouth and pawing their owners faces.
Because of these tootsies they also have the ability to climb into their kitty toilets, stand about doing some business and when they have a handful of pebbles to cover up any doodie they usually have a bit extra trapped between the webbing..taking it with them on the trip back out while scattering it all over the house!

Lucky owners that we are, we are left to sweep and mop up the remains constantly. Slaves to the cats. Long ago I gave up the Hoover for a ShopVac.

Dragging along one of those canisters, the powerful motor running and humming reliably and promising to suction up every granule.
Never missing a thing, making my chore easier..never any harder than necessary.
One trip through with that honey and then I can get right to work with my bucket of water, that's where the real work starts no thanks to my effing' mother and her training.

Why did I have to learn this habit from her?
Onto my hands and knees I crawl with a scrub brush in 1 hand, a rag in the other. My assault like Cinderella minus the glass slipper but I can feel the hot breath of an evil step-mother haunting me.

I think that perhaps it might be one of my old cats with halitosis, they come to assist me with all of the chores, breathing down my neck. Shoo them away all you want but they come back just like a bad penny.

Dunking my brush into the bucket saturate the tiles, I scrub and swirl, scrub and swirl feeling my underarm flab sway with the motion. I think to myself that if I did this every day maybe I wouldn't have underarm flab!

Nope, I'm not going to do that!

I work a 4 foot section, dunking my rag in and giving it a good wipe down, ringing it out, rinse and..
Repeat.

The water turns gunky and I know its time to switch it out. Is it because of the color? Or my hands have turned prune-like?
Maybe its the fact that I've tie-dyed yet another wife-heater with bleach, good thing I buy stock in these just for cleaning days.

My face is beet red, knees have dirt and litter ground into them and I have a line of sweat rolling down my butt crack.
Dead sexy!

Dragging the bucket to the basin because I'm not supposed to lift heavy stud yet, I scootch it all the way there until I reach my destination then steel myself for the heave-Ho.
Lift-grunt-pour.

Naturally (like an idiot) I splash myself, refill and start the next section of the house.

When I'm all finished with hand scrubbing the whole house I will go back through with a mop of citrus scented soap, this way the house won't reek of bleach. I had the windows flung open but it didn't help much because I had my nose jammed into the pail sniffing fumes the entire time.

Not even close to being unpacked, the Rubbermaid boxes are now landmines throughout the joint. Most are stacked into corners but some ate Willy nilly and have become cat jungle gyms, they need to be swept around and are just one more surface to clean.

Tomorrow I am having company over, the mortification begins.
I really can't stand seeing the place in such disrepair but what can I do? There isn't a magic wand to wave and then have it all miraculously put itself away.
The good news is (for everyone)....
My visitor is coming to install the internet!

Hot diggity damn! I will finally be back amongst my little world of social networking. Connected again to 'friends', able to upload my blogs, chat with total strangers, look at porn, play online games, Google stuff, (or myself..wait that's looking at porn) also forget about cleaning the house for awhile!

So I'd better make sure that the housework is attended to for the time being. After this fella gets his job done..its all going to Hell in a hand basket for a few days.
I'm going to be attached to the keyboard and screen for 24/7 until my eyes dry out and my fingers fall off.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Unloading a batch of cigars

Nearly every morning starts off the same way.
I roll out of bed with a groan and feel Helen’s tail start whapping away at my ankles. She’s excited to start her day and heads straight for the bedroom door to wait patiently for me to get my bearings.

This is how we attack our first hour of the morning.

Me, bathroom to relieve self and make sure I haven’t lost all of my hair or grown a wart. Helen sits patiently in the doorway watching me as I sit on the commode, her tail still swishing back and forth.

I wash my hands, brush my teeth and then tell her it’s time to go downstairs.
She then heads down in a rush, zooming and trying her best not to brush against or knock over the cats that are littering the thoroughfare.

Through the living room, through the dining room, zipping through the kitchen and ending up at the glass doors that go out onto the backyard patio.
Poncho and Jake are downstairs waiting for her, hyper as little dogs are – prancing and scrabbling around in their doggy palace (i.e. crate trained for bedtime).

Everyone touches noses, discuss what they dreamt about the night before and bound outside onto the grass to tumble and roughhouse for a few minutes. I sit down into one of the patio chairs, take a deep breath and enjoy the cool morning air and enjoy watching my threesome play.

I let them goof for a minute, watching as Jake and Poncho have a field day pissing on everything in a 20 foot radius. If I’m not careful, Poncho will come over and give my ankle or the chair I’m in a good whizzing.

The world must know “She’s Mine”!

After I feel they have satisfactorily emptied their doggy bladders it’s time to remind Helen to do the same. She’s a good dog, smart really but when it comes to her hygiene she’s a bit of an idiot. Quite literally she’d hold her pee all day long (poop too) until she was busting her britches. You have to tell her to go or she’ll just run and play, goof around and then come back inside and realize..OH NO I DIDN’T PEE!

That said, I give her the command, “Helen- Go PeePee”

The neighbors probably think I’m a raving lunatic by now, hearing that a few times a day.
She waddles about until she finds just the right spot; she has already dedicated a 6x6 area as the toilet and doesn’t like to stray far from it.

Squats and then runs back to me when I praise her with a “Good Girl”.
Those “Good Girls” will get me doggy wiggles, tail wags, tongue licks and lying on her back to have her tummy rubbed. She will do just about anything for a “Good Girl”

Now I will attempt the more difficult command…in a moment.

Let’s let her run it out a little bit more.
Play, play..and play.
”Get her Poncho”

This is a great activity though I think that some people would frown upon it. Tough shit I say. This command sets the dogs into a spin, ‘round they go about the yard weaving this way and that through the obstacles. 2 BBQ grills, stack of lumber, chain-link dog kennel that wasn’t set up.

I would have thought it impossible because of Poncho’s age (10) but that little stinker runs at Roadrunner speeds, tackles Helen, pulling her down and she lovingly falls onto her back to expose her throat as he mock-kills her. She absolutely WANTS him to maul her throat and face.

While he’s going to town on her, nipping and pulling at her ears and wrapping his needle shaped muzzle around her thick neck, Jake is bouncing around the 2 of them and pawing like a kitten with a giant ball of yarn.

He’s so tiny compared to Helen and he’s quite small even compared to Poncho but the 2 of those bigger dogs let him in to play and are forever gentle with him. It’s as if they know they could damage him but they do want him to be involved.

Sometimes Poncho will let Jake do all of the attacking, the racing around the yard is a lot slower, seeing how Jake’s legs are about as long as my thumbs. Once he gets the chance to pounce on Helen he is a vicious little shit, much rougher than Poncho ever is but I suspect that his bite feels like mosquito’s to her.

If Helen makes any move to toss him or be a little too aggressive while Jake’s doing his business Poncho sounds his alarm and starts barking at her.
I’m quite the lucky little dog owner, all 3 of these dogs are quiet.

QUIET! Not toy breed yappers that go berserk when they hear a mouse fart. They are nice and quiet and only bark when it’s necessary. A finger to my lips and a shush will quiet them in moments.
It’s come in handy when a few wankers have been at the door knocking.
Go away Jehovah, I don’t want any!

The few minutes of rowdiness is allowed and then I give the poop command. Helen gives me a look of “awww Mom I’m still playing” but stops, wanders over to toilet square and squats.
If she can’t muster a turd, she’ll look guilty and scuttle around working her way back to my seat waiting for the praise she knows isn’t coming. I will still pet her but not reward her with the G.G.
She also knows that it’s time for the best reward of all, time for a run.

You know damn well that I’M NOT RUNNING! Holy shit, the very idea of me running, arms pumping up and down and chest heaving, air rasping through my tight lungs is just giving me a fit thinking about it.

We walk back inside and go back through the kitchen towards the treadmill which I have set up facing the flatscreen in the living room.
Yes, this is an excellent motivator. I can put in a movie that is 1.5-2 hours long and sweat it out a few times a week.

“Helen, On!”
She willingly steps onto the belt and sits waiting for me to reach up to the keypad and start punching in the numbers and time for her workout.
Helen is a working dog mixed breed, I figured out the hard way that if she didn’t get worn out daily she would take up to being destructive around the house. Since I don’t have 10 acres for her to run and plan on, which would be best suited for a dog like her – she will have to settle for the NordicTrack.

The belt starts moving, her grin widens even more and she starts trotting along looking this way and that. The cats come up and sit on the deck to watch her sometimes, not sure if it bugs her but she seems to tolerate everything and takes it in stride.

Here’s the deal, if you go back to a past blog you’ll know that we’ve had an issue about flying objects from the treadmill. I have now resorted to placing paper towels at the foot of the machine each day of her run.
Now if she’s dropped her dung, pinched her loaf and blasted a dookie outside I feel 100% safe that the house will be deuce free. But, even that 100% can be destroyed if she’s been withholding and the next thing you know she’s makin’ gravy and her audience will come a’running to see what the stink is all about!

She never breaks stride though – a true athlete.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

On the cover of a magazine..just Vogue

If I go out I’m perfectly happy to toss on one of my many graphic tee-shirts & some denim pants but back in the late 80s and early 90s I considered myself one tough little shit.
My hair was dyed black (and then purple, blue, shades of blonde that turned green from chlorine at the school sanctioned mandatory swimming), wearing my dad’s WWII trench coat and had some Doc Martin’s.
I had my hair cut super short all around except for my bangs which hung long and heavy over my eyes, leaving my face in mystery and I could give everyone this angry brooding attitude.

“No one understands me, no one loves me”

Locking myself in my room I’d play The Smiths, Cure and R.E.M and feel sorry for myself.

Funny how back in the day when “The Breakfast Club” was released, girls like me could SO relate to Ally Sheedy’s character Allison Reynolds but today in my prime I look down on the same PUNK kids.

C’mon, they aren’t trying to be INDIVIDUALS speaking out, trying to impact the world by being unique. You can’t be unique if you run in packs, like rabid dogs, snarling and jostling everywhere you go in order to gain attention.

Last week while in my daily search for free WiFi I found a comfortable seat in the center of one of the shopping malls. Right outside of the MajorNameBrandComputerGiantandIconographicImage there was a quadrant of pleather settees in fall colors, they were very inviting and I found my tush fit perfectly.

A few seats away from me sat a good looking gentleman probably 10-12 years older than myself. He was very sharply dressed in camel coloured light weight pleated wool slacks, a button down long sleeved dress shirt and gorgeous square toe snakeskin boots.

He was a real put together package; he managed it without excessive man-bling and looked great.

We nod to one another with a polite smile and then return our attention to the electronic devices exiting briefcases only looking up now and then to see the parade pass by.

The punk & goth kids noisily colliding into one another as they skitter about the aisles, pushing each other and making a racket. Definitely they are trying to get as much attention as possible, considering themselves anarchists, distinctive because they express themselves through the black hair and gothic clothes yet they were all mirrors of one another.

Little do they realize that they are a cliché unto themselves, a parody of what used to be real expression? Instead they are little more than angry, confused Emo without any real imagination.

Good Looking and I see these kids and both purse our lips in distaste but say nothing.
Return to the tapping of keys.

All sorts of people are streaming by and I’m getting an eyeful and it occurs to me, this is the perfect fodder for one of my rants. Just how much I want to blather on about it remains to be seen.

The muscle-heads with hulking shoulders and tiny waists and itty bitty asses ((we all know that their repeated use of synthetic enhancers have grown the wrong muscles “if you ask me”)) are sauntering around, throwing poses now and then if they catch the eye of a pretty girl (OR GUY!)
I’d rather have a slightly flabby man with a rock-hard cock than a beefy brute.
HA! I just heard you gasp!

You know who really cracks me up the most though?

Bitches. Bitches that just don’t realize that they are so fake that they deserve a good slap upside the head to help them shake the shit off their faces and the bullshit ideas out of their heads.

You are not better than the rest of us bitches.
Not long ago when I was in the cat exhibition hobby I had a saying about uppity bitches involved in the upper echelons of the fancy, “at the end of the day we all go home and have to scoop shit, you aren’t any better than me – we all have shit on our hands.”

Same goes for fake ass bitches you see in shopping malls, restaurants, driving over-priced cars with sunglasses that cost more than my monthly grocery bills.
You are still human like the rest of us. You get up, have smelly breath, get ingrown toenails, your nose-hair grows long and needs trimming and no one is going to wipe your ass if you get the shits.
If they do AND you want them to, then you are one sick fucker.

Fashion is funny, it’s wonderful to see the creativity involved but let’s face it, it isn’t for Joe Blow or Mary Smith-Jones either.

Ya’ll look as out of place wearing high fashion to the department stores as I would wearing a wetsuit and snorkel to play on a Slip N Slide.

My companion and I look up to witness a pair of young ladies strolling, arms laden down with bags and you could hear peals of laughter and tittering coming from them.

The temperature that day was 90F without a cloud in the sky and the mall has wide open ceilings of glass letting in the days sunlight come pouring in.
These girls were dressed all in body hugging black. Off the shoulder blouses with glints of faux jewels, big fat gold chains dripping from their scrawny necks and leather skinny leggings that squeezed every inch of their emaciated body.

If they had any body fat, it would have been puckered up and dimpled through the fabric. They had to have greased their asses and made a running leap into these in order to get into on.
Without help from the Jaws of Life I couldn’t see how they’d get back out of those.

Both had hair that had been teased, combed, teased, sprayed, flat ironed, curled and then sprayed into gigantic nests which were too perfectly messy to have been by accident.

What really brought our attention to this particular pair of dingdongs was the footwear.
Black hair, black shirts, black belts cinching waspish waists, black pants gripping skinny buns and the leggings ending abruptly to these enormous pristine snow white furry-wooly boots.

I think they call them UUGs which is exactly my response (and his) when we got a gander of this pair of bitches. It was as if they’d been on a hunting expedition in a cryptozoological reserve and bagged a couple of Yeti.

Maybe they went to the Himalayas and came face to face with the Abominable Snowmen and instead of showing fear; they yanked out of their Prada backpacks some blinged out scimitars and cleanly beheaded them.

After ceremoniously dancing around the bleeding carcasses, dropping it like it’s hot (‘cuz it’s cold as a mother there), they gutted the poor creatures and took the pelts off to a cave where a rogue Sherpa awaited them in order to sew them this awful footwear.

Maybe I can roll up my Levi’s to expose my calves and ankles (that I haven’t shaved in a very long time) and it would it pass for fashion?

Saturday, October 9, 2010

They sing, "I Will Survive"

This has been quite a few interesting weeks for me.

I'm finally into the house at long last, which is a great relief. Seriously, I feel like I'm taking a breath of fresh air. The stifling weight of Hillbillyville was absolutely murdering me one cell at a time.
Sort of like smoking a fatty except I didn't get high, it was harshing my mellow. Every day I woke up a little more angry, some days I had bouts of absolute depression and complete rage at the same time.

Initially when the man moved out to start the project I stayed behind in our other house and commuted a few times a month to visit, get some good lovin' and prepare meals. It worked out for a while but after a bit we both started to feel lonely, it was putting pressure on our friendship and I didn't like maintaining a house by myself.

It was easier to close up and move in with him and enjoy sharing the same bed even if he does snore like a chainsaw that has lodged into a 200 year old Sequoia.

Even though I highly doubt the tubs are ever going to have the lids removed or the goodies scattered about (making it homey) we will settle in for the long haul and I feel at 'home' at long last.

The other house is vacant still, gathering cobwebs and those pesky wood-roaches local to the area. They like sneaking into houses using every tiny crack to escape the looming winter and find a cozy place inside.

You would not believe the size of those sons of bitches! Quite literally if a nuclear event were to happen and we did persevere this would have to be our main source of food. Don't worry, a handful of these black revolting creepers would satisfy any hunger pangs.

One of the man's previous projects had us living in central Mississippi. Wow, what a culture shock that was after being from the Midwest all of my life. I remember when he telephoned to tell me about some of the rental properties he was looking at prior to my arrival.

One particular home he visited in the early dusk hours, he said that he saw one exterior wall that looked to be an entirely different color of brick & mortar. Once he closed in, turned on a flash light the wall started to scramble about and hundreds of these gruesome crawlies ran for the roof, the other side of the house and zipped down to the ground to disappear in the grass.

He said, NO way on this one and eventually found a really nice property which didn't appear to be infested but sure enough, on colder rainy days they would come in..strolling as if they owned the place. Shoulders squared and they'd sidle up to the bar and demand a beer and a shot of whiskey.

I can't say that I'd scream (all of the time). Every now then however, just when you are sitting quietly on the sofa a buzzing sound would swoop past your ear and that's when the shrieking would happen.

Arms would be flying around above head something akin to the Robot on "Lost in Space"

It didn't take me long to get on the phone, nearly breathless with wonder and worry to ask the exterminators in town the following question: How do I get rid of them?
Several of the companies just said that it was impossible.

One though, one of them thought they'd be smart-asses (which I can fully relate to) and a fellow said to me, "Ma'am, go on down to the pet-store and find some leashes because you've just adopted new pets. These things are here to stay. If you have German roaches I can kill those, if you have silverfish I can kill those too - Hell I can pretty much kill anything except those...so just get used to it."

I accepted my company after that conversation, sure didn't like it but I had to take the bad with the good.

The good? What could be good about wood roaches prancing into the house on any given day?

The entertainment value it added when the cat's would go scurrying after them all the while chattering and alerting me that there were intruders. This way I could snatch up my trusty swatter and give chase to demolish them - if they didn't splat with my thunderous wallop I would crush them under my feet.

The sound of this is a surprising snap and a pop, I would even get a disturbing satisfaction like one does when they pop bubble wrap.

Final act: squish and pivot. The results are their whitish guts splattering on the floor and sticking to your sole.

Disappointment for the cats, the spoils were mine and I am trigger fast with a paper towel to swipe up the goo and flush.

For me.

VICTORY!

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Better living through Chemistry

I have an extraordinary amount of prescription medication that would make most junkies eyes gleam with joy.

For years I went without diagnosis simply because I didn’t have the resources to visit doctors and then when I did, there were doctors that were stumped or refused to accept that unseen ailments could actually cause disturbances of the body.

These days though, we see on the television all sorts of commercials for pain medications and antidepressants, counseling centers and hospitals that are completely focused on these issues.
I figure that someone finally pushed through their own discomfort or had a loved one that was suffering and it caused them to seek answers, to try and help others that were in their own little Hell every day. Unfortunately pills don’t solve a damn thing, they just ease some discomfort for the time being.

On one particular day when I was down again with pain, with the flu and my COPD flared up I gave up and went in to see the physician. When I get the triple whammy like this it means bending over for a steroid injection in the ass, an X-ray to check how full my lungs are and then a trip to the local pharmacy to fill up a prescription of antibiotics and cough suppressant.
My nights would be filled with wheezing and hacking for at least another week before these medications hit home, nothing ever works quickly on me – I suppose I am to suffer.

This particular doctors office requires you to bring in your medications each time you come in, don’t ask me why – I think it’s stupid as shit. You’d think that if THEY are the one’s giving you prescriptions all of the time they’d keep a list of them? They don’t keep very accurate records I suppose and you have to trot these down every single time.

I get a knapsack and haul the lot with me, each time the bag bumps against my hip when I walk you can hear pills and capsules clink and clack against each other. Step, jiggle, clink, clack, shuffle, click, step (grunt).

“How are you doing today?”
I always follow that with, “what do you think? I’m here, in the doctor’s office…so I must be doing poorly.” Or something to that affect.

Stethoscope to chest, breathe in and out for them and end up coughing. Look into my ears and throat, scribble a few things down and then look at me seriously and say, “It looks like you have pneumonia. I’m going to prescribe…and let’s go ahead and get you a steroid shot today”

It’s always the same; I can do the visits in my sleep only the paint in the waiting room and the actors change.

Prescription in hand, out to the car I go and make my way around the corner and down the street to the MajorNameBrandRxStore which just so happens to be 1.1 miles down the road from my house on the very same road (though it changes names when you cross an intersection).
Stupid me, I should have just stopped at the house and dropped off my bag with all of those goodies in it but NOOOO I didn’t. Instead I scrunched it deep inside of my smelly gym bag along with my wallet (WHAT?).

Parked right at the front door in the handicap spot, locked the doors and headed inside to drop off the Rx. I did not pass Go and Collect $200, I did not stop to talk to people or grab a Snickers bar, I did not goof around at the cosmetics counter – I only went to the counter, laid my Rx down and walked back out. I was there for less than 2 minutes and when I returned to my car I was greeted with a rear window smashed in.

Glass everywhere and the gym bag rifled through, guess what?
Drugs and wallet missing – imagine that!

I consider myself a bright individual but sometimes I’m just plain stupid. A few cards shy of a deck, the light is on but no one is home.

Who in their right mind would bother with the car? Let alone a car like mine which is a total mess. It’s never washed, interior a wreck of receipt scraps, drive through wrappers and the scent of pussycats from extended hours on the road to cat-shows past.
Of course I was thinking that it since it was broad daylight, 11:30 in the morning and right in front of the entrance of the store everything was safe.
What a joke.

As if I didn’t feel well already, now the trouble begins. Must telephone the police to register the theft, cancel the credit/debt cards, call insurance, etc. etc. Plus, mother fucker’s too my medications and wouldn’t you know that most of them were recently refilled so they really hit the jackpot.
I’m talking Hydrocodone, Vicodin, Xanax, Darvocet, oxy, Ambian plus a variety of other meds that I take for seizures and COPD.

My very first thought was – these fuckers are going to know exactly where I live and that I am now going to be a hot spot to hit, pharmacy for later – That’s all I could think of and I steeled myself for the trouble that was surely to come.

While I waited for the police, who never came, I went in and alerted the store of the theft and they informed me that the cameras were dummies and they wouldn’t be held responsible. Oh ho ho ho I say, you WILL be held responsible. In fact, I would not be victimized 2 times in the same day.

The pharmacist is happy to try and refill my meds that were stolen but I would have to pay all of the co-pays again. No fucking way sir, you can take that right out of MajorNameBrandRxStore’s pocket for your poor security and in fact I’ll want a store credit for the problems I’ve incurred today.
“Sorry ma’am, we’ll have to get a manager to approve that. She will be in tomorrow afternoon. I can take your name and number and have her call you.”

“Okay,” I respond “I’ll be back and expect an answer”….and I walk outside and sit in my violated car – she stinks of rape and I telephone the corporate offices and leave a nasty message that I will be inviting the local television news crew down to this store to interview me about my crime as well as my victimization by this store. How they would bend over a handicapped local woman in need at the very moment she has been traumatized. When I get through with this the store is going to be called Rx-ebekah’s”

I tell you this – only moments after I hang up from my recording I am immediately called and guess who? It’s a representative from … MajorNameBrandRxStore corporate.

“Ms. Lewis? Please, we understand there are some problems that you had today at the store. If you would go back to visit they would be happy to assist you in any fashion that you need.”

That’s right mother-fuckers. I’m not messing around one damn bit. I won’t wait 30 days to get refills and pay again out of my own pocket PLUS go without my shit.

”Thank you, I just happen to be near the store right now and will pop in. I appreciate your return call”

It’s nice when people stand up and take notice but it definitely takes a kick in the ass with my size 11 to get action.
This world is full of chicken-shit-I-don’t-want-to-be-the-one-to-be-held-accountable.
That’s why nothing gets done unless you shove them into a corner and yell at them with the best garlic and onion saturated stank-ass breath you can muster, get up in their shit and make them feel as big as a zit on the ass of society until the cower and do your bidding.

I’d like a glass of water please; it’s time for my pills.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Mountain Doo

It’s basically done, I am feeling pretty well whipped and I barely lifted a finger. The exhaustion comes from the overwhelming task of having all of it packed, labeled and then watch as it’s pushed up onto a truck only to be delivered at the next residence.

The task to go through each of those boxes that you’ve only just put your efforts into over the last several weeks and find a new home for everything is daunting.
While doing that chore you come to the realization that you have accumulated far too much shit but each piece holds some sort of memory or invokes a feeling.

This is when any educated individual will come to terms with the fact that they are a hoarder.
What an awful word hoarder is. It evokes disgust and sympathy at the same time, we don’t really understand what causes such behavior yet every single one of us has a touch of the disease trapped within us.

You don’t believe it?

Ask yourself this, why do you buy art, knickknacks, keep greeting cards sent to you each year during the holidays/birthdays/anniversaries? Are these items really so essential in your daily life that you can’t bear to live without them?
No, the answer is no – just face it and we’ll agree that you too are a hoarder.

Some people call themselves ‘collectors’ and amass great volumes of garbage, useless drivel that only has value to them or other collectors but when a larger group of people look at it they only see crap.

Purging is difficult to say in the least. You touch that ‘thing’ that made you smile when you first got it but after some time its just because a shadow in the background of your daily life, forgotten but there.

For years I ‘collected’ this and that but nothing of extraordinary value or size, but in the hopes that we would settle down at long last and I could display these things that caught my eye.

The problem is that we’ve never settled down and our vagabond lifestyle doesn’t fit with the heaps of crap we own. When you finally come to terms, decide to let items go you are then faced with the dilemma to place a ‘value’ on said shit.

More often than not we’re going to head straight towards the resale of our precious mementos and there is insult to injury when you have folks come to offer pennies to your dollars spent.

Don’t forget, you do the same damn thing when you are searching for something out of the advertisements, at yard sales and estate sales but when it’s our turn we turn into defensive wild cats ready to throw out our claws and spat at anyone that offers us anything less than the value we’ve put on the sticker.

This past week I thought I’d try my hand at the pawn shop to see what a few of my high-end handbags were worth. Not using them and they are prized by glitter-happy Texas-big-hair broads and I’m too impatient to put them online for sale.

My impatience is definitely my downfall because the slap to my forehead and the pittance offered for said fashionable baggage had me walking back out the door.

Back into storage for now but first some digital snaps, advertisement on the local classifieds and then sit back and wait while the offers trickle through my email.

Guess in the meantime I get to stare blankly at my mountain of priceless goodies.
One man’s treasure is another man’s heap of horse puckie.