We Fit the Profile

Normally I don't like to shop at Wally World. It's always overcrowded and understaffed. I really don't think I need to elaborate on the Wally World experience because I think everybody already knows what it's like. This time of year is one of the few times I even step inside one and only for the dreaded Christmas shopping.

Two years ago, Tee saved up her Christmas money for an Ipod. We drove out to Wally World to buy her one, and when we got it home, we discovered it had been USED. No shit. It had been opened and repackaged. How could we tell? There were dirty finger prints all over the fucking thing. We got back in the car and drove straight back to the store to return it. It was the same year that something similar happened, and a child received an mp3 player loaded with porn, also from a Wally World. We hadn't heard about that story yet, and had already returned the one we bought. We didn't even check to see if anything was downloaded onto it. I was just so pissed that it had been used and that Wally World had returned it to the shelves, I just wanted my money back. We bought one from Amazon instead, and actually got it about $20 cheaper. When we received that one, I realized something about the one we originally purchased from Wally World. Instead of the case being sealed with an Apple sticker, it was sealed with Scotch tape. Sheesh.

Yesterday we went shopping at Wally World. We had a cart full of shit. After we paid for our purchases we headed towards the exit. A woman walked out just before we got to the door, completely unaccosted. I hear someone behind me saying something, but didn't know she was talking to me, until she got loud and rude. "Ma'am, YOUR RECEIPT PLEASE!!" MJ stops me because, oh no she sure the fuck AIN'T talking to me, so I just kept on walking. I turn around to see her coming over to me, marker pen in hand. I was actually holding the receipt in my hand and she just snaps it right out of my hand as I look at her, shocked into silence. She marks something on the receipt, and then actually asks for my help to find something else on the list. I say nothing for a moment before I come up with the price point she's looking for. She finds it, marks it, hands me the receipt and very sweetly tells me to have a good day.

I was absolutely APPALLED. Why did the woman ahead of us get to leave without having her purchases looked over? I can't say I am surprised by this, we are accustomed to handing over our receipt every time we shop at their affilliated warehouse club. But this is the first time I've ever had to do it at Wally World, and in a manner that made me feel like instead of just spending $200 in their store, I had stolen dvd's shoved down the back of my pants.

It seems that Wally World has indicated to me that they would prefer that we do the rest of our Christmas shopping somewhere else this year. I'm more than happy to oblige them.

The Drunk's Confessional

Today, I said Fuck in front of my 7 year old nephew, Linus. He said he never wanted to hear me say another cuss word, because I'm a Christian and Christians don't do that. I told him I was 35 years old and I'd say whatever I damn well please. I feel bad about that. I didn't mean to hurt his feelings, but something I really hate is when children (ok, anybody) try to tell me what to do. Fuck. Extra Christmas prezzy for the kid.

I've got to come up with another means of persuasion to get what I want out of MJ. Using the "it's either THIS or I get to have a baby" line is really getting old. Although if I told you about how this one time, we were at the store and it had been snowing and the snow plows had piled up these huge 20 feet high snow banks and MJ told me if I could push a grocery cart all the way to the top of one, he'd let me have a baby, you probably wouldn't have any sympathy for him when I use that line.

My mother Ruby has a cell phone. I know, shocking, ain't it? It wasn't working right so she went out to her carrier store to have it looked at. She called me to make sure it was working. She didn't mention that she happened to go to the store at the very time Tee's dad was working there. (This was a freak occurrence because Enrique doesn't work at any one store. He travels around.) When he came to pick Tee up on Friday, he told me my mom had been in the store. He was just getting there himself, and brought her inside to help her. She announces in front of the entire store that Enrique was her "baby daddy". Uhhhhh, I think she meant to say "grand baby". Enrique corrects her, saying, "No no, she's my baby's mama's mama." He got teased the rest of the day about how they didn't know he preferred his women with so much......experience. I've been laughing ever since. I mean, come on, how often does my mother get to embarrass anyone other than herself?

We went to Price Hill to drop stuff off at my parent's house. The last few remnants of the storage unit. While driving through the neighborhood, we saw two different men who I thought were my father. Black graying hair, no teeth, plaid jacket, small stature (my dad's a black haired leprechaun, hence the reason I think my real father is the mail man) . We took a detour over to Hell House (my FIL's house) to make sure the heat was on for the winter. We hadn't been there for months, and taking a look around, realized how much trash was there. Sigh. I know what I'll be doing for the next couple of Sundays.

I am perilously close to the end of a case of Smithwick's. Too bad my sister isn't here to enjoy them with me. =(

When I was 8 months pregnant with Tee, I suddenly developed a "mass" in my left breast, literally overnight. It was very large and very obvious. I had to have surgery and because I was pregnant, I was awake during the entire procedure. After the surgery, I was seriously scared of what the results would be (benign, btw). I had some minor complications from the surgery, and the resultant scarring is the reason you'll never see me over on Boob Emancipation. Also, Enrique was a dick about the entire procedure. I sat at home, crying over it, while he was out with his friends. Another reason that some people think I am a BITCH. I have no problem calling men out as the fuckheads they are.

I actually got search results for "alien abduction symptoms" and "thank God I am not a hoarder". I love blogging. Where else can you get this much fucking entertainment for free?

Consumption of alcoholic beverages impairs your ability to drive a car or operate machinery. It also makes you type very very very slowly, and forget what you read two seconds ago, so it takes a long time to type that first sentence that I just typed up there. Yeah.

My Show On Food Network Would Be Called "Bitchin in the Kitchen"

When I was a kid growing up in Price Hill, which I admit even back then it was kind of ghetto, I went to publik public school. We always had a standard list of school supplies - crayons, glue, pencils, folders, ruler, and maybe colored pencils. Once in awhile, a teacher would put Kleenex on the list. Nothing too crazy or hard to find - the list was short and most of all cheap. If we needed anything else, it was provided by the school. If it wasn't available, it must not be too important. Only on one single occasion when I was in the 6th grade, did it ever happen that I needed to make a project at home that required extra materials. We were learning about Egypt and we had to make a model replica of the inside of a fucking burial chamber. For 5 years, the project was making pyramids. My class had to do burial chambers. Obvi, I didn't do the shit and got an F. Hard to replicate a burial chamber with the materials available at my house, which on a good day included crayons, empty beer cans and cigarette butts. We didn't even have toilet paper tubes, because we had so little actual toilet paper to go around, we wiped our asses with the cardboard tubes as well.

The first year my daughter went to school in Kindergarten which was only a mere 6 years after I graduated myself, that school supply list had literally exploded into a trunk load of tissues, paper towels, hand sanitizer, modeling clay, construction paper, and specific binders and folders that could only be found at one store in the tri-state area. Each year the demands became greater and more detailed. High school has been a nightmare. Everyone is expected to have a home computer and 24 hour internet access. Graphing calculators are de rigeur. Now, I admit, our town is a step above State Avenue, but I thought the entire point of going to public school was that it was fucking free. I still owe them $113 for school fees for this year, and another $55 just for band. I should have drawn the line when Tee came home and told me she had to bring in food for health class.

The very first year she was in high school, her health teacher did a lesson on nutrition and had each student bring in a different food. Tee had to bring salad. I think the teacher just found a way to get a free fucking lunch. It was easy enough though, we just bought bagged salad. Ta da! The Spanish teachers expect actual cooking. The students aren't allowed to BUY ethnic food at one of the myriad of Tiendas we have in this area, oh no. That would be too easy. They have to research and find recipes, and then make something from scratch.

Tee's assignment was Ecuador. She found a recipe for meringue cookies and we thought, shit, that'll be easy. I mean, I'm no fool, I know meringue isn't really easy, but I've made it before. (And didn't I just tell you I can make fudge? And I could have a throwdown with Bobby Flay over some cheesecake, that bitch wouldn't know what hit him.) It had been a long time, but I thought we could do it. After reading the recipe, I was confused by it, and without going through the details that make me want to punch myself in the face, let's just say it didn't fucking turn out. The "batter" was way too thin to make anything resembling a damn cookie, so in a last ditch effort, I just poured the batter into the baking sheet and put it in the oven to dry. It turned into a hard sheet of white crust, with meringue underneath. It couldn't even be broken into pieces of brittle candy that was suitable for feeding the class.

We still had one more day to make something, and we found another recipe for pumpkin cake that could be made with winter squash. I happened to already have two acorn squash on hand so we decided to use that. I tried, but just couldn't cut the hard ass squash into pieces. Luckily, MJ was working from home that day, and managed to cut it up for us. We both ended up with cut fingers. I'm still not sure how Tee's extra credit project became our kitchen duty, but since she can't be trusted with sharp objects, we had no choice. It turned out to be more like a pudding (which was the way it was supposed to be) and had a consistency almost like pumpkin pie. We made two pans of it, and she fed both her Spanish class and then her math class because she had a whole pan leftover. All in all, it turned out ok.

I still have a pan full of cement meringue sitting in the kitchen. I have no idea how I'm going to clean out the pan. Fuuuuuuuck me.

Getting Into the Holiday Mood

When I was a kid, my dad's oldest sister would always bring us a big plateful of her special Christmas fudge. (And yes, I mean candy, people, that's not a euphemism.) It was usually half peanut butter and half chocolate, and in my family the peanut butter won hands down. I am a huge peanut butter freak. I hate peanuts, don't give me a fucking peanut. But I will totally whore myself for peanut butter cookies, or fudge, or just a damn pb&j sammich.

Eventually, my dad's sister got old and moved to another state, and stopped coming to visit at all, not even to bring us our Christmas fudge. I started trying to make it myself, and over the years I have had more successes than failures, trying to come up with fudge of the consistency my Aunt used to make. My dad looks forward to these "trys" every year, and starts asking me about a few months in advance. He'd really like it if I made some once a week, but anyone who has made real fudge knows, standing over the stovetop, candy thermometer in hand, it's a labor of love. Don't give me a fucking peanut, and don't try to pass off shit from the microwave as fudge.

Last Christmas I made an extra batch of fudge to give to my Aunt Cassie. If you haven't heard about my Aunt Cassie, she's a must read. I like Aunt Cassie for many reasons, one of which is her ability to always entertain me. I took the extra container of fudge over to my parents house, and left it there with specific instructions to my father to give it to Aunt Cassie the next time she came over. I assumed he had done so, and never thought about it again for months.

The next time I happened to run into her at my parents house, she actually mentions the fudge. She wants to know if I brought any with me (because I can just pull a pan of it out of my ass, it is fudge after all and that my friends IS a euphemism) and I ask her how she liked the stuff I gave her for Christmas. "What? I didn't get no fudge." I told her I had left it there for my dad to give her. She looks at me for a minute, then turns around and looks through the living room door where my dad is seated (and laughing already) and says, "You ate my fucking fudge didn't you, you motherfucker! I orta kick yer ass!"

(singing) It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Alien Abduction Explains ALL Your Symptoms

Throughout my life I have suffered from a variety of physical illnesses, as have most people. I have suffered through severe pain internally from kidney stones as well as body pain from plantar fasciitis where I could barely walk, and impingement syndrome in my shoulder where I could barely raise my arm. I know about pain. I may bitch and moan about it a little here and there, but I have always managed to drag myself into a doctor when needed, and take whatever little miracle in a prescription bottle they can give me. Somehow, I've always managed to reach down inside myself, pull my fat ass up off the sofa by my pubes if I have to, and go to work, or take care of my family. Even when I was stung by a bee in the face and my eyes were swollen shut, I made sure my kid had something to eat. I don't consider myself a Super Woman. Just a typical wife and mother. I do what I have to, as would most people, who are not truly debilitated.

I have spent the better part of this day trying to convince Melissa to go to the doctor. Is that my job? It sure the fuck feels like it some days. She's been having stomach pain for weeks. Severe pain from every bit of food she eats. She feels nauseous, bloated and tired (but she's also depressed, so I think that's where the feeling of tiredness comes from) and can barely eat because the pain is so severe. (She also can't get up and feed her children or do anything around the house. Last time Raymond was here, he had plenty to tell us.) When she first told me about it, she claimed to have not eaten for 3 or 4 days by that point. Lloyd was obviously trying to convince her to go to the doctor too, but their copay is $30 and she hesitates to go.

(OK, that last part about the money? That's pure bullshit. We all know the reason she doesn't go is because when the doctor tells her nothing is wrong with her, she can't get sympathy anymore. Money is just her excuse.)

At that time, we went over her symptoms. I was unable to pinpoint anything specific, and she was sure she had stomach cancer. I told her she probably had an ulcer and to eat bananas and fenugreek tea. She did, and the fenugreek tea cured her after the first cup. I shit you not. (The power of suggestion, people, it's all about delivery.) She said nothing else about it for the past month, and instead focused on the cyst she has in her hand. She "claims" the doctor told her that she had torn a ligament and that she'd have to have surgery, because the pain was just excruciating. She actually went and had it xrayed. To find out it was "sprained". She wore a brace for a few days until it got on her nerves, and then she was suddenly cured. She always goes to the doctor alone, so who knows what he's really telling her.

Now that the hand crisis is over (til she needs an illness to fall back on) she's having trouble again with her stomach. Because you see, stomach trouble is just unspecific enough to be anything from constipation to gallstones to a food allergy. She'll never get an actual diagnosis. They can do tests on her til Kingdom come, and never find anything wrong, because so many things can cause stomach pain.

I think that she wishes she did have stomach cancer. I know that's a shitty thing to say about someone, but I really think what she actually has is Munchhausen's. Yep. She has more symptoms of that than anything else. I think she hopes if she comes down with something serious, she'll suddenly have a husband who shows love and concern for her.

Munchhausen Syndrome: recurrent feigning of catastrophic illnesses. Munchhausen syndrome is a psychological disorder that is characterized by the recurrent presentation of the patient for treatment of an acute and often dire illness that is, in reality, not present.

She even has had things wrong with her that she can't remember later. An example of this was in the summer when she was power walking and blew out a knee. It was so bad that she got xrays then too. She said that the doctor told her she would have to have surgery or it would continue to deteriorate. Approximately 5 years ago, she had knee pain that wasn't preceded by an injury. She told me then that she had to have surgery or it would never get better, and that she'd had knee problems since she was a teenager (according to a doctor that she says her parents never took her to, because it cost money, no matter how sick she was). She couldn't have the surgery then because her children were much younger and back then she actually took care of them. When I reminded her of this incident, she couldn't remember it at all. She had to confirm with Lloyd that it actually happened.

In the past 2 years she has also suffered from ill effects from toenail fungus meds, a cyst in her foot that has caused severe pain in her foot ever since for which she had to have steroid injections, excruciating psoriasis on her feet and legs, a big toenail removal, chronic severe menstrual pain and most likely some sort of female cancer, debilitating migraines, cancerous growths on her skin, and a weird patch on the side of her hand that wouldn't go away and hurt when she tried to wash dishes. Those are just the things I can remember. And if she's not sick and requiring surgery, one of her children is. All except Raymond, the oldest, who isn't worth the money.

Today, during my Q&A about her current symptoms, she told me she was "diagnosed" with an ulcer when she was pregnant with Raymond (over 17 years ago). I asked her what treatment they gave her then, and she said, none, because she was pregnant. I asked her how they diagnosed her and she said by her symptoms and some kind of dye test. I asked her where she went, for my own future knowledge, so I can avoid such a cockamamie establishment next time I need medical treatment, because that is NOT how they diagnose an ulcer. She very quickly changed the subject. Mhmm. I asked MJ about this, and he said that he remembers her claim, but that she also milked her pregnancy for everything it was worth, and distinctly recalls how she was puking one minute and scarfing a whole pizza the next.

She also has chronic backpain that started when she was a teenager and had a bike accident. According to her husband, this was also how she lost her virginity. By falling off a bike. Uh huh.

I filled MJ's brain with everything she said today and he pondered whether or not I still loved him for filling his brain up with her shitload of despair. All I can say is misery loves company and I needed someone else to bang heads with. I can't bear this burden alone. And I don't have a husband who is willing to stand in the background and ask me what my hypochondriac friend thinks she has now the next time she calls. Her brother in law already got to use that one.

Um, I Have Nothing To Talk About Today

I seriously want to be this guy. And yes, I want the whole raggedy man look. I mean, that's where the talent comes from right? Anybody know how to play the drums?

Fire in the Hole!

Recently, MJ has been playing a turn based war board game via email with some friends. He's been invited to go play an actual game at the home of the guy who got him involved with the game. It reminded me of a story about the guy and his wife.

My husband met Guy when he first started working at his current place of employment lo many years ago. We used to socialize with them on a more regular basis, and while his Wife wasn't my cup of tea, I actually kind of liked Guy. They were involved in an organization that (ahem) recreates a historical time period in which they participate in activities such as battling with fake weapons, dressing accordingly, and even have hobbies that go along with the time period such as making chain maille. This is fucking nerd heaven for me, ok, but MJ didn't like it. They got him involved to the point that he spent a weekend making armor out of a plastic barrel and we even watched some of these "battles". There is nothing better than hearing the sound 100 guys in armor make when they run across a field towards each other and crash their shields together. No really, trust me.

During this period in time, we were invited to a house warming party by one of MJ's other coworkers. Guy and Wife were also invited. We were some of the first guests to arrive, along with a third coworker, Harry. MJ was inside helping with something, while I sat outside with Harry, talking about his most recent trip to Germany. Guy and Wife were sitting at the picnic table across from us. Guy joined in the conversation, but Wife had a plate of food and was busy shoveling tortilla chips and salsa into her mouth. We were in the middle of talking about Harry's trip, when suddenly, from the other side of the picnic table, came a loud farting noise. I glanced over to see if it was Guy. If it was, he gave no indication whatsoever that he just blasted ass. I turn back to Harry, who was still talking, but he looked over at me, eyebrows scrunched together. I shrugged slightly, and we carried on with the conversation.

This time, when she farted, Wife actually lifted her right ass cheek up off the bench to let 'er rip. She never stopped eating. Just farted as she put another chip in her mouth. She didn't even stop to apologize. It was obvious that it was her, and that everyone was trying to ignore it, so I just kept my eyes locked on Harry after that. Wife continued playing air guitar with her ass for about 10 minutes until she was finished eating, got up from the table and went inside. Harry and I couldn't even laugh about it until later in the evening when we got a minute alone with MJ to tell him what happened.

When MJ told me about the game party he was invited to, he asked if I had any interest in going. The answer to that would be a chair rattling PppfffferrrrrRRrrrrt.