Why it kinda sucks that I live so close to my job.

Don't get me wrong - 99% of the time, that's actually a good thing. I don't have to leave more than 15 minutes before I'm actually supposed to be there, I can run home if I really had to, and I don't have to sit in anything that could even remotely be referred to as "traffic." Even if I took the "long" way, which really only makes the ride eleven minutes as opposed to eight.

There are two main things that I miss about living in Houston proper: the practice I got driving around so many crazies on a regular basis that I was used to it, and being in the car long enough to forget about driving and be able to sing. Even as I type it, I realize how completely fucked up it sounds. I know it, but I can't help it. I remember hundreds of times that I would get to class and realize that I barely remembered the drive at all. I know that I changed lanes several times, navigating entering and exiting at least two freeways, yet the last thing I could remember was backing out of the driveway. Why? Because I would spend most of the drive singing. Loudly, and surprisingly well. Well enough that one of my college music professors suggested I consider singing professionally, which I find amusingly irresponsible. What kind of college professor suggests that their students quit school to do something so risky? Ehhhh, maybe he was drunk.

To this day, I remember that I could reach notes in the morning that I would struggle attaining later in the day when my voice had warmed up, which never made sense to me, by the way. I would sing for at least forty minutes each day, and that was just commuting from home to school, and later to work. Sometimes I'd just go driving because I enjoyed it. I did! I loved driving. Especially later at night during the week - little to no traffic, windows open, and stereo BLARING. Because a huge reason I enjoyed being that I'd often sing the whole time. I can't listen to the B-52s Cosmic Thing and stay in a bad mood. It's instantly therapeutic, whether I want it or am ready for it to be or not. I associate music and smells with every good or bad memory in my life, and I find it soothing. When I left the vet from taking my Akita to be put down, Madonna's Live to Tell was on the radio. I associate a lot of the Red Hot Chili Peppers with my first college boyfriend, specifically the song that was in that Coneheads movie and that will forever make me think about the lowest point of our relationship. Hearing The Cars and Led Zeppelin immediately takes me to a camping trip in Ruidoso, New Mexico I went on with several friends/coworkers (and my boss!) from Evergreen Pool. Driving across Texas on one of our many trips to San Francisco, my friend Dan and I listened to Depeche Mode's Black Celebration. Dan, in fact, was a huge musical influence in my life and I am eternally thankful to him for exposing me to so much music and dragging me to a million record shops from Houston to San Francisco and in between. Although I do also lovingly blame him for my dreams involving Rick Ocasek and Run DMC. (Don't ask.)

So, although many people would consider giving up their first born to have a ten minute commute, I miss it. If gas wasn't so fucking expensive and my husband wouldn't consider having me committed, I'd go for a nice long drive right now. 9:40 on a Sunday night? Oh my gaaawwwwddd! It doesn't get much better than that.

The truth shall set teachers free! And by free, I mean fired... Probably.

A few years back, several of my friends who are teachers got together over a  round of margaritas and started this list. Okay, maybe it was closer to three rounds. Not important. What IS important is that teachers have to hold their tongues a lot. As in more than any other profession I can think of. Even therapists get to be truthful with their patients without major concerns about their patients' parents having a conniption fit over what they said.

As summer vacation comes to an end and teachers prepare to deal with this year's doses of crazy, it seems like the perfect time to share this with the world... or the five of you that might see this. I should probably add that this list was meant as a way to vent after a particularly difficult year. Teachers usually do like your kids.  You, on the other hand, might be a completely different story.

Here we go:

1. You are the reason I drink every day.
2. Asking your child to walk in a straight line as we move through the hallway does not equate "breaking his little spirit."
3. Your kid was lying to you when he said he doesn't lie to you.
4. You are embarrassing your kid... and not in a good way.
5. Why does your nine year old smell like she smokes a pack a day?
6. If you see me at a restaurant, feel free to say a quick "hello" and then MOVE. ON. If I wanted to spend my dinner talking to you, I would have asked you to dinner.
7. Remember when you were in school and you knew a kid who was a total asshole? FYI, they exist these days, too. And one of the ones I know looks just like your kid. Guess why.
8. I'm not going to make up random lies about your kid... because I have a life. Your kid, on the other hand, needs to get one.

Unfortunately, this is all I can remember at the moment. I will edit to add more if I remember them.

My love/hate relationship with Carnival Cruise lines

I freaking LOVE roller coasters. I do. I find them thrilling, not frightening, and probably because I know I'm more likely to be attacked by a shark in my bathtub than to get killed on a roller coaster, so no matter what crazy loops or dives they take, I feel pretty safe. Which brings me to admitting that I find sharks fascinating - but more in a I can barely swim in a pool alone without freaking myself out a little bit way than anything else. I like watching Shark Week just as much as the next person, but I have absolutely no desire to actually meet a shark in person. It's pretty similar to how I feel about Mario Lopez, except that I don't change the channel when I see a shark on tv. Unfortunately, Mario and I have met and the only way I'm willing to go through that hell again is if I'm there to watch him get attacked by a shark and our interaction is limited to when I get to stuff chum into his pockets.

The last time I personally had to worry about getting attacked by a shark, other than during my visits to the neighborhood pool, was when I went on a snorkeling excursion in Belize. My husband and I were on a cruise with my parents, my husband's brother and his wife, and a couple of their friends. My parents somehow knew better than to sign up for this type of mayhem, but the rest of us decided to go on an excursion that involved a 45-minute ride from the ship to the snorkeling spot on a double-decker party boat with a seemingly endless supply of rum punch. My huzz, in his never-ending quest to befriend and entertain everyone around him with his fratboy-type antics, convinced more than half of the boat, including an octogenarian who he nicknamed and called "Old Blue" for the rest of the trip, to do multiple rum punch "shots" through a snorkel. I reminded Huzz about this right after Old Blue almost took a nose dive off the gangplank at the end of the excursion, but he insists that Old Blue wasn't that plastered and that he's sure he saw "the poor old guy" trip.

Did I mention that even though I didn't drink any on our trip, I freaking LOVE rum punch? I would have probably given in to my mom's multiple requests to go to mass with her had they been serving that instead of red wine. Rum punch is THAT delicious. What munchie would go best with rum punch to replace those stale ass wafers? I mean, it supposed to be the body of Christ, for Christ's sake and that implies that it should taste pretty freaking miraculous. Wouldn't it make more sense for it to taste so wonderful that you'd immediately say, "Oh my god, that is SO good!" when you eat it? Makes sense to me. Hmm, maybe cinnamon sugar tortilla chips with a little pineapple salsa on the side. I am pretty sure that's a Pampered Chef recipe. Yeah, that might get me there, but I want a plate and my own glass. I don't need a whole platter, just a little dessert plate would be fine.That one wafer and sip from the same cup crap is for the birds. Rum punch and chips and salsa, Catholics - I think that might be your best best in getting a few more butts in the pews. You're welcome.

Unfortunately, I skipped on the rum punch during our cruise because I happened to be about five months pregnant at the time. I don't take it out on him much, so no biggie. Looking back, one snorkelful probably wouldn't have had any noticeable effect on my child, but would have made my snorkeling experience much less stressful seeing as I was completely convinced that I was giving off some extra yummy two-humans-in-one smell to all sharks in a fifty-mile radius. Let me just say now that we didn't see any sharks while we were in the water. None. Zero. Zilcho on the sharko. But, much like anchovies in Caesar dressing, even though you can't see them doesn't mean they are not there. Even though it's the Caribbean, it's still ocean - of COURSE there are sharks in the water. I'm pretty sure that a pregnant human tastes just as delicious to a shark as shrimp-stuffed crab does to me. Meanwhile, sharks probably hate rum punch. I mean, their jealously of how cute dolphins are kind of makes them act like assholes, so it wouldn't surprise me which means all those rum punch-soaked people that were swimming all around me were perfectly safe. Meanwhile, I was dizzy from continuously turning to try to spot any ominious or vaguely shark-shaped shadows being lured closer by my delectable pregnant aroma.

The other little detail that would might have helped would have been if the jerk(s) in charge of choosing movies to show in the cabins of the ship hadn't continuously been showing the movie Open Water for the four and half days before our snorkeling excursion. What a saddistic fucker this guy has to be. What really pisses me off, in all actuality, is that I think it is absolute genius. I find it ridiculously hilarious-- now that I'm OFF the boat, that is... I just wish I'd thought of doing it myself. I mean, I recognized the irony every time I caught a glimpse of the movie while we were on board, but my overactive imagination wouldn't let me appreciate it until the cruise was over and I was back on land. While we are on this subject, I'd just like to put it out there to the people of the Carnival Cruise line that although I love, love, LOVE that you let a pregnant me order five of the cheese plates from the formal dining room and take them back to my room, that your wonderful room service is free, that the steel drum band by the pool (surprisingly) doesn't annoy me, that your waitstaff and porters have always been delightful and accomodating, and that I really do love taking cruises even if the excursions are ridiculously overpriced but I'm too scared of getting left behind not to pay for them, you should know that there are several movies that should never be played on a cruise ship, at least not while I'm aboard.
These movie include, but are certainly not limited to:
- Open Water (Wasn't this already established?)
- Titanic (Because I've never seen it, but I know how it ends.)
- The Perfect Storm (duhh...)
- Speed 2 (Not necesssarily because it's set on a cruise ship, but because it sucked.)
- any of the Jaws movies (Besides starring asshole sharks, none of them were made this millenium.)
- Deep Blue Sea (see Jaws reasoning)
- Couples Retreat (Because its snorkeling scene is pretty much how I expected my experience to turn out.)

I can only hope that I will get a call from Carnival (or any other cruise line, for that matter) asking me to choose their on-board movies, and that this post totally ruined Caesar salad for Mario Lopez.

Seriously. Sometimes, I just hate people.

(This is not new, but actually transported from a blog of days passed. Wait, now I'm second-guessing myself. Is it days passed or days past?  Well, that's craptastic... That's going to bug me all day. Unless I forget all about it in the next twelve seconds, which is entirely possible. Whatevs. Like I was saying, this is not a recent post, but I also can't say that it isn't accurate!)

Here are just a few of the reasons/situations I'm currently thinking about:

• When people make snorting/sniffling noises in public (ESPECIALLY when I'm eating!!) that are faaaaaar beyond what is actually necessary. Go to the bathroom to hock the loogey in your mouth, fucktard. (Just for kicks I decided to let you know that spellcheck suggested that I change loogey to logger. I suggest spitting them out regardless of which one is in your mouth. That's just unsanitary.)

• The fact that I have become the wuss driver that I used to totally despise when I was an excellent driver. Granted, I got a shitload of speeding tickets back then, which wasn't so excellent, but now I'm probably causing accidents. (Which would you prefer?) For example, I now sometimes slow down cause I think the car waiting to pull on to the road I'm driving down isn't going to see me or is inching forward and it freaks me out - basically cause I'm convinced that everyone driving is texting and/or messing with their phone, mp3, or playing Angry Birds, etc, and NOT paying attention! I so used to be the person in the other car thinking (ok, yelling) Will you fucking GO?!!? I'm not gonna hit you, dumbass!

• When people refer to their family members (who are not MY family members) by the names they call them, but are not their actual names. Example: Uncle Larry is going to have dinner at Mom's house tomorrow. Uh, noooo. Why can't you just say "My Uncle Larry is going to have dinner at my mom's house tomorrow." Are the two extra words in that sentence REALLY gonna throw off your schedule for the day?! I think not. It's the same fucking word.

• When people use the word "conversate." And although it won't show you on the blog, it's freaking underlined by spellcheck which means IT'S NOT A REAL FUCKING WORD! The word is converse - as in "I would like to converse with you about how hard your grammar sucks ass."

• When people do things in front of others for the purpose of excluding them. Here's an example of what I mean: Person A invites several people (Persons B-E) to lunch (or whatever). Then Person A, in front of all the other persons(!!!), asks Person C to do something that does NOT have a person limit, like going to a bar next Tuesday (or whatever). Meanwhile, Persons B, D, and E get to hear this entire conversation and feel like they are back in high school and little miss/mister popular Person A has just purposefully excluded them and made them feel like total losers. Thanks, Person A! That A must stand for ASSHOLE, you fuckin' bi-otch!

• When I go to a drive through and place my order, I usually end my order with something along the lines of "And that's it." I don't know why, I just do. Maybe there's a post dedicated to that on a fast food worker's blog? Anyhoo, here's what pisses me off: 9 times out of 10, the next thing out of the clown's mouth, and I'm not referring to the shape of the menu, has something to do with ordering more food. Why can't you just listen to what I said? I promise I will let you know if I change my mind and want to order more. Come ON!

AND now I'm done... (for now.)

Allergies SUCK

Did you know that there is supposedly a tool at the ER specifically for removing cue balls from people's mouths? This tool is apparently necessary because even though it is, allegedly, easy to get the cue ball IN to your mouth, getting it out proves to be impossible because your tongue isn't strong enough to push it out and your fingers can't get enough of a grip, even if they had the room, on the slimy spit-covered ball to pull it out. Now, I say supposedly, apparently, allegedly, etc. because I'm 99% sure my husband told me this and he enjoys telling me random shit like that that isn't always necessarily true or accurate.

I started thinking about this last night when I turned over for the twenty-seventh time to make the stuff clogging up one side of my head drain over to the other side -- you know, just to shake things up a little -- and was relieved that I'd found a comfortable position to breathe through my wide-open mouth.  Then I started thinking about how if it wasn't comfy, I'd basically stop breathing and be dead because of my stupid allergies. Which led me to thinking: If you did get a cue ball stuck in your mouth and you started panicking and, therefore, possibly crying, wouldn't you start to drown/suffocate from not being able to breathe through your runny/stuffy nose? Which would then probably bring on more crying and runny/stuffy nose issues? I know if this ever happened to me I would be freaking the fuck OUT! Probably more because I would be pissed at myself for wasting a trip to the ER for something so amazingly stupid and because I wouldn't be able to resist telling my friends who would then never let me live it down. Not that I would ever let one of them live something as hilarious as that down, either. But that's just the kind of good friend I am.

Another couple of thoughts... I know plenty of stupid people, and yet I've never heard of any of them having had the privilege of having this tool used on them. My friend Brenda used to refer to the clueless kids who would stare off in to space with blank looks on their faces as "mouth-breathers" and I'm starting to think a few of them could have been just the type to grow up and try this. (Note: For those of you thinking I was being a mouth-breather just because I had to have my mouth open to breathe last night, you are wrong.  I was not being a mouth-breather out of stupidity, I was just trying to stay ALIVE. Way to be an asshole, asshole.) Is this cue-ball-stuck-in-the-mouth thing really that often an occurrence that a special tool was invented for it?  If they fit in the mouth, aren't they quite likely to fit and be put in to other orifices? (Really makes you want to go play pool, doesn't it?) Are there some ERs that don't keep one of these on hand? Do they even need more than one on hand? Isn't it possible that they are just saying it's a special tool, but in actuality they are just borrowing forceps from Labor and Delivery? And, most importantly, will my insurance cover this?

My sister, the (occasional) megabitch

Okay, so I admit I sometimes love my sister. She can be really sweet --no really, I've seen it. But then there are little things she does or says that make me want to slap her upside the head. Let's start with the latest. I recently had to meet her somewhere for something (obnoxious and stupid, therefore, not worth writing about here) and I had already spiraled up to the 6th , and TOP, mind you, floor of the tiny parking garage when I finally decided to turn around, go back to the bottom, and use my husband's handicapped sign to park in one of the four empty handicapped spaces. Not my proudest moment, but I was running late and it's not like I whip that puppy out every time I park, so I don't really feel that I abuse it... too much.

I dash in to the building, get to the office on the 6th floor, realize I left the one stupid thing I needed to bring with me in the car, and am already walking back to the elevators when I get a text from my sister basically giving me shit for where she saw that I parked. Gee, I wonder if you're even later than I am because you had to park on the fucking roof...?! This from the biznatch that finds it perfectly acceptable for her, her husband, and their kid to go to a  movie theater on Saturday morning, buy tickets to see ONE MOVIE and then stay there all day skipping from one theater to the other to pack in as many viewings in one day as possible before getting kicked out. I actually don't think they've ever gotten caught, which just pisses me off even more because I would get caught within two minutes if I tried to pull that shit.

The only reason I even know about this little stunt they pull is because I met them at the movies one day, and when I started walking through the lobby towards the parking lot, my sister suddenly stops at the concession stand and says, "It was good seeing you guys!" and starts saying her good-byes. When I asked what the heck she was doing, she told me they were planning to stay the whole day and asked, "You didn't think I was going to pay that much to go to the movies and then just see one movie, did you?" Well, yeah. I kinda did.

And there..... goes the neighborhood.

So, because this is all a little new to me, I wanted to check out some of the other blogs here at blogspot. I hadn't skimmed through more than about ten when I was like, Uhhhh, JACKPOT, baby! At the very top of this particular blog is a professional photo of what I can only assume are the blogger's eleventy-seven kids. Can you say... polygamist? Don't get me wrong - I am a fan of both Big Love and Sister Wives, but good god... Unless you are running a farm, there is no reason to have that many kids. You might want to take a few pointers from some of the boys I knew as a teenager. They seemed to be experts on the subject and coincidentally got girls knocked up much less than your average polygamist seems to do. I'm sure their information was very accurate seeing as none of my friends got pregnant in high school, so we can probably take that as proof.

ANYWAY. So, pictures of kids on a blog... Nothing new, right? The girls seemed to look pretty normal in that nothing about them stood out to me. I don't think that the girls' outfits matched other than maybe they were all white or pale yellow -like I said, nothing caught my eye. But then I noticed the boys... Ohhhh, the boys. I couldn't help but be amazed by what was obviously a conscious decision made by someone in charge of choosing the boys' clothes. All of them were wearing jeans, which whatever- they're boys... The shining stars of their ensembles were their matching wifebeaters. Now, I don't mean white tank tops, not that white tank tops would be that much better -- but no. I mean three to a pack see-through fucking find them next to the tighty whities wifebeaters. Now, I did once dress my toddler as a snowman for a photo shoot, but I was actually TRYING to flex my warped sense of humor. Besides, it was fucking adorable.

I don't think anyone on the actual photo was older than eleven, so unless these kids dressed themselves and walked themselves over to the studio, an adult had to SEE these boys all in their wifebeaters, think that it was perfectly acceptable and take them to the damn photographer! Talk about Christmas in July. The only thing that could make this any better was if the blogger happened to come across this post. Fucking AWESOME.
<3