Smell ya later

Newsflash: Nervous Girl is feeling nervous. Uneasy. Panicky. Weird.
The inevitable moving to the new office is happening whether I like it or not. Today. Maybe it will be better. It will be different. Yep.
At least a good thing is I didn't looove the place we've been in. In fact, we could be getting out of this place just in time. For the last week or so, this place has been smelling like one big ol' toilet. It's not just the bathroom area that stinks, but the adjacent furnace/air room too - and subsequently when the air comes on, it blows dirty toilet smell through the vents. There was some ungodly toilet problem here last year in which poo-water bubbled up from the drain in the bathroom, causing a stinky flood. Yeah, gross. It was unfortunate that it happened to this sweet old woman (on crutches, no less!) who had stopped in to use the bathroom and got a little more than she bargained for. But she must've been used to toilet trouble, as she told us "Oh yeah, we live out in the country - you can't even flush toilet paper at our house." Hmm. Anyway, when the douchebag from roto-rooter came to fix it, he just got all haughty and blamed it on us women-folk and our flushing of feminine products. "Oh yahh, get a bunch of women together flushin those things and it'll do a number on your system, heh heh" Psshht. Then he touched our doorknob with his poopy glove and when he left, backed his truck into the building and then peeled out of the parking lot, pulled into the lot across the street, checked his truck for damage and then took off. What a dipshit. Or shitdipper. Whatever. The point is, I don't think whatever was wrong actually got fixed, even after our crash course in tampon disposal. So yeah, good to get out of here in the nick of time before that toilet just feckin blows up.
Anyhoo, limited amount of time before my precious computer here has to be taken down and moved - and then we won't have internet until probably Tuesday. Of course, I can use the 'puter at home on my own time, but what fun is that? Bleh, I have to go.

Stuff either happens or it doesn't

Yeah, so I really need to get a credit card. I got neeeds, yo. Expensive needs. Grown up needs. Don't try to talk me out of it. But I would preferably want to get like, say, maybe a credit card that's worth a shit? Because having only cleaned up my tainted credit recently and never having had a credit card, I only get the shit offers. They all gotta like start out with a modest $300 spending limit, which I can understand. But then they put all these fees & shit on the card right away so you actually get a card with like $76 left on it and a 21% interest rate. Fuckin shit. Bleh. I hate talking finances. Sorry about that, just don't mind me.



* Tell me what the title is a quote from and you will be sooo coool.

Officially Officialized

So yes, my birthday dinner on Thursday completely surpassed the dinner I wrote about in the last post. By far. Can't even judge it on the same scale. I don't think I can remember a (restaurant) dining experience that was this good. He made reservations and we got dressed up a bit. It was a lovely, relaxed, romantic dinner with delicious food, easy conversation, googley eyes at each other and hand-holding across the table. Six years we've been together and the same thing I said about him at the beginning still holds true: he can make me smile and laugh so much that my face will hurt and my heart feels like it could burst. In a good way.

We walked out of the restaurant in good spirits. I was feeling giddy and slightly drunk on him and on the two Long Island iced teas (I really didn't need the second one - but hell, it's my birfday) I had consumed. The sun hadn't quite set and it began softly sprinkling as he pulled me close and gave me a sweet kiss when we reached the car. Then before I knew it, he took my hand in his and got down on one knee. He looked up at me with those beautiful green eyes, so full of love and my heart raced with excitement. A small group of people who were dining outside became a cheering section and a pleasant audience to the proposal. My hand went over my mouth, half-laughing half-crying, nodding incessantly and then cradling his face in my hands and kissing him. Oh and I managed to say yes somewhere in there, the ring slid onto my finger and we embraced and kissed to another round of applause. It's official. He is mine, I am his and it was a very wonderful birthday.

Bad food experience #723

I don't often send food back at restaurants. I've been known to be a bit fussy about certain foods that I don't like but I try not to be a big pain in the ass about it, especially when dining out somewhere. I'm a pretty low hassle consumer.

So we go to grab a bite to eat at this place that is a "roadhouse" whatever that means. Okay in this instance it means that they play loud country music, provide mini-buckets of unshelled peanuts which you are welcome to litter the floor with and crunch around on, the staff is required to shout "yee-ha!" when notified of a birthday, etc. They've got your burgers, your chicken sandwiches, steaks, regular old mid-priced fare. Hmm, now I'm wondering what the appeal is in the first place. Oh, they give you fresh warm complimentary dinner rolls! Yee-ha!

So I get a french dip minus onions. Minus onions, that's unnatural and wrong you might say. Well, you don't have to deal with my fussy digestive system and I don't care to have onion-induced stabbing pain running through me for the next 24 hours. But whatever. I also order a side of mashed potatoes instead of fries or chips because well, shit I love me some mashed potatoes!

So we get our stuff and hungry as I am, I can even accept the fact that the sauteed onions that I asked to be left out are piled onto the sandwich and covered in cheese, thus making them nearly impossible to remove. I can accept that. It'll hurt later, but fuck it. But then, THEN I try the mashed potatoes. They looked decent enough. Even had some skins in there to look more authentico. But the taste - what the fuck. What is that taste? The only thing I could describe it as was a "livestock kind of taste." I made J try them and he backed me up on that description. I mean, it tasted like a smell. Like when you'd go to the county fair and there'd be a 4H club there? Or maybe when you've driven past a farm? That smell of nature, hay, mud, animal hair and of course, pipin hot excrement! I don't know. I don't get it either, but I swear if I licked a horse it would be similar to the underlying taste of these mashed potatoes. What the fuck? So with two strikes against this meal, I did send it back. And I was really, really nice about it to our server who was probably still in highschool and while she was nice and apologetic, didn't really know what to do or say other than "Sheesh, our cooks sometimes... I don't know! Hahaha! So do you want another one?" And no, I decided to go with a burger and chips to be safe. It took a long-ass time and she came back to say "Um, it's almost ready - should I just box it up for you? I mean, I know you've been here a long time and all. Oh and I'll go ahead and take the french dip off of your bill for you." Um, yeah! Like you totally should take that off the bill. If you wanted to be really nice about it you wouldn't charge me for the burger either, but whatever. J says I was probably too nice about it. Probably. Even though this is the 2nd or 3rd time I haven't liked my food there, I still have them "on notice" and not "dead to me"... nah, fuck it I changed my mind - I still had that livestock mashed potatoes taste lingering around for hours afterwards (gross), even after just a couple bites, so that's it. Dead to me!

blow up the outside world

• Finally watched Brokeback Mountain. I thought it was pretty damn good, but I had expected that much. Never was a huge fan of either of the guys, but they both did a fantastic job with their characters. I thought he always seemed goofy before but I couldn't help but get hot and bothered over Jake Gyllenhaal and his big sad eyes. Hubba hubba. Oh and there are a couple extremely brief shots of hot boobies too.
• I keep having dreams that we've moved out of our house and into a much crappier one, and it all happens so fast I don't know what's going on or why we moved. I think it's my stupid subconscious fears about my boss moving our office.
• I got to see the new office last week. I don't know. I expected the worst, as I am known to do and it wasn't exactly that awful. It's an old old house with an old old smell, but I guess it will be "cozy" as my boss says. I feel like it would be too wrong of me to add to his stress by protesting - it's not my choice to make (even though I tried giving him many other suggestions that he didn't care to look into) but I'm still really opposed to the location, not just for me but from a client's standpoint. If any of them visit us, that is. But alas, it'll be something... different. And I won't have to listen to these loud-ass people who share the office space we're in now for much longer.
• I hate it when you're driving in the hood and punkass kids won't get out of the street. It's not that they don't know you're there - they'll look right at you and even slow down if they're crossing the street walking in front of your moving car. Daring you to do something, because fuck you for being in their neighborhood anyway.
  
• My attitude really sucks lately. Sorry about that. Sometimes I wish my inner feelings weren't so transparent to the outside world.
  
• Here's one of my favorite bits from Dr. Katz to help cheer things up.
  

I'm like, angry at numbers

I guess I see what you productive people mean about just keeping busy and to just keep on moving forward. Because too often I take the time to stop and think about shit too much. And shit gets to me, ya know? Money issues make me want to tear my hair out. I don't know how people do it. I'm probably making more money than someone with my education (or lack of) deserves, yet it's still nothing. I thought I had come so far, but I'm still for the most part living from paycheck to paycheck with no kinds of savings, no 401k, no credit cards, no wealthy relatives, none of that. Bah.
I feel sick about things. Birthday is next Thursday and it seems like I always get kinda down around that time, getting all reflective about shit. There's hardly any of my 20s left and I feel like it's all a blur of time that I've wasted, or at least could've done something better with. I've got a lot on my mind and it's all a jumbled up mess, probably should keep some of this depressing crap to myself. Bah!

What's in that pocket?

Part 1 of a possible series I might call: The Horrors of Dirty Laundry

So you know if you take your clothes to the drycleaners you might want to check your pockets first, right? Having worked at two of them I have to say it's quite an important step of the process - not only did we make sure your favorite pen or driver's license didn't go through the drycleaning machine (ok, so it happened once and uh, no it didn't make it out of there too well - sorry dude, your license is all melty now) but we also would you know, check for all kindsa goodies that were left behind. Whee! Loose change! Treasures! Incriminating evidence!
Can you guess which one of the following I did not find in a customer's pocket?

• Soiled underwear
• Nudie pics
  
• Lunchmeat
• A turd
  
• Bloody gauze
  
• Viagra
• A bag of weed
• Flavored condoms
  
• Handgun ammo

And just think of how disturbing that would be if all of these things had been in one customer's clothes!


UPDATE 8/15: Answer time!

Thanks for the comments and the guesses, folks! The only item on the list above that I did not find in a customer's pocket was:
***nudie pics***
Which must mean that people keep much better track of those than any other item OR our customers were just generally more nasty than they were sexual, I don't know.
And now for the explanations of the other items we did find:

• Soiled underwear - People left their underwear in their garments way WAY too often. Depending on the customer, whether or not it was a first offense, and the state of the undergarment, we would sometimes put them in a little bag and give it back to the customer. Other times, we'd spare them possible embarrassment by just throwing the undies away. Sometimes it would be boxer shorts that were taken off hastily along with the pants, but also some not-so-whitey-tighties would get thrown in the mix - which were usually from older men and worthy of being labeled a biohazard. The time I'm referring to though was when we found an obviously worn thong in a woman's pocket. Maybe she just couldn't take having something up her butt all day and decided to go commando instead.
  
• Lunchmeat - We were given a load of some of the most foul-smelling clothes from a drunkass (possibly a drunkass hobo) who pulled up in the back of a taxi and shouted his slurred orders for what to do with his nasty clothes. I can't believe we even took them, but our owners were ones to rarely ever turn away business, no matter how nasty the stuff was and not knowing if they'd ever get their money for cleaning it. So partway through getting this guy's clothes checked out (after he had left), my coworker reaches in to a pants pocket (fortunately she had a glove on) and says "ughh, something's stuck in here" and continues to pull until she can peeeel this opened package of turkey lunchmeat out that had become fused inside the pocket. Or well, maybe it was turkey at one time many months ago but now it was this revolting black turkey-slime. Blechhh! We both came very close to vomiting.
  
• A turd! Yes, a turd. I was checking the pockets of one of our regulars - an elderly farmer-ish man who often had a little trouble with incontinence. So in his back pocket, in a sandwich bag, flattened like it had been sat on for a long time - was the turd. I guess I hope that he had a dog he was picking up after and just forgot about throwing that away, but I really don't know.
  
• Bloody gauze - this really pissed me off because it was in the sport jacket of this asshole plastic surgeon who really should've known better about disposing of those kinds of things.
• Viagra - found in the pocket of an elderly man that might've needed another medication so he could remember to take it.
  
• A bag of weed - what a find! Somehow with no prior indication that it might be something I would partake in, my coworker (who was in her 60s) says "oh, well lookee here" and tosses me the bag. "Oh wow, I might know someone who would like...." I started to say, and she cut in with "Whatever honey, I didn't see a thing." How cool is that? It was just a little bit of shake, but shit with that kinda thing I think the universal rule is finders keepers.
  
• Flavored condoms - these got passed around the entire place so everyone could have a giggle.
• Handgun ammo - found in the pocket of a 3 piece ivory linen suit from a guy who never took his sunglasses off. Creepy.
  

Those were some fun times, I tell ya!

Jemima's witnesses

When I was a kid, I had a strange fear that the woman on the bottle of pancake syrup would come to life and start talking to me. This could very well interfere with my enjoyment of delicious pancakes. I would even turn the bottle around so she wasn't watching me, looking for some signal to come to life. I don't know why I didn't think this was cool, as she seemed jolly enough and probably would've just made more pancakes. And I loved pancakes. But I didn't know what all she knew, and she surely could've gotten me in trouble for something those days. Always watching with those beady little eyes! Now I find that my fears were all for nothing, as most of the time I remember us having the more reserved Aunt Jemima syrup around the house and not that crazy chattin Mrs. Butterworth. (I think this video is funny enough on it's own without the subtitles, but you get the idea.)

Garden, shmarden

If you go back a few months, you can see I started out being kinda gung-ho about this whole gardening thing. Though I enjoy seeing the new plants and things pop up, I can't say I've maintained my excitement level about doing the actual gardening. Yeah, I suck. In other words - I've kinda let some of it get neglected and plus, there are a bunch of stupid wasps hanging around where I need to pull weeds. And then, when you pull a ton of weeds - what do you do with them? The trash people don't want to take them, the city brush collection doesn't want to take them (jerks), and there's only so much room for a pile of compost behind the garage. Eh, oh well - for as little as I've done, it's not so bad (thanks to the previous homeowners planting a bunch of perennials). Here are a couple of the latest pics.

Holy chit, mang! Dos' flowers are as big as jer head!

I wanted to get a shot of the one ripened termater there in the middle, but it apparently was being protected by it's big ol' termater family. I like how you can just see a little red peeking out. We shared our first homegrown tomato the other day and it was so nice and fresh (and I've never even really liked tomatoes!)

My latest guilty pleasure on TV

Has anyone been watching Sexual Healing on Showtime? If so, what do you think? It's a couple's therapy show with Dr. Laura Berman where real-life couples attend her workshops and are filmed throughout the week - even in bed. I'm intrigued by this show because:
A) Well, you know things that are sex-related usually interest me;
B) I like to see how different couples interact with each other and see if I can guess what the underlying issues are;
C) I've had a secret interest in being a therapist myself, which probably sounds silly coming from me - but I guess it always seems easier to recognize and deal with other people's problems than your own, and helping people is cool;
D) I think it's important for people to have good, healthy sexual relationships!

So if I have any point here, I guess it's that hey, we've all got issues and don't have to feel like we're alone, hopeless or any more messed up than the next person.

Reheated leftovers for you!

Hey! If you're new here or visiting from the delightful Mr. Husbland's blog, I direct you away (avert your eyes!) from the depressing stuff and onward to this post if you're looking for my infamous (not really) first time sex story. Sex, sex, SEX! And no, it's not too late to share your own devirginization story (I don't have any prizes to tempt you with, but I'll give you... um, virtual respect knuckles and coolness points and I will of course read it with my full undivided attention and all that.)

Update - I'm throwing out some more leftovers from way back in the fridge (in which I throw even more links out in hopes to entertain you while I do some cleaning):
- The token "I hate this shitty apartment complex" post (thankfully, that's all in the past now).
- The story about playing "dirty barbies"
- The token.... I guess I'd just file this one under "in the mood".
- And just for shits & giggles and to keep with the theme here it's a post full of links to more leftover posts - ha!

If you've already read everything here, well damn - you're quite a trooper and I need some new material.

Tell me now how do I feel

Haven't written for a bit and here I am still with nothing wild & crazy to report. But hey, no tales of woe and misery either! Well, not really. Okay, a little woe.

I am experiencing this depression-related anger and anger-related depression. I don't like feeling like this and I feel bad for feeling like this. Some days I feel pretty much like myself, but then lots of days I feel like I'm experiencing the hormonal equivalent to being pregnant, or having postpartum depression, or going through menopause. I know I haven't actually been through these things but they all have something in common - hormonal or chemical imbalances gone awry. I'm not only annoying myself, but the people around me who don't deserve it - and that in turn, makes me feel worse.

I could go into a thing about medications and whether I think they're helping or hurting me, but that's kind of a long boring story that I've discussed with some of you already. Then I happened to come across this article today about going off antidepressants (or rather, not being able to go off them) and it's kind of interesting, though I can't say it was very uplifting. Feeling sort of damned if I do and damned if I don't. But for what it's worth, it's good to know I'm not the only one who feels or has felt this way.

So, bleh. I haven't even felt like blogging or emailing (but I will!) lately - which sadly enough, is usually one of my more pleasant distractions from life. But if I write, I'd be writing shit like this, and that's no fun. Sorry! I'll try to get the regular old me back soon.

Gentlemen, behold

You must understand that once you start giving this stuff to your cat, you will never be allowed to stop. I think it might even say that in the fine print somewhere. Just so you know.




Update:
Goodness people - I'm serious, once you start with this as a treat you've got a fiending cat underfoot every time you go to the fridge. Ha, I even found some testimonials on the catsip site! Oh and you can also find out there what stores in your area have it. Good luck!

Hey hey hey, yes I like it a lot

Even when everything is standing completely still, the humidity makes you instantly sticky and the heat stifles you like being in a headlock under someone's armpit... this is still some good stuff, right here. Summer. Even an indoor kind of person like me wants to embrace this for as long as I can. The first summer in our first house with our first lawn and our first garden. Shootin hoops with my sweetie, the drinkin-n-grillin, having light outside even in the evenings - I have to remember to appreciate these little things before they so quickly slip away. I don't want this to end. In Michigan you gotta enjoy it while it lasts.