I knew when I wrote that last post that I would hear about it. Let me just inform you all: everyone, every single person who has called me in the last week has made some crack about how gracious I am to answer their call. And that...is true enough. I'm glad you finally appreciate what an honor it is to speak with me. Just be advised, it's been done.
On to other business. Like this damn drought. Let me tell you a story about the time Liz decided that it would be a good week to abandon her desk job in favor of a more challenging, stimulating, earthy task. Liz? Isn't here anymore.
I took this class a while back. Some people came and they taught me and several of my co-workers how to install landscape lighting, those pretty outdoor lights that make neat shadows on big fancy houses at night. This week, I got my first opportunity to actually install one of these systems, so I jumped at the chance. I thought about the insane hotness and dryness and miserableness of the weather we've been having lately, but, I thought, people work in hot weather every day. And I'm a people.
Anything you can do, I can do better. Yes, I can do anything better than you.
Things I learned about myself this week:
1. There is a limit to how much of God's unforgiving sun I can take, and I almost found out what it is.
2. I can't dig trenches. Digging trenches is so far past my capability as a human being that I do not even hope to aspire to one day become the kind of person who is able to dig a trench. At least, not in 105 degree weather through what may as well be concrete.
3. It is possible for me to fully appreciate the life-saving value of sunscreen and despise its existence at the same time.
4. You know what sucks worse than death? Working outside, all day, in the hot hot heat, never more than ten yards from the siren call of the most inviting swimming pool you've ever seen.
5. When I get really hot and miserable, I cuss a lot. I mean...like...A LOT.
There was this little vacuum snake thing that skulked along the floor and walls of the pool all day. Every now and then, it would walk up just above the water line and spit out some pool water. I remember praying to God that if He really loved me, He'd make that vacuum snake spit on me. I can't be sure, but I think that's the first time I've ever asked God to please make something spit on me.
6.23.2006
6.15.2006
Phone Phobia
A few things.
First, Jaimie, you may think you're off the hook for that J. D. Robb book, but you're really not. I just don't want you to see it coming. *cough*NoraRoberts*cough*
Second, about the Ask Liz thing. I took an unscheduled break from Ask Liz this past week because I TOTALLY. FREAKING. FORGOT. I mean, completely. Didn't cross my mind. Jaimie asked me about it Monday night and I just blinked for a minute, as if I were some alien clone of the real Liz trying frantically to access one of the more obscure memories I downloaded from her unconscious brain. Boy did I think my cover was totally blown. But as it turns out, Liz forgets shit all the time, so the Earth friend just rolled her eyes and said, "Oh Liz."
Now, about the phone thing. I'm feeling especially candid today, so I'm going to tell you all about how much I hate phones. Cell phones, cordless phones, wall-mounted phones, phones with the curly wire thing, big phones, small phones, ear phones, micro phones...
People who haven't known me since way back sometimes have a hard time believing that I'm an introvert at my very core. I'm actually pretty proud of myself for overcoming some of the more crippling social drawbacks of that personality type, but in many ways, I'm still the posterchild. I write a hell of a lot better than I talk. I have a very few very close relationships as opposed to many acquaintances. I prefer smaller, more intimate social gatherings, and even though a great big party might sound like a lot of fun, when I get there, I'm exhausted in about 10 minutes. And as competent as I've had to become at talking to complete strangers in a friendly, outgoing manner, it wears me out. It sounds crazy, but I feel better after 30 minutes on the treadmill than I do after 5 minutes on the phone with someone I don't know, and I don't just mean psychologically.
This impairment even carries over into people that I do know but, for whatever reason, I'm not completely comfortable talking with. Maybe it's an acquaintance or maybe it's just someone I don't talk to on the phone much, even if I see them a lot in person. What it boils down to is that, as you all probably suspect by now, I ignore phone calls a lot. I'm working on it, and it doesn't mean I don't love you.
There is, however, a short list of numbers that I don't typically ignore. I started thinking about this when Jaimie said on the fleeganforum that I was hard to get in touch with, and I got all indignant and thought, "But I actually DO answer your calls. Do you have any idea what a step that is for me?"
You can leave out the comment where you point out I'm psychotic, Mr. Obvious.
Chris, Mom, Dad, West, Jaimie, Kris'n'Laura, and Mommie Ann (my grandmother). That's the short list of folks I never blow off, at least not without a good, sane, normal reason. There's other numbers that would probably fall into that category, including most other family members, but I'm only including those who call pretty frequently.
Calls I absolutely never answer include any number I don't recognize, even if it looks vaguely familiar. This often causes Chris fits. He doesn't have these phone issues and can't relate in the least to this particular quirk. He MUST KNOW the identity of the mysterious caller on the other end and can't fathom why I'm not in the least bit curious.
Calls that don't fall into either of those categories depend entirely too much on my mood. That's what I must apologize for to anyone who has been the victim of my phone-hate. Until I get that under control, you might try text messages, which for me, again with the preference for the written word, is more like opening a present.
First, Jaimie, you may think you're off the hook for that J. D. Robb book, but you're really not. I just don't want you to see it coming. *cough*NoraRoberts*cough*
Second, about the Ask Liz thing. I took an unscheduled break from Ask Liz this past week because I TOTALLY. FREAKING. FORGOT. I mean, completely. Didn't cross my mind. Jaimie asked me about it Monday night and I just blinked for a minute, as if I were some alien clone of the real Liz trying frantically to access one of the more obscure memories I downloaded from her unconscious brain. Boy did I think my cover was totally blown. But as it turns out, Liz forgets shit all the time, so the Earth friend just rolled her eyes and said, "Oh Liz."
Now, about the phone thing. I'm feeling especially candid today, so I'm going to tell you all about how much I hate phones. Cell phones, cordless phones, wall-mounted phones, phones with the curly wire thing, big phones, small phones, ear phones, micro phones...
People who haven't known me since way back sometimes have a hard time believing that I'm an introvert at my very core. I'm actually pretty proud of myself for overcoming some of the more crippling social drawbacks of that personality type, but in many ways, I'm still the posterchild. I write a hell of a lot better than I talk. I have a very few very close relationships as opposed to many acquaintances. I prefer smaller, more intimate social gatherings, and even though a great big party might sound like a lot of fun, when I get there, I'm exhausted in about 10 minutes. And as competent as I've had to become at talking to complete strangers in a friendly, outgoing manner, it wears me out. It sounds crazy, but I feel better after 30 minutes on the treadmill than I do after 5 minutes on the phone with someone I don't know, and I don't just mean psychologically.
This impairment even carries over into people that I do know but, for whatever reason, I'm not completely comfortable talking with. Maybe it's an acquaintance or maybe it's just someone I don't talk to on the phone much, even if I see them a lot in person. What it boils down to is that, as you all probably suspect by now, I ignore phone calls a lot. I'm working on it, and it doesn't mean I don't love you.
There is, however, a short list of numbers that I don't typically ignore. I started thinking about this when Jaimie said on the fleeganforum that I was hard to get in touch with, and I got all indignant and thought, "But I actually DO answer your calls. Do you have any idea what a step that is for me?"
You can leave out the comment where you point out I'm psychotic, Mr. Obvious.
Chris, Mom, Dad, West, Jaimie, Kris'n'Laura, and Mommie Ann (my grandmother). That's the short list of folks I never blow off, at least not without a good, sane, normal reason. There's other numbers that would probably fall into that category, including most other family members, but I'm only including those who call pretty frequently.
Calls I absolutely never answer include any number I don't recognize, even if it looks vaguely familiar. This often causes Chris fits. He doesn't have these phone issues and can't relate in the least to this particular quirk. He MUST KNOW the identity of the mysterious caller on the other end and can't fathom why I'm not in the least bit curious.
Calls that don't fall into either of those categories depend entirely too much on my mood. That's what I must apologize for to anyone who has been the victim of my phone-hate. Until I get that under control, you might try text messages, which for me, again with the preference for the written word, is more like opening a present.
6.06.2006
Yard Sale!
Chris and I took some crazy pills last week and decided to have a yard sale. Actually we'd planned it for the week before, but the Times forgot to run our ad the day before. That's what they said. They forgot. The lady I talked to said that isn't that just the funniest thing and of course she owes us a free day of advertising. Lady, first of all, no it is not just the funniest thing and second, if I wanted something from you it wouldn't be a free day of advertising in your yard sale section.
The whole first yard sale attempt last week was already going badly. Chris was supposed to have the day off, a very rare occurrence on a Saturday, so we planned it about a month in advance around this phenomenon. Then sometime early that week, he found out he was going to have to work that day after all, because another city building had a function scheduled and they just didn't feel like having it there. He'd be going in that afternoon, so we let our plans stand, but I felt bad that he would have to get up early on a day he normally got to sleep in, work until noonish, grab a sandwich, and run to his real job where he would work until sometime in the AM. I was already fuming over the injustice of the world when the ad thing came up, so we just put it off a week. At least that way, Chris would have more time to get mentally prepared for a 20-hour day of hell.
In the three days leading up to the yard sale, I think we did the most heavy lifting we've done since we moved into the Dreamplex. And then, at least, we could take our sweet time doing it. I try to think back on my childhood memories of yard sales, those pleasant thoughts burned into my brain during the crucial developmental years that I must have called on in deciding that this would be a fun way to spend a Saturday morning, and I don't remember that part.
The actual sale was pretty interesting. I've always been an informal student of sociology, so I found myself studying our patrons looking for patterns of behavior, social cross-sections, buying habits, etc. I could probably write a paper on it. There were high-brow junkers, middle-class hybrids (nice cars, bad teeth), affable conversationalists (they were my favorite because they bought more and because they tended to buy things no one else seemed interested in), and of course your subsistence buyers who, whether by birth or meth, you could tell they did all their shopping in this manner. We even had one family come by that I'm pretty sure had at least five generations of inbreeding under their belts. I've never actually met anyone whose family tree I knew went straight up, but don't you think you'd know a circus clown if you saw one, even if you'd never seen one before? There were two women, one who talked too fast to be remotely understood and had weird joints that didn't point exactly the right way, and one who was large and lumbering and didn't have ankles and I swear she looked just like an urRu. They had a boy with them who was high school age and obviously a bit slow. They rode around in a compact car with strange religisms hand-painted on the sides.
What I learned from the whole experience is that while yard sales can be profitable and mildly entertaining, the same can be said of selling your body for scientific experimentation, and that doesn't usually involve lifting large appliances.
The whole first yard sale attempt last week was already going badly. Chris was supposed to have the day off, a very rare occurrence on a Saturday, so we planned it about a month in advance around this phenomenon. Then sometime early that week, he found out he was going to have to work that day after all, because another city building had a function scheduled and they just didn't feel like having it there. He'd be going in that afternoon, so we let our plans stand, but I felt bad that he would have to get up early on a day he normally got to sleep in, work until noonish, grab a sandwich, and run to his real job where he would work until sometime in the AM. I was already fuming over the injustice of the world when the ad thing came up, so we just put it off a week. At least that way, Chris would have more time to get mentally prepared for a 20-hour day of hell.
In the three days leading up to the yard sale, I think we did the most heavy lifting we've done since we moved into the Dreamplex. And then, at least, we could take our sweet time doing it. I try to think back on my childhood memories of yard sales, those pleasant thoughts burned into my brain during the crucial developmental years that I must have called on in deciding that this would be a fun way to spend a Saturday morning, and I don't remember that part.
The actual sale was pretty interesting. I've always been an informal student of sociology, so I found myself studying our patrons looking for patterns of behavior, social cross-sections, buying habits, etc. I could probably write a paper on it. There were high-brow junkers, middle-class hybrids (nice cars, bad teeth), affable conversationalists (they were my favorite because they bought more and because they tended to buy things no one else seemed interested in), and of course your subsistence buyers who, whether by birth or meth, you could tell they did all their shopping in this manner. We even had one family come by that I'm pretty sure had at least five generations of inbreeding under their belts. I've never actually met anyone whose family tree I knew went straight up, but don't you think you'd know a circus clown if you saw one, even if you'd never seen one before? There were two women, one who talked too fast to be remotely understood and had weird joints that didn't point exactly the right way, and one who was large and lumbering and didn't have ankles and I swear she looked just like an urRu. They had a boy with them who was high school age and obviously a bit slow. They rode around in a compact car with strange religisms hand-painted on the sides.
What I learned from the whole experience is that while yard sales can be profitable and mildly entertaining, the same can be said of selling your body for scientific experimentation, and that doesn't usually involve lifting large appliances.
6.01.2006
Nose Issues
I break a two-week silence to bring you this important update:
My nose itches.
Actually it doesn't itch so much as it just annoys. I can't stop messing with it. I told Chris I probably looked like a crack bunny. At first I thought I had something on it, some invisible film that had to be washed off. Then I remembered I first noticed it when I got out of the shower this morning, so it must be dry skin. Upon close examination, however, I find no evidence of alleged dry skin. After poking and prodding at my nose like a retard for several hours now, I think it may be numb. But it's hard to tell sometimes if it's numb. My office is like an ice box right now because our so-called "central air" only seems to care what the temperature is in the front of the building, so it's possible that the cold has numbed my nose and further clouded the issue, but it's also possible that my nose was numb to start with and I couldn't tell because it wasn't cold before and my nose has never gone numb before for any reason other than being cold.
Do any serious medical conditions manifest in the early stages with nose numbness?
If you see me today and I'm ceaselessly poking at my nose until I finally start trying to mash it inward with my thumbs in frustration, don't laugh. It's not funny. IT'S NOT FUNNY!
My nose itches.
Actually it doesn't itch so much as it just annoys. I can't stop messing with it. I told Chris I probably looked like a crack bunny. At first I thought I had something on it, some invisible film that had to be washed off. Then I remembered I first noticed it when I got out of the shower this morning, so it must be dry skin. Upon close examination, however, I find no evidence of alleged dry skin. After poking and prodding at my nose like a retard for several hours now, I think it may be numb. But it's hard to tell sometimes if it's numb. My office is like an ice box right now because our so-called "central air" only seems to care what the temperature is in the front of the building, so it's possible that the cold has numbed my nose and further clouded the issue, but it's also possible that my nose was numb to start with and I couldn't tell because it wasn't cold before and my nose has never gone numb before for any reason other than being cold.
Do any serious medical conditions manifest in the early stages with nose numbness?
If you see me today and I'm ceaselessly poking at my nose until I finally start trying to mash it inward with my thumbs in frustration, don't laugh. It's not funny. IT'S NOT FUNNY!
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