Spite You

How fucking mean is the person who stole my pen??!!

Very very mean.

It was a good pen, a great pen! Someone took it out of spite, I know it.

Do you ever wonder who doesn't like you at work but is nice to your face?
I do.
And I know they took my fucking pen. And it pisses me off.

Rubber Ducky, You're The One

J1and J2 are home from a month at their dad's in Oregon, the longest I've ever let them go, HOORAY!
J1 seems to have developed the habit of waking up early. Every morning for the past four, she wakes up and comes and hangs out with me. Keep in mind that it's usually 5:30 or 6:00am. This morning I ask her, "Why in the heck are you up so early?"

She replied, "Uh, Mom, you're really loud when you get up."

Wha? I get up and go to the kitchen and warm up a bottle for J3. The microwave opens/closes, beeps three times and then opens/shuts again. Husband can sleep through it. J2 sleeps though it and her room is the closest to the kitchen. How is it that the preteen with the bedroom furthest away and door shut can hear it?
No matter, I will take advantage of the situation. J1 sat in my room and played with J3while I... (get ready....are you ready??)......

....took.....

A SHOWER. In the morning! I brushed my teeth! I shaved my legs! Both of them! I am getting so excited!
If she keeps getting up early, I might be able to take one EVERY MORNING without a baby in the bathroom with me.
Holy crap. It's almost too much to contemplate.

Smokers Suck

The lady across from me, B, doesn't wash her hands anymore when she's done smoking. All day long I had to smell her stale smoke. It gave me a headache and made me sneeze.

Her mother died recently and B was out on leave all last week to go scatter ashes and whatnot. I feel like it would be rude to again ask her to wash her godamn hands. The woman is mourning and all. Maybe a small subtle can of air neutralizer might do the trick?

Phone Call Numero Uno

A client called me today crying. She could not get affordable Welfare Healthcare, due to an abundance of income. (Which, by the way, the government says is anything over $600 dollars a month for one person.)
She sniffled to me that she couldn't afford to go to the doctor!! She didn't make that much money!! She needed the other kind of Welfare Healthcare, the kind that only pregnant women get!! Or the kind that people with children get!!

Her reason for needing to do away with her $250.00 monthly share-of-cost?

She needed to see a fertility doctor because she couldn't get pregnant. She couldn't get pregnant because of the expensive Welfcare.

I wanted to explain that babies cost a zillion trillion dollars more than that each month, but I held my tongue. But I gave a good long sigh when I hung up the phone.

Answer The Phone

I sit in a "unit", which is a medium-sized room with desks and chairs, computers and a printer, and eight other Welfare Workers. Our areas are personalized; pictures, plants and whatnot littering the desks. Each desk has a phone and the unit has a Community Line, which is a phone line that is mandatory that somebody answer it. The phones ring quite a bit. I'd say that the ringing phones are a big part of the overall Unit-ness. So much, in fact, that I titled this post as such.

Each Unit has a Supervisor. Some Supervisors are great, some are shit. Thank goodness I've never had a shit Supervisor. It can make the job way more stressful. Anyhow,

N~ my Supervisor. She's fair and knows her stuff. She likes her job, enjoys helping people, is an overall good person with one fault. She refuses to take initiative with the members of her Unit when there's a problem. She tends to not be very assertive if there's a skirmish amongst the others. I love that word, skirmish.

SM~ fellow Unit Member. He's a funny guy, older man, married. He loves to answer the Community Line. The is because answering the CL allows him not do anything else. Like, working. And he smells.

L~ is an okay worker. She has a chip on her shoulder about something. But I'm not interested enough to get to know her any better. She was a bitch one day about the ones that are "supposed" to answer the CL, and pissed me off. Whatever. She fades into the background. Nothing great is on her desk.

Y~ is misunderstood. She doesn't seem to have any friends, and everyone in the building is superficially nice to her. Her marriage is a sham, her best friend is her dog. She makes snide comments. For some reason, I really like her. I think she's funny, and I think she feels sad. There's something about her that people just don't like, but it doesn't seem to bother me. She knows her stuff, works hard, but her people skills leave something to be desired.

T~ is whiny. She whines about her life in a trying to be nonchalant attitude way, and I can see through it. She's nice and always willing to help when somebody needs it, but she's a complainer and a gossip. If someone is willing to gossip to me about others, I wonder what she says behind my back.

A~ is a larger woman, sweet and knows her resources. She's not afraid to get to the bottom of any bullshit a client is telling us. I have no problems with her. Scratch that- she keeps her radio a little louder than I like. Mine is on the same station, but softer. Why don't I turn mine off, you ask? Because I shouldn't have too, dammit. Moving on.

K~ is a quiet man, does okay work and keeps to himself. Frequently he says amusing things and we all have a good laugh.

U~ is a helper, a do-gooder. She has the weight of the world on her shoulders and she likes it, it fuels her.

B~ is a newbie. She's a smoker. She sits right across from me and when she comes in from her break she always smells like smoke. It bothers me. It bothers me so much that I asked her to start washing her hands when she comes in from her breaks. She apologized and agreed, but sometimes she forgets and it bugs the shit out of me. I really really hate the smell of smoke. I write suggestions to the Suggestion Box that read, "The law says smokers must stay 20 feet away from doorways. Let's reinforce this, shall we?" and other snide remarks. I sign my name.

Then there's me, Brokemom. I have a rubberband ball on my desk. I have pictures of my husband and children on my bulletin board. I am organized. I answer my damn phone.

The Stupidest Thing I Heard Today

Scenario: I am speaking with the AT&T Customer Service Representative. Let me just add (before I continue) that these people are robots. They say the same things over and over and fucking over. I get frustated and annoyed and I want to cry and hang up the phone.

Me: Can you explain this part of my bill blah blah etc?

Robot: "The section amounts here are different than other people's amounts because different amounts are there."


WTF? No kidding.

The Lie

I've been lied to. Such a simple, small thing...but with such huge ramifications.



They always look so happy, mooing and chewing cud and joking on about this and that. Green grass, sunny skies, all is well in good ol' cee ae ell aye eff oh are en aye ae. It's real! It's the real deal!

Such falsehoods!

I tried cheese from Wisconsin and it was BETTER. Creamier, tastier, it was the best cheese I've ever eaten in my whole life. No joke.

I feel betrayed.

Not Even Close To Yum

I ate eel. It was not yummy in the slightest. It looked funny, too.


I am so not adventurous.

Yum?

I ate moose meat. It probably would have tasted like beef, except for the fact that I knew it was moose. I only ate a little bit. I didn't really care for it...again, because it's moose. Not that there's anything wrong with moose, mind you. I almost wish I hadn't been told what it was before I ate it, so I could have eaten moose with an open, clear perspective.

Things I Like About Where I Live

It smells good when I walk in. And it's cooler, and airy, so I always breath in one breath deeper when I walk in. I get a very satisfied feeling while doing so. As a result, I keep the place clean. Not just cleaner than before or cleaner than usual because people! People! I have never really been a great housekeeper. I'm very cluttered. I have my own organizational method. So the house is clean and smells good.

The kitchen is larger than any kitchen I've ever had. I hadn't realized up until now how small the previous kitchens actually were. This kitchen makes me want to try new things. That's a good kitchen.

The bedroom is cold and has a fan that makes a noise that drowns out the world when I'm trying to sleep. The bed is huge and when I take a nap it's all mine. I can stretch out and snore and forget about the baby for just a little while. Husband will entertaining J3 and I am out.

J1 and J2 each have their own rooms which are kept clean. (The bathrooms are clean too. I can't get over the Clean Feeling.) They are happier with their own space, and as a result they bicker and argue all the freakin time because that's what siblings do! But at least I can send them away from each other sometimes.

I can take a walk outside with the stroller and J3. J2 tags along and we talk about which neighborood cat will let you you pet it, and why don't clouds talk, and if we should taste the cherries from the tree along the road. (We do. They were sweet! And you could just spit out the pits in the street!)

The backyard has grass and roses and trees. Okay, two trees. It's not 13 acres worth of trees, but at least there are trees. The backyard roses also include my favorite kind, not sure what they're called, but they're purple and smell fabulous.

Finally, I have a porch where I can stick my turtle collection. They're keeping the house safe. Keep on truckin', Turtles.

7x365 Leonard

Leonard was an elderly man who lives across the street with his wife. He had the nicest lawn on the block.
I was an industrious child, and I liked to be creative in the kitchen. This usually involved a recipe from a cookbook that I would tweak to "make it better". This resulted in foodstuff that the dog wouldn't even eat.
I had a plastic wagon that I would cart around the neighborhood filled with my Flourless Cookies and my Beer Muffins. I would go door-to-door selling my treats for .50 cents a pop.
Leonard always bought one. I hope he never ever actually ate them, but what a good sport!

6x365 Mr. Robathan

Mr. R was my math teacher in my sophmore year of high school. I wasn't a great student, but I was cute and charming. My friend Kristi and I would sit in the back of the class and make fun of the day's lessons, write notes back and forth, and decorate our binders with stickers.
We could tell that we exasperated the crap out of him, but we kept his class interesting, and he never really did get angry.

5x365 Mrs. Hyatt

Mrs. Hyatt was a the Speech Therapist at my elemetary school. I had a lisp, and in third grade I was told to go every Tuesday to a small trailer at the back of the school. In this trailer I would sit with Mrs. Hyatt and practice my 's' and 'z' sounds until I could thay, I mean say them properly. I got star stickers on each level of sounds that I made.
I still lisp sometimes, but only when I'm excited or angry.

4x365 Mrs. SF

Mrs. SF lived a few houses down from us. She had a daughter named Amy who was in college. When Mrs. SF would go out of town, she would ask me to care for her dog, Sassy. Sassy was a Dalmatian, and had a tail that, when whipped across my legs, hurt like a bitch.
Caring for Sassy including walking her, putting out food and water, and picking up her poop in the backyard. For this I was paid $5 a day. Pretty good wage for a 12 year old.
One day while caring for Sassy, I was bored. I starting snooping around in their house. It felt wicked then, but looking back on it now it wasn't very bad...wrong, yes. I watched 'Pretty Woman' on the VCR and then it wouldn't eject! I picked through Amy's clothes and found a bikini top that I actually borrowed for a few days and then returned. I didn't actually have the boobs for said top, but I was hoping for some encouragement from the top.
I think that Mrs. SF figured out what had happened, because she never asked me to care for Sassy again.

Things My Husband Said

"This isn't pot. Your dad just smokes high-grade oregano."

3x365 Lisa Tripp

I was in third grade, she was in second. Lisa lived across the street in an ugly house with a kick-ass cement pond in front, where we would collect frogs eggs and tadpoles. We would play Barbies together.
As a third grader, I was very proud of my Barbie collection. I had lots of them, clothes, jewelry, etc. One Barbie even came with her own little makeup case/purse, which had real eyeshadow in it!
One day while we were at her house playing Barbies, I had to go home for something, so I left my Barbies there with Lisa. I was going to pick them up the next day. Lo and behold, when I came to get my suitcase of Barbies, things were missing. Earrings, fancy dresses, a turquoise fur wrap...a turquoise fur wrap, people!
I asked her for my things, and she claimed she had no idea what I was talking about. She wouldn't budge from her story. I never got my Barbie items returned. And we were never really friends after that either. Huh.

2x365 Mrs. Gregory

Mrs. Gregory was my third grade teacher. I don't remember much about her teaching style, other than learning to love to read. I still love to read, any book, any time, and I credit Mrs. Gregory for forging this bond with books.
She would read to us during class, after lunch. She would read books like A Light In The Attic by Shel Silverstein and The New Kid On the Block by Jack Prelutsky. I remember her reading aloud The BFG by Roald Dahl. When I see these books I think of her.
I wish I had taken the time years ago to find her (she's retired) and let her know how much she influenced my life. I'm afraid that she's dead, honestly. I remember her as old, and that was over 20 years ago.

1x365 Courtney Owens

Courtney was in my fifth grade class. She had a blonde pageboy haircut and a snub nose. She was mean mean mean to me. She would insult me, taunt me, get the other girls and boys to get in on it and laugh at me together. I hadn't considered myself to be any less popular or any less pretty or any less smart than anyone else ever until she came along.

The fifth graders took a week-long trip to Environmental Camp every year. Before we left, we were asked to write down on a piece of paper the five people we would want to share a cabin with. I wrote down my friend's names and was so excited. The teachers put me in a cabin with Courtney and her chummy group, all who had a great week making me miserable.

I would cry after school when I got home. My mother would tell me that Courtney was jealous of me and that's why she was so utterly mean.
I didn't believe her then and I don't believe her now.

Sometimes I wish we would meet accidently. Would I have the nerve to ask her why she was so hateful to me? Would she remember? Would she even have a reason?

My House In The Middle Of My Street

Don't you wish you had a washer and dryer like these? No, you don't! Because if you did, you'd have a backache from all of the bending it requires to load and unload the damn things. Water saver, pish!






What's that under the foil in my fridge? I'm certainly not going to peek and find out....

Don't you wish that while on maternity leave I had gone and organized the garage like I said I would? Fersher.

A Day In The Life of J3

Mmmmm....milk. Milk milk milk, I love milk. (burp)

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Milk! mmmmm (burp)

Oh no naked aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Hey, milk! I love milk, milk milk. (burp)

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.


Hey! Hey! I'm awake now! Where's my milk?! Gimme my milk!! No Daddy, don't eat my toes, I want milk!

No, I don't wanna be naked again!! Dammit, where's my milk?!!!

Mmmm, milk! (burp)

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.