IlovemyjobIlovemyjobIlovemyjob

Some days, the above litany must be repeated for as long as I can keep it up, just to remind myself that I do indeed love my job.

My boss drives me up the wall, but he’s the best boss I’ve ever had. He knows his shit. He knows how to navigate the maze of protocol required in our office in a calm and sensible manner, make snap decisions (that are generally spot on), and when the heat is on, the best parts of him really come out.

My coworkers are equally fantastic. It’s a little bit of an odd arrangement, as there are three in their twenties, and everybody else is 50 or older. Quite a motley assortment of varying personalities and quirks and idiosyncrasies, but we make it work. We make it work in such a fluidly stellar fucking fashion that our organization is now being hailed as an example-of-what-to-do-right on a regional level. (Wooo!)

[As an aside, I feel the need to clarify that this is not any typical office we're working in. No corporate bullshit, no cubicles, no mind-numbing reports and paperwork and brainless drudgery. Though for the sake of my paranoid desire for anonymity, I don't feel I can divulge any more than that. It's a special place, staffed by special people, overseeing the lives of some really, truly special fucking people. If you get my drift.]

And it’s so fucking stressful. Ridiculous horseshit flies from all sides, in every way horseshit could possibly fly. Just when you think you’ve put up an adequate wall of defense, a steaming pile comes catapulting in from overhead. Put up an inpenetrable ceiling, and sewage geysers out of the floorboards. Reinforce the floor and the walls cave in. And so on. And on and on and on.

Which is why I’m a functioning alcoholic.

And also why I regularly lose myself in my happy place, which usually includes something along the lines of:

Ooooo-oooh-ooooohhhh, yes please!

Drunk: I just got home from work. We’ll get there, just hold your goddamned panties on!
Hearing: Jimi Hendrix, and a pussy crying to be let out. Heh heh.
Drinking: Jose Cuervo cleverly disguised in a cute little Patron bottle.
Smoking: Nothing yet.

I swear, I’m not the type…

…not the type to fall for all that schmoopy, girly lovey-dovey horseshit that’s usually peddled toward women. A woman I may be, but I refuse to adhere to the “norm” as far as “femininity” goes. And even then, it’s not so much a refusal, just a natural state of being. I’m not a girly girl.

Having said that, I recently read The Bridges of Madison County. And I loved it. Shoot me if you must, but I fucking loved it. I imagine myself and the Bed Warmer in the same position as Francesca Johnson and Robert Kincaid, and I know that, if given only a four day window of connection in the course of an entire life, it would have been as equally life changing. An instant romantic frenzied passionate permanently-scarring crossing that would be constantly in-mind for both participants, for the rest of our lives.

Which makes me that much more appreciative of my dear Bed Warmer. I realize that my name for him here may seem somewhat dismissive, but I assure you, I feel quite the opposite. My internal/ingrained/I-must-be-a-total-fuck-up-no-matter-what-happens misgivings aside, I love the man and all the growth he has spawned in me in our time together.

And now, an excerpt.

“With her face buried in his neck and her skin against his, she could smell rivers and woodsmoke, could hear steaming trains chuffing out of winter stations in long-ago nighttimes, could see travelers in black robes moving steadily along frozen rivers and through summer meadows, beating their way toward the end of things. The leopard swept over her, again and again and yet again, like a long prairie wind, and rolling beneath him, she rode on that wind like some temple virgin toward the sweet, compliant fires marking the soft curve of oblivion.

“And she murmured, softly, breathlessly, ‘Oh, Robert…Robert…I am losing myself.’”

Neighbors

Previously, I described the virtues of my SBP.

Now let’s explore the downsides.

Directly across from me, there is a family – mother and father I presume, plus a tweenerish boy and a baby which I have never actually seen – and some sketchy hangers-on or possibly roommates? All I know, as the resident neighborhood cat lady/nosy old lady, is that there’s some seriously non-kosher shit going on over there. Most days they can be heard screaming at each other, with the sound of the baby wailing as a pitiful counterbeat.  The only thing that disturbs me more than this is the fact that I’ve heard it so often that I don’t even hear it anymore.

Directly behind them is an apartment complex that is now boarded up and slowly disintegrating into the earth. Not two weeks ago, it was a perfectly normal building, full of college kids and parties and whooping and hollering and all the normal things that go along with this town. And then there was the fire. And then there was the incinerated body found in the bottom floor apartment after the fire was put out. And then there was the revelation that the body (a woman about my age, and – just for that extra dig – heavily pregnant) was dead before the fire. And then there was the investigation that revealed a husband with a history of domestic violence, and the ensuing arrest and drama and scandal. Totally fucked up. I look at this place every day, and as morbid and macabre and just plain disturbed as my thoughts tend to be, I find myself deeply emotionally depressed on a daily basis by the sight of this twisted and burnt building, and the knowledge of what must have occurred inside.

Directly to my right is another duplex containing functional families on both halves. On Saturday, good old Independance Blow Some Shit Up! Day, one of these families celebrated with what must have been several hundred dollars worth of explosives. They were firing them off from the end of their driveway, and the positioning just so happened to be that these high-grade fireworks were exploding directly above my house.

Now don’t get me wrong, I loves me some bright and shiny combustive things. It was awesome having to crane my neck to see these things bursting right over my head. And also novel having to immediately step back under the eaves to avoid the rain of debris that ensued. Sure, sure, they could have set off a firestorm in the tinder-dry ridge out back. My cats and the Bed Warmer and I could have been cooked like turkeys in a silly little counterpoint to what had happened across the street the week before. But it was awesome. Refreshing. Joyful and reckless and a big celebratory FUCK YOU! to the gods of stupid and senseless acts of violence.

Having nothing more to say on the matter, I will close with a sample of what I found on my front step the next morning:

That scorched piece of cardboard reads, in part:

WARNING
SHOOTS FLAMING BALLS

Eeehheeehheeehheee!

Drunk: Not quite.
Hearing: Kashmir.
Drinking: PBR. Because I love it. I recently learned that it is a choice drink of those christing hipsters, but rest assured, the only relationship I have with them is superficially pointing and laughing at their ridiculous fashion choices. Aaah, we were all young and stupid once….
Smoking: The lovely glass pipe on the table upon which my feet are propped is singing my name. “Eeeedwiiiinnnaaaa. Suck me! Taaaaste meeeee!”

Welcome to my Swingin’ Bachelor Pad

I love my house. Well, okay, it’s actually a duplex, but still, it has been my home for the last three months and three days, and I absolutely fucking adore it.

The street I live on is ridiculously overpopulated, duplexes and apartment buildings disguised and described by the property management companies as “townhomes” and “condos” in order to dupe stupid college kids into blowing Daddy’s money. There are so goddamned many of them crammed into such a ridiculously small space, I am sometimes a little disgusted. And then, I spend an afternoon sitting in the sun in my yard, reading a book good enough to make me oblivious to the sounds of fledgling douchebags blowing contrived machismo across the neighborhood with every blast of good ol’ American horsepower from their little-penis-hiding sportscars and jacked-up pick up trucks.

The Swingin’ Bachelor Pad (SBP) owes a lot of its allure to its placement. A wooded ridge in back, a garage in front to block direct sight of the street, and set just far enough into the ridge to remove it from the neighbors on both sides. There are trees out in front and along the sides that are flowering in gorgeous pinks and whites and yellows. Just yesterday I spent several hours digging and rooting and leveling a sorry ass hillside into a very nice garden plot. Flowery colorful shit was planted. There’s a bird feeder and soon will be a hummingbird feeder. The finches and pheasants and robins are now used to my presence, and are comfortable coming to feed on my scattered birdseed while I sit watching them from just a few feet away. This is probably the only time you’ll hear me extolling upon the wonders of flowery, foofy shit.

I absolutely fucking love it.

Sike!

Erm. Okay, so maybe I’m not such a fuck up as I thought.

Let’s give a big old huzzah for incredibly understanding and compassionate (not to mention passionate) men.

O, my dearest Bed Warmer, where hast thou been all my life?

Drunk: The night is young.
Hearing: Classic rock and large-trucked douchebags racing down the street.
Drinking: Vodka and lemonade, with brief visits from my good friend Jose.
Smoking: Just leaving for the Camel’s ass.

Fuck up.

What is the term for someone who has suddenly found herself in the midst of a fantastic fucking relationship with a fantastic fucking man, and then, just like clockwork, manages to blow it straight to hell?

Oh yes, I believe that would be known as “fuck up”. Or, in this case, “perpetual fuck up”.

Yay, me! This is why I should not be allowed to associate with the general population.

Drunk: Obviously not drunk enough if I’m still conscious.
Hearing: The sound of my own horseshit bouncing from ear to ear.
Drinking: Everything in the house.
Smoking: Let us retire to the veranda so that we may chain smoke until dawn.

B is for Beer

“…when brewers combine hops with yeast and grain and water, and allow the mixture to ferment – to rot – it magically produces an elixir so gassy with blue-collar cheer, so regal with glints of gold, so titillating with potential mischief, so triumphantly refreshing, that it seizes the soul and thrusts it toward that ethereal plateau where, to paraphrase Baudelaire, all human whimsies float and merge.”

An excerpt from “B is for Beer” by Tom Robbins.

This book claims to be “a children’s book for grown-ups” and “a grown-up book for children”.

Though I’m only on page 18, I’m pretty goddamned sure that I will be reading this book to my little screamers, should I ever decide to eject such screamers from my pickled womb.

Hooray, beer!!

Drunk: Hell yes! I worked a full (strenuous) nine hour day on my goddamned day off. You’d better bet your wife and house that I’d be drunk right now.
Hearing: The faint sounds of classic rock from the other room.
Drinking: PBR and Jose.
Smoking: Nada. Friggin’ “no smoking inside” landlords.

Praise the lord.

Thank you christnbabyjesus, spring might finally be showing her pretty little head.

The sun is shining, birds are twittering. A chainsaw is whirring and burring somewhere on the ridge out back. My pussy roommates have been taken with spring fever. It’s almost 70 degrees out there, people!

If I see another goddamned snowflake at any point between now and October, I might just be forced to do myself bodily harm.

Drunk: No.
Hearing: Laundry being done by those helpful house gnomes.
Drinking: A deliciously strong pot of Columbian coffee.
Smoking: A Camel’s ass, not five minutes ago.

Pussy

So, I have four cats.

Four fuzzy fuckin’ felines, who, through happenstance and subliminal suggestion, came into my life and declared me their own. It’s been a length of time since I moved in to the SBP, and in that span I’ve really come to experience and appreciate each of their unique personalities. Three of them are black, one is white; three of them are male, one is female; one is moving along into the elder years, one is settling into a comfortable middle age after years of fighting and fucking, and the last two, siblings, are pure adolescents. They are my roommates and they drive me crazy. And they are my friends.

I suppose that makes me a cat lady. Where’s my tin cup? And that chrissakin’ gin? Somebody tell those little bastards to stop peddling past my house on them goddamned souped-up bi-cycles.

Anyway, I recently found myself searching Amazon for cat shit scoopers. The purpose behind this quest is a tale for another day, but one of the things I came across was this: OMG! A Diaper Genie for cat shit!

Okay, so I can completely understand the desire not to have your home smelling of stale kitty poo, but a plastic can with a rotating cranker to drop the shit you just scooped into a specially designed, six dollar each plastic bag where it can languish for weeks without offending delicate sensibilities is a wee bit silly. Jesus christ, just tie that shit off in a plastic grocery sack and walk it with your lazy ass out to the goddamned garbage can. The flagrant waste of money and resources here makes the miser in me go into fits.

And also:

Drunk: Getting there.
Hearing: The beer fridge humming. Cats tearing the place apart.
Drinking: The last of the tequila, the last of the bourbon, a Mirror Pond and two Blue Boars. My neurologist told me I need to cut back on my drinking.
Smoking: The last of the bowl left over from my most recent evening with the Bed Warmer.

A Henry Rollins threesome? Yes, please!

So, in the wee hours of the night/morning, whilst satiatedly wrapped around a virile hunk of man (heretofore known as the Bed Warmer) I had a dream that I was in a love triangle. One of my suitors was the Bed Warmer, and the other was Henry Rollins. They each gave me a ring and pledged their undying love and commitment. I said I needed some time to decide which one to choose (it occurs to me now that no one said I had to necessarily choose one or the other). After all, I know the Bed Warmer and deeply enjoy his presence. And Henry Rollins, aside from the fact that he is, obviously, Henry Rollins, well, I don’t know him very well, do I?

And there the dream ended, at which point I woke up and proceeded to ride the Bed Warmer off into the sunrise.

As an aside, for those of you who may have been following along at home, several months back I wrote about trying to escape a dying relationship that was driving me motherfucking inssaaaane. Well, if you couldn’t tell, I did manage to extract myself, but had to continue living with the guy for two months after that. And it got bad. And then it got better. And then it got real bad. And then it got a little better.  And then I found myself a super swingin’ bachelor pad and moved the fuck out.

And so, life is awesome.

Drunk: Not yet. The tequila will start flowing as I make lunch.
Hearing: Classic rock from the other room. The goddamned Fun Time clock tick-tick-ticking it’s bastardly heart out.
Drinking: Coffee.
Smoking: Nothing at the moment, but now seems like a good time for a cigarette break.