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Pile up debit and credit card receipts on the computer desk next to the monitor for two months. Don’t worry about this because it’s tax season and you’re busy. Besides, you got your refund in January and it can’t be all gone yet.
When tax season finally ends, put off the mess further because Gather has done an upgrade and it’s ruined your life. Besides you have to go out of town to take your mother to lunch for her birthday.
Remember to check the snail mail box on Friday. Find a bank notice in there that looks suspiciously like an overdraft notice. You don’t get paper statements any more, so any news from the bank is probably bad news. Uh oh. Hide the incriminating mail from your husband who counts on you to stay on top of these things.
On Saturday, get a call from AT&T who is turning off your cell phones if you don’t pay your bill. Now.
Decide that today might be a good day to get the checkbook balanced and the bills paid no matter that the weather is beautiful and you’d rather be planting your tomatoes.
Open Microshaft Money 2007. Enter receipts in the appropriate accounts for several hours. See lots of red numbers. Cuss. Wonder why you went out to eat so much when you’ve clearly bought enough groceries to feed a small 3rd world country. Cuss some more.
Log on at the bank. Cuss because your password has disappeared out of auto-complete and you don’t remember what it is. Begin checking little boxes to mark items cleared. Make a list of things that cleared that you have no receipt for. Send husband on receipt hunt in cars, on dressers, and in the dumpster. Cuss. Find direct deposits from Amazon, Google, and Linkshare. Think that at least one good thing has happened.
Finish balancing checking account. Take some pride in the fact that you have done this against overwhelming odds and without using the Adjust button in Money. Thank Charles for overdraft protection.
Fight with Gmail which hasn’t been working right for days. Finally get it open. Start digging through 2853 emails in your inbox looking for the utility bill which hasn’t come via snail mail for years. Find it. Open it. Cuss. Tell your husband that we’re all going to die and the world is ending. Cuss. Gripe at the kids for leaving stuff on all the time. Cuss.
Dig through 2852 emails looking for the cable bill. Find it. Cuss some more. Tell your husband that we really need to consider DSL.
Dig through 2851 emails looking for the phone bill. Give up. Tell husband to dial *PAY before they shut you off.
Open mail from the mortgage company. Find a bill for escrow shortage. Cuss. Discover house payment is going up. Cuss.
Still, it can’t be that bad since you set up all your credit cards on auto-pay through your bank. Right? I mean at least there won’t be any $39 late fees.
Wrong. You set Sam’s Club up to pay $100 per month. Meanwhile, you ran it over the limit and the minimum payment went up to over the $100 you had set up to go out automatically. It’s now too late to pay the extra amount on time. Repeat this basic scenario for two more cards.
Cuss. Change all your automatic payments to send more next time. Blame yourself for not opening any of those credit card statements for two months and for using the credit cards you had sworn to never use again. But, hey, you were depressed and it was cheaper to go buy new stuff than it was to go to the mental health care provider. Besides, your tax rebate is coming soon.
Go to your blog and whine about it.
There is an ugly computer taking up space on my kitchen counter.
We went to Joplin on Wednesday to take my mother to lunch for her birthday and spend some time with her. Her long-time boyfriend had an old computer in his van that had belonged to his daughter. He said it works but it’s slow. He thought I could fix it up for my mother since she’s been wanting a computer and internet for years now.
Of course, with it sitting there in a van, I’ve really no idea if I can fix it up or not. It may just need a defrag and maybe a Ram chip. Or it may be running Windows 3.1 and not be worth fixing. I’ll have to take it home and hook it up to find out.
My mother starts shouting, “John, I don’t want it! It’s ugly. I don’t want an ugly computer.”
He continues to load the ugly computer into the trunk of my car. She continues to protest.
“Andrea, don’t even bother. It’s ugly. I’m telling you I don’t want the ugly thing.”
This from the woman that insists that your baby wipes container match your bathroom decor. I’m not surprised. I just wonder how she will find a computer, new or old, that fits in with her decor. I don’t think Martha Stewart has a computer line.
So here it is. It is ugly. It belonged to a teenager and it’s covered with graffiti. I’m thinking about spray-painting it. Kris M. suggested last night that I put an attractive scarf around it. I haven’t hooked it up and plugged it in yet because I don’t want to waste my time fixing it up if she doesn’t want it.
I was going to Freecycle it today but I’m starting to feel bad for it. It’s homeless, ugly, and unwanted. I collect cats and dogs that fit that description. Why not computers?
There are already four computers in this house. With only four people in the house, I’m not sure what to do with a number five. I guess I could put it in the laundry room on top of the dryer for when I hide from the kids in there.
Cast:
The Pot: Played by yours truly, aka Mom
The Kettle: Played by my motormouth daughter, aka Lexie
Striped Hair Guy: The stylist lucky enough to get assigned to the motormouth kettle, God rest his soul
Extras: All the other people in a large salon on a busy Saturday afternoon including my stylist
It’s been winter. The dry heat has frazzled our hair and we look like the wicked witches of Bad Hair Day Land. We haven’t had a haircut since early November just before our family portrait. And we’ve got a serious case of the grey-day winter doldrums. It’s time for mommy/daughter day at the salon! That should fix us right up.
And it did. I’m now too mortified to be depressed.
On a positive note my daughter is an out-going, friendly, never met a stranger, perky little thing. When people like my stylist or the neighbors are trying to make me feel better they say, “Well, at least she’s happy.” Really. I’ve heard those exact words before and I heard them again today.
As I was being shampooed I heard her voice all the way across the salon. Her voice carries well. She needs to go into politics. I am certain there was no one in the salon that wasn’t hearing her. She began to talk and she did not stop.
I was hearing her voice as my hair was cut. I stopped hearing her for a bit while I was being blow-dryed. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not. I heard her while I was being styled. I heard her while my uni-brow was being ripped off with hot wax in the very back of the salon.
I heard her stylist suggest that maybe is she closed her mouth she wouldn’t get hairspray in it. I heard that more than once. I don’t think she heard it.
Now I’m waiting for DFS to come and take my kids away to foster care and cart me off to jail or something. I should probably be getting ready for that instead of sitting here writing this.
She told them about every time in her life that one of our cats has pooped outside the litter box. She told them about my bulimic cat that eats too much then barfs all over the place. She told them about the time her brother made the mess in the bathroom. She told how much she loves being homeschooled because she can stay up all night playing the Sims. She told about our naked pregnant snowlady and how we used strawberry marshmallows for nipples. She pretty much shared every single embarrassing thing about our family and our home.
By the time she was done it sounded like we live in filth and squalor. It sounded like we’re a bunch of backwoods idiots that don’t need no learnin. I was mortified.
Then she asked her stylist about his sexual orientation in regards to his multi-colored striped hair.
Even as this was happening I was planning my lecture series. The lecture about not sharing embarrassing things with strangers and the lecture about what happens at home stays at home. The if-you-don’t-have-anything-nice-to-say-don’t-say-anything-at-all lecture and the don’t ask people if they’re gay lecture. The “Oh, my God, don’t tell people how far behind we are with our schoolwork” lecture. The “No one needs to know how laid back your mother is about bedtimes and R-rated movies” lecture.
Even as I’m forming my lectures in my head I realize that I have told many of the same things to strangers on Gather. I have told even more embarrassing things on Gather that my daughter (thank the fates) isn’t even aware of. To read my articles you’d think all my cats ever do is poop and barf and never where they’re supposed to. You’d think we haven’t touched a schoolbook since before Christmas and you’d be right about that one. (Hey, we have all summer to catch up.) You’d think nothing ever happens around here that isn’t a total fiasco. You even know that I flirt with strange men in the condom aisle.
So the pot has to sit the kettle down and have a talk. I feel like such a hypocrite.
Tonight my husband has the guys over to game. I cooked a very nice dinner and thought I’d have my evening to catch up on Gather. I’m a couple of days behind reading and commenting on my people. First I posted a few recent photo collections and was going to spend the rest of my evening reading and commenting.
Not.
My son frantically called me into the bathroom. I walked in to find this:
My naked son standing in front of the toilet in a pool of toilet water about half an inch deep that covered the entire bathroom floor. A bath towel half in the toilet and half out, dripping everywhere. My son’s cast-off clothing laying in the pool of toilet water. My son yelling, “Mom! I can’t get the poop off!”
Remember, we have guests.
The towel in the toilet was not just any towel. It was one of those decorative towels that people hang on a towel rod in the bathroom and don’t ever actually use. Pale yellow with satin daisies sewn onto it, it now sports streaks of human feces. At least I guess it’s human feces. I never did determine where the shit came from or why it was now on the towel which was now in the toilet. Beats me. Not only is there an ample supply of Charmin in the bathroom, there is also a full container of shea butter baby wipes on the back of the toilet for cleaning one’s ass.
Every bit of laundry in the house was clean for a change so there were no dirty towels to mop up the toilet water with. No, we threw the clean, neatly folded and stacked towels on the shelf into the floor to soak up the toilet water.
Toilet water dripped down the hallway when we carried the soaking towels from the bathroom to the laundry room.
I ran a bath for my son since he was already naked and really, there was shit involved at some point in this debacle. Now he is running naked in front of my husband’s guests and I do not care. I will not care. I am going to sit here and Gather.
Meanwhile the Ro-Tel dip I was making got scorched on the stovetop.
Lucky for you I forgot to grab the camera.
I originally sent this email to our local homeschool group on 12/14/06.
Go ahead and laugh at me now because you will be as soon as you read this. Add to your list of famous last words, “I wonder what that tastes like?”
Several few months ago we were given a very large cactus. Our neighbor was moving to Florida and couldn’t move it. It spent the summer and fall outside. When it got too cold out I brought it inside. Well, the dog was chasing the cat and knocked the thing over. It shot out this milky fluid all over the place when it hit the floor. And I say, “I wonder what that tastes like?”
Turns out it tasted bad, very bad. It was downright painful, burning like fire, swelling up my mouth and throat. Nothing helped. Not water, not milk, not mouthwash. Then I got dizzy and developed a migraine-like headache. I was sick for 24 hours.
Upon googling I discovered that it is not a cactus at all but a succulent of the Euphorbia family. It is highly toxic. Some euphorbias are used to make poison arrows. I have to get rid of it. We have six cats, one dog, and two small children. This thing is only suitable for a home without pets or small children.
It is a lovely plant and I really think it’s too beautiful to simply put out in the garbage. It is in the laundry room under a fluorescent light until I can find a home it. I had to rescue it after my husband evicted it into the bitter cold and I hid it in there. He’s bound to find it and evict it again. So if you have no pets and your kids are older please take it.
What does this have to do with homeschooling? Not much. Sorry about that. But homeschoolers do have a natural curiosity that could cause a story like this to be told.
My daughter’s ninth birthday is the day after tomorrow. We were looking at cookbooks together tonight choosing a cake to bake for her birthday when I remembered the year of the Broiled Birthday Cake.
I said, “There’s a Gather article.” Then I said, “There needs to be a group for these kitchen disasters.” And now here we are.
My daughter was turning three years old that year. We had invited friends and family over for a birthday party. Because of this, we cleaned the house. Thoroughly. Part of cleaning the house thoroughly involved removing all the knobs from the stove for cleaning.
Then we made the chocolate cake. It went into the oven less than an hour before the guests were supposed to start arriving. We set the oven dial to “bake” and the temperature to 350 and put the cake in the oven.
Shortly after putting the cake in the oven to bake we began to smell smoke. We opened the oven to find the cake being broiled. The house was full of smoke, the cake was ruined and the guests would start arriving any minute. How did this happen?
Whoever put the knobs back on the stove put the oven dial on wrong so that when we turned it to “bake” it was actually on “broil.” That’s how.
It’s been six years so I don’t remember enough details to make this story as good as it should be but I wanted to share it anyway. I am now leaving for the store to buy ingredients for the chocolate cake she chose out of the cookbook. Wish me luck.
Originally published at Gather on 1/19/08.
I used to work in a grey cubicle as a payroll clerk. Two cubes away from me sat the Tampon Lady.
I don’t remember the Tampon Lady’s name. I only remember how much I hated sharing work space with her. She was nice enough. She did her job and had no annoying habits that I recall. There was, however, one issue, and I never figured out how to address it. They just don’t cover stuff like this in business college.
She kept a super-size box of Playtex Deodorant Tampons in her desk drawer. It had to have come from Sam’s Club to be the size that it must have been. I never saw the tampons but I know they were there and I imagine every person that worked on that floor knew the tampons were there.
Playtex Deodorant Tampons have a distinctive odor. If you have ever smelled one, you will always be able to recognize the sickening, flowery scent that they are saturated with. I can smell them in a strange woman’s closed purse when she walks by me at the grocery store. And I could smell them in my co-workers desk.
Monday through Friday, I smelled them, week after week. She kept them there all the time, not just at her time of the month. I was assaulted be the tampons as soon as I arrived at work each morning and I left work in the evening with the scent apparently stuck to the hairs inside my nose. I was not free of it until I had been out of the office for several hours in the evening.
I will admit that I have a more sensitive sense of smell than the average person. That’s surprising since I have been a smoker for many years. Still, the tampons were a menace and made for a hostile work environment if there ever was one.
I am allergic to flowery perfumes. I can’t walk through the perfume department at a department store without becoming ill. I can not read magazines that have perfume samples in them. I used to take the stairs instead of the elevator even when I worked on the 16th floor of an office building so that I wouldn’t be in a crowded elevator with someone who had marinated themselves in perfume and spend the rest of the day with a migraine.
So this was a problem for me and I didn’t know how to address it. Luckily, I got pregnant and had to quit my job. I wonder if the Tampon Lady still works there.
This article was inspired a blog entry I read earlier today.
Were you ever the last kid picked for kickball? Do they even still do that in schools? If they don’t, then maybe I’m homeschooling my kids for no good reason. Oh, yeah. I do have a few other reasons but kickball is pretty high on the list.
A post I made earlier today got me to reminiscing about always being the last kid picked for kickball. I do not look back on this time of my life with angst.
No, I remember the pathetic child that was me, always chosen last for kickball, and I have to laugh. The kid that was me was a “looser” with a capital L. It was not yet fashionable to protect a child’s self-esteem at any cost so no one tried to convince me that being a klutz was a gift. Kids weren’t raised to be praise junkies like they are today in this age of self-esteem run amok so I learned to see myself the way I really was and it wasn’t always a pretty sight.
I sucked at kickball, so of course no one wanted me on their team. At the time that seemed important. There I stood with the dregs of my class waiting to be picked. I stood with the dirty, smelly boy that no one would sit next to at lunch and the fat girl that we all threw rocks at and called names on the playground. I usually at least got picked before they did.
I always missed the ball completely when I went running up to kick it. Think of Charlie Brown, Lucy, and that football. Except no one was making me miss. I was just that clumsy.
One day I ran up and kicked and my foot actually made contact with the ball. I couldn’t believe it. Neither could anyone else. My humiliation was not ended for good like I thought for a nanosecond that it might be.
I ran the wrong way. I took off for third base instead of first. After that I was always picked dead last, not even beating out the smelly boy or the fat girl.
They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I’d like to amend that to whatever doesn’t drive you to suicide makes you funnier.
I now look at most anything that I screw up as a source of amusement and something to write about. I wonder if I would still be able to do that if some nice adult had rescued me from ridicule back then.
I wish I hadn’t opened it. Now I’m a mess. It is more than double what it could reasonably be expected to be. I don’t have a prayer of paying it this month even if I were the praying sort.
Fear — What if this is just one curve in the downward spiral to hell that I find our finances in? What if we end up homeless in the street raiding dumpsters behind restaurants to feed the kids? What if this gets worse instead of better?
Rage — I told them to turn those damned electric mattress pads off when they get up in the morning. I told them to turn the damn lights off when they leave a room. What is the matter with them? Why doesn’t anyone listen to me?
Reason — This can not be due to electric mattress pads, mostly because it is the natural gas portion of the bill that is from hell. It must be something else. Get to the bottom of it. Fix it. All is not lost.
Bewilderment — We just replaced the heating and air system. This is a brand spanking new furnace that should be using half the gas the old one used. Instead it is using double. Or is it the water heater? I’ve been thinking I smelled gas every time I’ve been in the utility room lately. Did I really bake that much the week of Christmas? Is my oven screwed up? How can this be when we weren’t even home for a week during the holidays? WTF?
Fear again — Maybe we got screwed when we bought the new furnace.
Reason again — Nah. The electric bill really was cut in half when we ran the air conditioner after getting the new system so they weren’t lying about that. It must be something else.
Irrational Worries — There really is a God and He hates me.
Plan — Figure this out. Write numerous articles about it. First find out how much power two electric mattress pads and one electric blanket use. Figure out if it would be cost-effective to buy timers to put them on so they aren’t running 24/7 and causing me to rage at my kids and spouse every afternoon when I discover them still on. Call the furnace guys to come look at their installation and make sure it’s been hooked up properly. Write an article on furnace maintenance. Call utility company to come read the meter again and check for a gas leak. Look into replacing the water heater and write an article about water heaters. Figure out how to bake Christmas cookies on the grill outside and write an article about that.
Conclusion — Go back to bed and try again tomorrow.
