"It's raining in my bathroom."
The man on the other end of the line chuckled. "That's not good, is it? Let me send someone over to take care of that."
I put down the phone and picked up a mop. It was 9:35. I'd been zonked out on the living room sofa for a good hour when the sound of water smacking linoleum roused me from my delicious Tuesday evening coma. Plop! Plop! In my sleepy haze, I misinterpreted it for the sounds of cat mischief.
"Knock it off, Hal!"
Grumbling, I yanked the thread worn chenille blanket up to my chin and prepared for coma re-entry. Five, four, three. In whoosh and the crisp snap of claws on couch, Hal's round black face appeared over the arm of the sofa, looking foolish and eager. You rang? I freed an arm from my blanketed cocoon to give him a lazy, grateful scratch on the chin.
Plop! Plop!
Cripes. The ruckus was decidedly not cat mischief. By the time I found the source of the plop!, there was a tire-sized puddle on the bathroom floor. I swore (the f dash-dash-dash word). At the edge of the puddle, a brand spanking new giant roll of Charmin Ultra Soft lay, displaced from the roller, disintegrated in a soggy gray heap. I swore again. Then I called maintenance, cleaned up the mess and waited.
And waited. When I got tired of wringing out the mop, I installed garbage cans to catch the water. Then I waited some more, horizontally. Sometime after 12:30, I gave in to sleep and dreamed that my coworker had turned into a zombie and was trying to eat my work friends. Our panicked fleeing made a steady rhythm - slap! slap! slap! - mimicking the bathroom weather system. When I woke up, it was dawn. No one had come to fix the problem, which was now a lake, shored up by the soggy hallway carpet. I took in the sodden shower curtain and the trickle that had wriggled down the bathroom mirror into the cabinet, destroying the remaining five rolls of Charmin. More f dash-dash-dashes followed. Exhausted from a night of escaping the living dead, I abandoned my long-held rule about not taking out my frustrations of people in the service industry. I redialed maintenance and swore into the answering machine.
"You owe me some f-dashing toilet paper!"
The man on the other end of the line chuckled. "That's not good, is it? Let me send someone over to take care of that."
I put down the phone and picked up a mop. It was 9:35. I'd been zonked out on the living room sofa for a good hour when the sound of water smacking linoleum roused me from my delicious Tuesday evening coma. Plop! Plop! In my sleepy haze, I misinterpreted it for the sounds of cat mischief.
"Knock it off, Hal!"
Grumbling, I yanked the thread worn chenille blanket up to my chin and prepared for coma re-entry. Five, four, three. In whoosh and the crisp snap of claws on couch, Hal's round black face appeared over the arm of the sofa, looking foolish and eager. You rang? I freed an arm from my blanketed cocoon to give him a lazy, grateful scratch on the chin.
Plop! Plop!
Cripes. The ruckus was decidedly not cat mischief. By the time I found the source of the plop!, there was a tire-sized puddle on the bathroom floor. I swore (the f dash-dash-dash word). At the edge of the puddle, a brand spanking new giant roll of Charmin Ultra Soft lay, displaced from the roller, disintegrated in a soggy gray heap. I swore again. Then I called maintenance, cleaned up the mess and waited.
And waited. When I got tired of wringing out the mop, I installed garbage cans to catch the water. Then I waited some more, horizontally. Sometime after 12:30, I gave in to sleep and dreamed that my coworker had turned into a zombie and was trying to eat my work friends. Our panicked fleeing made a steady rhythm - slap! slap! slap! - mimicking the bathroom weather system. When I woke up, it was dawn. No one had come to fix the problem, which was now a lake, shored up by the soggy hallway carpet. I took in the sodden shower curtain and the trickle that had wriggled down the bathroom mirror into the cabinet, destroying the remaining five rolls of Charmin. More f dash-dash-dashes followed. Exhausted from a night of escaping the living dead, I abandoned my long-held rule about not taking out my frustrations of people in the service industry. I redialed maintenance and swore into the answering machine.
"You owe me some f-dashing toilet paper!"
Like the technologically savvy communicator that I am, I use my Facebook status updates to announce very important details about my personal life. Behold, updates from the last week:
(I told my sister it gave me elephantitis of the heart, but after a quick wikipedia lesson, I realized how truly horrifying that was and decided to go with a less graphic description. You're welcome.)
In truth, I never realized the impact that these silly status updates could have on the internet world at large. I certainly never guessed that they would become a reason for an... intervention. But today when I logged on - initially to make a statement about the life changing experience of eating Reese's Pieces for breakfast - I found I had a new message.
Clearly, I'm going to have to start embracing emoticons and multiple exclamation points before someone locks me in a room with hideous yellow wallpaper.
Heather is... celebrating her nuptials to a pulled pork sammich.Well, fine, maybe they're not important... but what my status updates lack in meaning, they make up for in sincerity. Once, I suggested I might initiate a cage match with my officemate. I meant that every bit as much as I did the degree to which I admired my new Hannah Montana lip gloss ring (Oh yes, they do exist. Four for a dollar at Target). I do love tater tots more than I do most people I meet. And as far as the Notebook kids go, this may be the most sincere statement I have ever made publicly. I am unreasonably happy. I will never understand why Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams pretended to break up for the last year or so in the first place because it's obvious they are meant. to. be. and should not eff with fate like that, and seeing pictures of them reunited and snuggly made my heart swell with the kind of love that only a strange fascination with the romantic lives of complete strangers can achieve. Wuv, twu wuv.
Heather...just gold medaled in napping.
Heather is... unreasonably happy that the Notebook kids are back together.
(I told my sister it gave me elephantitis of the heart, but after a quick wikipedia lesson, I realized how truly horrifying that was and decided to go with a less graphic description. You're welcome.)
In truth, I never realized the impact that these silly status updates could have on the internet world at large. I certainly never guessed that they would become a reason for an... intervention. But today when I logged on - initially to make a statement about the life changing experience of eating Reese's Pieces for breakfast - I found I had a new message.
"what makes u so unhappy? I never see u say anything positive. Makes me sad for u."Unhappy? UNHAPPY?! I appreciate the pity and all, but come on. The Notebook kids are back together, I ate an infant's weight delicious saucy pork, and I napped the shit out of my Saturday afternoon. I cannot imagine someone being in a state of better emotional health!
Clearly, I'm going to have to start embracing emoticons and multiple exclamation points before someone locks me in a room with hideous yellow wallpaper.
Confession: I'm reading the skankiest book right now, and I LOVE it.
Actually, I have three books in rotation right now, but the other two have been pushed aside because it turned out that their incest/murder quotient was simply not high enough to keep my interest. Before last summer's adventure with the Outlander series, I had never read anything that could be classified as a romance novel. Forgive me, historical romance. Not that I wasn't getting my daily recommended allowance of smut. It was just well disguised. You know, in novels by folks like Marquez or Kundera - some seriously dirty bird writers, who by virtue of maleness, managed to escape having their perversions labeled as romantic.
At book club the other night, we did a swap. My contribution was a book of short stories by Ursula Le Guin; my take home was Wideacre, by Philippa Gregory. Boy is that lady a degenerate of the most awesome kind! Her heroine (who I find myself pulling for despite her proclivity for evil) is a seductress, a murderess, a dominatrix and a super eager/willing participant in a steam incestuous relationship all while still in her teens. Does it get any better than this? Probably not, which is why when I finally pluck Three Junes off the nightstand to finish it, it's going to seem a little bit like homework. Not in the way Tolstoy does, mind you, but the lack of riding crops and patricide? It will be keenly felt.
Actually, I have three books in rotation right now, but the other two have been pushed aside because it turned out that their incest/murder quotient was simply not high enough to keep my interest. Before last summer's adventure with the Outlander series, I had never read anything that could be classified as a romance novel. Forgive me, historical romance. Not that I wasn't getting my daily recommended allowance of smut. It was just well disguised. You know, in novels by folks like Marquez or Kundera - some seriously dirty bird writers, who by virtue of maleness, managed to escape having their perversions labeled as romantic.
At book club the other night, we did a swap. My contribution was a book of short stories by Ursula Le Guin; my take home was Wideacre, by Philippa Gregory. Boy is that lady a degenerate of the most awesome kind! Her heroine (who I find myself pulling for despite her proclivity for evil) is a seductress, a murderess, a dominatrix and a super eager/willing participant in a steam incestuous relationship all while still in her teens. Does it get any better than this? Probably not, which is why when I finally pluck Three Junes off the nightstand to finish it, it's going to seem a little bit like homework. Not in the way Tolstoy does, mind you, but the lack of riding crops and patricide? It will be keenly felt.
I don't know how we got on the subject. Actually, I'm not sure how we get on most topics that we do, but Friday afternoon in the office, when the work is slow and we're itching for freedom, my coworkers and I decided it was critical that we knew the origin of the word, "shorty."
"Shorty?" John turned around in his ergonomic chair.
"Yeah," I said,"it's kinda like boo. As in, Michael Phelps is my boo."
"Michael Phelps is MY boo!"
Before Laura and I could attack each other with letter openers and sharpies over the love of our aquatic god, Shawn had Urban Dictionary up on the screen.
"Wow," he said, hovering his mouse over definition number 2. "Apparently, it originally meant someone new to the game - either rapping or... selling crack."
"So, in essence, our interns are shorties," I said. "But that doesn't really explain how it applies to women now..."
Turns out, Urban Dictionary couldn't be counted on to really clear that up. But the first definition of the word did provide some amusement, if not enlightenment.
"Shorty?" John turned around in his ergonomic chair.
"Yeah," I said,"it's kinda like boo. As in, Michael Phelps is my boo."
"Michael Phelps is MY boo!"
Before Laura and I could attack each other with letter openers and sharpies over the love of our aquatic god, Shawn had Urban Dictionary up on the screen.
"Wow," he said, hovering his mouse over definition number 2. "Apparently, it originally meant someone new to the game - either rapping or... selling crack."
"So, in essence, our interns are shorties," I said. "But that doesn't really explain how it applies to women now..."
Turns out, Urban Dictionary couldn't be counted on to really clear that up. But the first definition of the word did provide some amusement, if not enlightenment.
1. Shorty: affectionate term for a girlfriend, attractive female or concubine.Okay, hold on. CONCUBINE? Like, King David concubines, or is this some new-fangled hip hop concubine? The more I learn, the more it seems as though I have a lot of investigating to do if I'm ever going to truly understand the complexity of being a shorty. One thing's for certain, though. The interchangeability of shorty and concubine has made my world a richer place.
Yo concubine, it's your birthday! Drink Barcardi like it's your birthday!
"Have I ever told you my son is an absolute angel?"
"Are you just saying that because you're his mother?"
"He's my reason for living."
"Mine's melted cheese."
"What?"
"My reason for living - it's melted cheese."
"Like, fake cheese on nachos? Yeah, that's a pretty good one."
« previous |
next »
