Long Story Short ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- friday hijinks I just now had this conversation with a coworker: Me: Why did Greg switch offices? Coworker: Because he wanted a bigger desk. Me: I wanted to play with his little balls but he's on the phone so I couldn't. Coworker: Yeah, you can't if he's on the phone. Me: I thought about doing it anyway but figured it might be distracting. Coworker: You're probably right. ________________________________________ I thought my car was ba-roken. I thought it would cost millions, or at least thousands, to get it fixed. I've been driving it for weeks while doing a "please don't break...please don't break" mantra in my head every time I hear the creaking and cracking sound it makes. Not just when I turn the wheel but when I accelerate, or reverse, or do pretty much anything that you would normally do with your car. It's a horrible noise, like breaking tree branches or something. My fucking car...I love it, but I HATE HATE HATE having to take it in for service. Anything that requires me to leave early in the morning or arrive home late in the afternoon can suck whale dick as far as I'm concerned. I sucked it up after almost a month of driving with a pit of fear in my stomach and took it in this morning. I got a call a little while ago - the noise I was hearing was the subframe rattling because one of the bolts they installed the last time the car was "fixed" had loosened. That's it. They tightened it, replaced my burnt out headlight, patched the tire with the nail in it, and I can go pick it up. And they aren't charging me for the bolt tightening labor since they installed it in the first place. How kickass is that? Really, that's the main reason I hadn't had my car fixed - can't freaking afford it. I hate bringing it in, but I also can't pay for the labor or the parts. I finally 'fessed up to my dad the other day that the car was about to break down, leaving my ass on the side of the road in the middle of rush hour traffic. And that could result in my getting shot, since nothing inspires homicidal thoughts like having a car break down in front of you when you're driving to work, or even worse: driving HOME from work. Dad said to put the bill on his credit card since he was worried about my safety. What a sweetie pie! This is the second family bail-out for my car. My grandparents paid to have an axle joint replaced in February. Again, for my safety. Because apparently I'm the type of person who would rather drive my death trap back and forth to work than a)pay to have it fixed, or b)suck it up and take public transportation. My family has figured this out and would rather pay for the stupid repairs themselves - it's cheaper overall than funeral costs. God, that's pretty pathetic. I am so not successful at some of the most basic adult tasks. Like I never get my oil changed until the oil light comes on and scares the shit out of me. And I don't think I have ever balanced my check book in my entire life. I just have a general ballpark idea how much money I have and I use my check card to pay for everything. And I believe I've mentioned the pile of nasty garbage bags that lives on my deck. Things I can successfully do: change lightbulbs relatively quickly after they burn out, replace the garbage bag in my kitchen trash can when it needs replacing, keep my Brita water filter filled to the brim, usually laundry*. *Okay, footnote to doing laundry: I never put the clean clothes away. I'll do ten loads of laundry and put the clothes into laundry baskets (of which I have many) in an organized fashion so the clothes don't wrinkle, planning in my head to fold and hang the various items at a later date. And then inevitably Monday rolls around and I find myself rooting around in the laundry baskets for clean underwear. Then the week passes and the clean clothes are all over the floor since I've been rooting more and more vigorously as the week passes. And the "clean" clothes now have dog hair and dirt and leaves and shit all over them (yeah, so vacuuming is another one of those things I can't get it together to do), so they are all now dirty clothes. And so I do laundry over the weekend and the whole freaking process starts all over again. Washing dishes. My arch enemy. For the first year I lived in my apartment I had a perpetual two-foot high tower of rank, stinking, scum-covered dishes in my sink. I started buying plastic cups and forks to avoid having to wash any of the "tricky" stuff - plates were easy, but having to soap up the inside of a glass was too much work. I got made fun of a lot but I don't care about that kind of stuff. I think I finally determined that I didn't know how to wash dishes properly - probably thanks to my mother screaming at me that I don't know how to wash dishes properly. I would pick up a scum-covered plate and place it under hot water, pour dish soap all over it and scrub for an hour - it's really hard to get food off that's been drying for weeks, try it sometime. By the time the plate was clean, twenty minutes would have passed and my arm would hurt. I mentioned this to my mother and she offered to come over and wash my dishes, showing me how to do it properly in the process. That was last summer and ever since I've been a lot more consistent about keeping up with my sink. It still usually has stuff in it, but the pile can be dated back only a few days. I feel pretty proud of this particular accomplishment. The kitchen generally smells better and there are a lot fewer flies. Martha freaking Stewart, here I come! So yeah...I am not taking a lunch today so that I can leave early and get my car and drive around like a bat out of hell - well within the speed limit, of course - and start enjoying my Friday. And my loooonnnnngggg weekend. Cause guess what? Monday is my birfday! Hells yeah! Twenty-freaking-four baybee! Just curious: What age is it when you finally grow the fuck up? 12:17 p.m. - 2004-05-21 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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