cougardom

the wonderful world of cougars, i.e. older women who like to have fun

Nothing Sucks Like a Bureaucracy, Speak English, and Ineptitude is a Constant

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My son wasted almost an entire Saturday farting around with upgrading his stinking phone.  I know he does everything on that damned thing, so it’s important to him that it works, but I ended up waiting around for him and his buddy to come back and ended up not being able to get the oil changed on my car.  That sort of pissed me off.  I ask for so little, and get screwed over so much.  Shame on me for allowing it to happen.  I need to get tougher.  I understand dealing with the phone company is a pain in the ass (which is why I tend to just do as much as I can with them online,) but I can only take so much of the negotiatory dance in one day.  I hate bureaucracies.  The cable company is just as bad, because you have to talk to thirty different people who tell you thirty different things before they get you to someone who actually knows something.  Then you have to bitch- obnoxiously- and negotiate rates with them and threaten to have your shit turned off at least once a year to get the good ‘ol boy pricing.  Whatever happened to loyalty discounts and so forth?  Why do I have to demand to talk to the supervisor and spend hours on hold and then hours arguing with someone seven states away (or in some God-forsaken third world hole) to get what I should be getting automatically without having to threaten and bitch about it?

I can deal with the cable company and the phone company a lot easier than dealing with any governmental or healthcare bureaucracy though.  Insurance companies of any sort (but especially health insurance) are the absolute worst to deal with, except for Dell Customer Service, who I will name, simply because I am convinced that everyone who works for Dell Customer Service lives in a ghetto in Mumbai and learned what few English phrases they know from watching Pee Wee’s Playhouse reruns.  Believe me, if he tells you his name is “Tom” or “Robert,” you can bet his given name is something that white Midwestern Americans can’t pronounce.  What amazes me (even more than the abysmal language skills) with these sort of bureaucratic systems is that no one knows anything.  Just what I need when I just bought a computer and I’m getting the Blue Screen of Death.  That actually happened to me once.  I ended up having to uninstall and reinstall Windows- yay!- after about 12 hours straight of farting about with these guys.

This is actually a screen saver.  It would likely keep others from farting with your computer.

If you don’t know anything, then why in the flying bejezzus are you answering the flipping phone?  The same philosophy applies to anyone who is supposed to be speaking with people whose first language is English.  If you can’t understand me and I can’t understand you, then what the hell is the point of the conversation?  Why in the hell am I repeating my account number, birth date and social security number fifteen dozen times if none of you idiots (providing you can understand enough English to have a clue as to what I’m saying to begin with) is able to find the information you need even when I provide my information so many times and in so many ways it brings me to the point of nausea?

This dog is NOT Sheena.  It has normal canine teeth, which Sheena does not have.  Otherwise this dog is Sheena’s doppelganger. However, I agree, dogs- even those as dim as Sheena- understand the English language better than a good number of redneck men.

My flaming type-A personality can’t take this degree of ineptitude for long, so I avoid these sort of “customer service” options like the plague.  My son is of a different temperment.  He thrives on pulling people’s chains and he takes delight in demanding to talk to supervisors and so forth, but I just don’t have it in me to be that crass.  It doesn’t come naturally for me.

Because my son belongs to a younger and more technically adept generation (and he is a hopeless techno geek anyway) he knows how to work his way through a bureaucracy, especially his cellular provider, who (for their protection,) I will not name.  I am not at all surprised.  He not only had the determination but the patience (which I do NOT possess, because I’d just say screw it and keep the old phone as long as I could at least call out and text on it) to end up more than likely talking with the CEO of the joint before all was said and done and he came back from the cellular store with the particular Android phone he wanted.   I’m still waiting until September for an upgrade. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a phone that doesn’t randomly call people for no apparent reason.  I’d also like to be able to get on Facebook with my phone, which I can’t do anymore, either because I don’t know how to install the software upgrade, or because my phone’s too old.   I should have opted for one of the Android phones the last time.  That way I could at least play Angry Birds if I get bored.

Yes, I am easily amused.

I have commented on the principle of entropy, which comes to us from the science of physics (too bad I can’t get with the math to be really good at understanding physics, but such is.)  Entropy is a high faluting way of putting forth the timeless assertion that as time goes on everything eventually turns to shit.  Ineptitude is one of those conditions that adds to entropy.  If entropy is what’s happening to the hillside that is eroding away into the sea, ineptitude is the torrential rain causing the friction and wear.

If you want an idea of the volume of ineptitude I experience in the course of a day: Visualize Niagara Falls.

2001 Redux, Things I Do Not Wish to Repeat, the Good, the Bad and the Indifferent

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I finally decided (Thursday) to call my Dr.s office about my heart palpitations and other funkiness and I got the answer that I pretty much assumed I would get.

Hang up, call 911 and let the squad take you to the ER.

Yay.  But I did follow instructions, mostly because I knew they weren’t just going to set me up to see a cardiologist in a week or two.  They wanted me to get that cardiac workup one way or another that I’d been denying I needed to get and that I’d put off for a few years.

The plus side of the fun 5 mile ride in the squad was the view.  Hate to admit it, but the one paramedic was maybe early 30s or so, and very easy on the eyes.  Shame on me for noticing, but I’m not dead yet.  Maybe I should have just told them that since I could still ascertain that the one guy was rather hot even while he’s putting electrodes all over me and getting an IV started in my arm, that it would be cool to just let me out.  However, I don’t think they would be allowed to just drop me off somewhere along I270, no matter how awkward it was that I was thinking some rather randy thoughts.

Yes, I watched the Emergency! TV reruns all through the 80s.  They were hot, except for the 80’s hair, which was considered hot then too.

When I get to the hospital (which was the one hospital where I really didn’t want to go, but they have to take you to the closest one that has room) then I get put in one of those exam rooms and get questioned as to what’s been going on and how long, etc.  Another interesting aside- in the ER all the nurses and techs I encountered were young men.  How distracting, but I’m not complaining.  I feel sorry for them for being forced to have to view my old saggy chest to wire me up.  I’m sure they’ve seen worse and they’re not there for the view, but still.

What was really scary (and why I wanted to go to a different hospital, because this one is notorious for its poor record keeping) was that as I was being put in the ER bay one of the techs looks at the computer and says, “Hi, Mildred, how’s your diarrhea?”

Dahlink, I thought you would never ask!

Mildred, apparently was the woman who was just being released from that room before I was assigned to it.  I heard the physician assistant almost screaming at this poor lady who must have been at least 95, to drink lots of water and have her son stop at the CVS to get her some Imodium, before they wheeled her out.  I looked over and asked the guy if I looked like a “Mildred,” to which I got a sort of puzzled look, then he asked me my name and what they brought me in for.  I didn’t bother to tell him that “Mildred” was old enough to be my grandmother, and I know full well what to do about the shits without going to the ER, but when you’re as old as that lady was even a good case of the shits can kill you.

So I sit and stew for about half an hour, when Jerry finally showed up (doing God knows what with my car) and, after a few phone calls and not a little bit of under the breath profanity, the nurses were finally able to find my information in the computer.  They were fortunate enough to catch some of the palpitation incidents on the monitor, which was enough for the physician assistant (who was the only woman I saw working in the ER) to decide to confer with her boss about admitting me for the night.   Just don’t call me Mildred or ask me about my diarrhea and we will get along OK.

In the meanwhile I’m just lying back on the cot while they wait to put me in a room.  Then another squad brings a lady in from a nursing home who won’t stop screaming.  After awhile they wheel her off and it gets a bit quiet.  Then the transport guy shows up to take me upstairs.  I’d been under the impression I’d end up in one of the cardiac observation rooms which are private, but all those rooms were full, so I end up sharing a room with the howler monkey from the ER.   Wonderful.  To make it worse from the time the squad brought me in- 3:30- until I landed in the room- 10:30- I’d had absolutely nothing to eat.  One of the aides was kind enough to dig me up a sandwich, and the nurse was finally able to find and give me my evening meds so I thought I could go to sleep.

Then Howler Monkey Woman’s sedation must have worn off because she kept setting off the bed alarm, and crapping the bed, so that the nurses and aides were over there hosing her down half the night.  The plus side of this is at least I had the toilet all to myself.  I might have slept an hour or two but I doubt it.

Yesterday morning (Friday) I finally got to talk to the cardiologist, who decided to do both a stress test and an echocardiogram to rule out any really serious stuff since I’d not had a heart attack but I wasn’t exactly “normal” either.  Suffice to say that the chemical stress test is not a pleasant experience and neither is the sort of reverse rotisserie machine they take pictures of you with. I was so glad to get out of there last night I immediately took a shower and went to bed.  It’s better to be home.

The conclusion so far?  I got referred to a pulmonologist for a sleep study as the cardiologist seems to think that my irregular heart rhythm and palpitations are caused by sleep apnea.

To me it sounds like 2001 all over again.  At least I’m not dead yet.  But I already know I don’t sleep for shit.  What I didn’t know is that not sleeping for shit can eventually kill you, which is sort of sad in a way.

Repression is How I Roll, (Not to Mention Denial), and Stuff I Gotta Do

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Focus on the cute dogs…

People like me to be around when they have a crisis, which sort of sucks for me, because I have enough crises without any external help.  Why?  Probably because I don’t let pesky emotions get in the way of what needs to be done.  I am, of course, the queen of the delayed reaction, which usually comes unbidden at the least convenient of times when nobody sees, nobody cares, and frankly, emotions are things I very seldom wish to share anyway.  I don’t feel a damned thing during a crisis.  I simply fly on adrenaline and the advice of my rational mind.  The problem is when that runs out and I am left to process what happened, be it a day later, a week later, or as normally the case, ten to twenty years later.  That’s when I go to the zoo.

Lately I’ve been completely fried and I can’t really explain why.  I know the whole business of Dad having heart surgery was rather disconcerting, but all through the process he has done extremely well with very few complications, so I really don’t have any reason to be a basket case about it.  I was afraid that he might develop cognitive deficiencies (which can and does happen to some people following open heart surgery- I’ve known people who this has happened to- it’s rather obvious and disturbing to witness) but so far I’ve not seen him have any memory lapses or any kind of strange behavior that could be attributed to hypoxic episodes (there’s a lot of medical jargon in the preceding link, and it is a bit dated, being from 2003, but it’s understandable enough to scare the holy bejeezus out of me.)  Suffice to say that hypoxia is the condition of not having sufficent oxygen to the brain or other essential organs, and it’s a common complication of heart surgery.  I’m infinitely grateful that Dad seems to be with it upstairs.  He’s been managing his shop affairs from the day after his surgery via phone and hasn’t missed much.  If I know him, since he got sprung from the rehab last week, he will go up there and at least do his own paperwork and administrative hoo-hah.  Today he will probably be released to drive again- let the mischief begin, although it will be several months before he will be able to actually work on cars again.  It’s only been 5 weeks since his surgery.  I’ve had major surgeries, but both of mine were abdominal (I didn’t have my sternum cut in half and wired back together,) and I wasn’t 66 years old.   I am delighted to see him getting around so well after a relatively short amount of time.  This being said, after both of my surgeries (especially after the hysterectomy) it took me at least a year to actually feel somewhat normal, like everything was actually healed and so forth.

The main difference between me and my mother is I try to deny having anything wrong, while she tries to make up even more stuff. As if I need any help.

Maybe the part of this that is bumming me out- and it shouldn’t- is knowing that I’m not getting any better.  It actually pisses me off, because I don’t like to admit it when I’m not well- my physical infirmities underscore my weakness and I really hate that.  I need to go back to the Dr., but I am loathe to because I know I’m going to have to go through the process again.  The heart palpitations are back with a vengeance and they’re not sporadic anymore. They’re pretty much constant.  Part of the reason I couldn’t sleep at all Monday night (and spent all day yesterday in bed, as much as I absolutely hate calling off for any reason) was that every time I laid down to sleep my heart would pound and pound and I’d struggle to catch my breath.  I felt so bad Monday night that I toyed around with calling the squad on myself, but the only thing that kept me from it was knowing that Jerry was butt drunk and he would probably end up getting a nice little ride in a cop car for being drunk and disorderly and/or interfering with emergency personnel.   So I figured either I would feel better or die.  So far- not dead- but not even close to being OK either.  I know I have two damaged heart valves and irregular rhythm (rheumatic fever, the gift that keeps on giving) but either a.) my blood pressure meds are not adjusted right or b.) something has gotten worse since the echocardiogram in 2001, or c.) both.

Supposedly my mitral and aortic valves both leak.  At least they did in 2001.

Yes, I need to call for a Dr. appt. The only thing I fear is that when I describe this messed up shit to them they will tell me to go to the ER.  I want to wait until my appt. in August and then see if I can get back in to the cardiologist and deal with it then, but as shitty as I feel right now, August is a long, long way away.  The bad thing is I know he will want to do the monitor and the echocardiogram, etc. again and I don’t want to waste his time if it’s the same shit from 2001 all over again.  Yes I feel a lot worse than I did in 2001, even though back then my blood pressure was sky high (190/120 or thereabouts most of the time) and they played hell getting it down to a reasonable level.  I hate going to the ER, and I will really hate it if they tell me it’s something stupid, that I’m a nutzoid hypochondriac, and I wasted my time.  I don’t like sitting in those nasty plastic chairs surrounded by the contagions of humanity.  The pisser is, I really hate not sleeping worth a shit and feeling like I can’t breathe, and that weird creepy tightness like something is sitting on my chest, and the feeling that my heart just plain isn’t working right.  I also wonder just how weird it is for my blood pressure (which is generally high and notoriously hard to control) to be running with numbers like this morning’s-  97/61.  I usually struggle to keep my blood pressure down in the 140/90 range so something is really bizarre here. That’s why I sort of suspect my blood pressure meds, but the Dr. only upped the dosage ever so slightly on one of the six meds I take for that.  The effect should not be that dramatic.

Even though I am feeling genuinely physical effects, and I’m still tired as hell even after sleeping all day yesterday, I don’t want to go through all the medical hoo-hah and then have some wise ass tell me it’s all in my head.  But if I have another night from hell like Monday night, I will sit out front and call a frigging cab to take me to the ER.  Unless of course, Jerry is sober.  Then I will call the squad, because he can’t drive for shit at night.

Nuptial Nuttery, Don’t Wanna Be a Bridesmaid, Don’t Wanna Be a Bride(zilla)

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At least someone’s getting some.

Nothing gets young twenty-and-thirty something women’s undies in a bunch like a wedding- especially their own, or God forbid, that of a family member or close friend.  I got railroaded into that mess exactly three times- once for my first ill-fated wedding, mostly courtesy of my mother, and twice for my sisters’ weddings- and I refuse to go through that noise again.  As far as I’m concerned if you must get married, then have the sentience of mind to just go the courthouse and let the Justice of the Peace du jour do it.  You can clue me in about it after the deed is done and I might be nice enough to score you a Target gift card or a free pizza or something.

  According to Steve-o, “If your pants are bigger than mine, I’m not getting in them.” If you see something like this on your wedding day, run like hell. Need I say more?

I wore a tie-dyed Toyota t-shirt, black shorts and shower shoes for wedding #2.  I’m glad I didn’t blow the scratch for high faluting clothes.  It was August and it was bloody hot.  I sincerely hope that the illustrious Steve-o and his daughter’s mother do actually get married- that would be nice- but I hope that they have the good taste to keep it simple and tasteful and most importantly, frugal.  Everyone knows it’s extremely rare these days for anyone to make it to his/her wedding day with his/her virginity intact, but let’s just say it would be a bit on the tacky side for the bride to blow all kinds of money on a bright white gown and to force her friends to buy fugly dresses they’ll only wear once, especially when the couple’s kid’s a year old or more.

 See what I mean about fugly dresses?  However, these may gain a second life, either as curtains, the covers for cushions that go in the dog crates, or upholstery of some tacky sort.

I don’t mind being the spectator and making commentary on the frightening (not to mention bloody expensive) fashion faux-pas I observe from others’ weddings.  That’s fun, as long as I don’t have to be involved in the party planning, I don’t have to make an extended road trip to be there, and I’m not stuck buying a fugly dress I’ll only wear once.

 This is not a fugly dress, however, this is not my mutant-troll proportioned body either.  My face is about 14 shades whiter than the model’s too.

I don’t believe in fairy tales and princess brides and all that happy horseshit.  I don’t think I bought that line of crap as a kid either, if only because I was awkward, ugly and proportioned like a mutant troll as a child too.   Plus ça change, plus c’est la méme chose…

Anyway, watching other people’s elaborate weddings fail to go according to plan does have some entertainment value, which is sad.  There’s a bit of the schadenfreude element there too, as I can’t help but to enjoy seeing the beautiful people get screwed over.  I get screwed over every day. That’s my “normal,” so I do enjoy a little bit of that sinister glee in observing a high dollar outdoor wedding getting rained out, or someone’s wedding pics suddenly taking on a whole different dimension when complimented by dog humping.   But I fail to see the wisdom in thinking that it is actually possible to engineer a “perfect day.”  The only person guaranteed to show up at your wedding is the one person who you’d never dream of sending an invitation: Mr. Murphy.

Any kind of staged event, from a graduation to a speech, to a concert, to a play- anything that involves a number of people and processes that have to work together correctly- is a guarantee that somewhere in that process Mr. Murphy will show up.  Murphy’s Law is alive and well, and nothing contributes to Murphy’s Law playing out than a number of people and processes that have to come together at the right time and in the right way.

Then there are people who are just plain touched in the brain.  I like venison as much asmost other rednecks, and I admit with some trepidation that I do know how to make deer meat taste good, but this cake draws the line:

Something in my visual cortex will not allow me to eat this cake.  That, and knowing what cake and sweets do to my blood sugar- I’ll have to pass.

I have to wonder about a wedding in which the bride is doing a keg stand too.  I know people get drunk and stupid at weddings, but one would think the happy couple would stay sober long enough to do the nasty later?

Sometimes we need to see the guys through beer goggles too!

I can’t really say I ever had any better luck getting lucky back in the day when I did indulge in a lot of binge drinking.  The last time I ever really got shitfaced, as in forgetting what planet I was on, etc. I woke up in a motel room alone.  That’s not a terribly good commentary  on my self-control, but at least I didn’t get friendly with the toothless truckers who were trying to hit on me earlier in the evening.

For some reason when I used to enjoy going to bars (?) which seems completely foreign to me now because I don’t like crowds and I can’t drink due to medical issues, the fugliest dude in the place always seemed to be compelled to talk to me.  I’ve tried to figure this out but can only come to two conclusions:

I was a target because I was just as fugly as the toothless truckers and/or lard assed bald dudes, and/or I was a target because the only things they picked up on were my boobs, as in boobs=female, usually.

One of the beautiful things about being my age is that there are no more worries about the “biological clock”- ’cause that dude’s been dead for a number of years now, and by the time a woman hits 40 she (should have) come to the blissful realization that while men are enjoyable, you don’t need one, and you don’t need to take their shit.

Simply Enchanting, Insect Apocalypse, and Solitude is Elusive

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When I was a child I was terrified of almost everything- strange people, especially strange men, cops, other kids (because left to their own devices they generally beat the hell out of me,) strange places, being shoved and locked in closets, and I had an obsessive fear of being shot to death through the window, which considering the neighborhood we lived in until I was about 7 years old, wasn’t as irrational as it sounds.  People in that little slice of redneck heaven liked to get drunk and shoot off their shotguns in the middle of the night, so who’s to say?  But my most overwhelming childhood fear by far was of flying, stinging insects.

I still have a pretty hearty dislike for these bastards.

It didn’t help that my sisters (especially the oldest one, who was sadistic as hell) liked to toss live wasps in my hair.  There’s a number of reasons why I wear my hair very short today.  It is cooler, easier to color, and much easier to style, granted.  It is also easier to keep it insect-free.  It was bad enough to have live wasps tossed in one’s hair, but far worse when you have insanely thick hair that goes down to your waist.  I still really hate anyone or anything- besides me- touching my hair.  I’m weird about any kind of touching anyway.  Going to the hairdresser every month or so for a simple cut (I color my hair myself) is a necessary evil, but I can’t say I enjoy it.

Anyway, I found it most distressing to be informed that the insect apocalypse has arrived in what was my grandparents’ house.  Dad had rented Grandma’s old house out to a dude for the past two years who paid his rent and lived there without incident, but said dude died about three days after Dad landed in the hospital.  The dude’s girlfriend had been keeping a dog there and for some reason the electric had been turned off.  So she left the place- rotten food in the fridge, dog shit all over the floors, and unauthorized insect life- just as it was.  Poor Spencer went in to examine the disaster and ended up completely covered in flea bites. God only knows, but I’m sure in that neighborhood that the roaches are living high off the hog in there, and possibly bed bugs too.  There’s no way in hell I’m going anywhere near that.

Just call the exterminator, or the crime scene clean up people.  It’s not worth it to try cleaning up that nightmare without having the Extreme Prejudice to do it.

I still don’t like bugs.  Especially ones that leave welts.

So, I hope, when Dad is able to deal with his rentals, that he just gets the exterminator in there and lets them de-bug the place.  I do not envy anyone the task of cleaning out a rotten fridge in high summer, but I would want the bugs annihilated first.  Again, I think the crime-scene people are the way to go.

 Some things may not technically be considered HAZMAT, but should be.

I did attempt- with little success- to get some quality leave-me-alone-dammit time in over the weekend.  Mom calling me at 7:30 on Saturday just after I’d fed the dogs, let them out, got them back in, and then got Jerry out the door was a nice, annoying touch, since she usually never gets up any time before 10AM.  I was hoping to be left alone Saturday at least between 8AM and noon but that wasn’t happening.  It’s my own fault for forgetting to turn the damned phone off.  It would be one thing had she been calling me for emergency purposes, but she was pretty much only calling me to bitch at me because Steve-o was rude to her and it was a rant that could have waited until later in the day, or even a rant she could have saved for one of her nosy friends.

To make it worse, when she got off the phone with me, no sooner than I’d hung up,  and before I had the sentience of mind to turn the damned thing off, Steve-o called me with his own 37 minute rant on why he’s pissed that I’m not paying for his emergency room visit back in April.  I listened to him vent, but pretty much responded with,  “It’s called ‘you’re an adult now,’ so now you have to pay for your own shit.”  It sucks enough that he’s still on my farking health insurance so my deductible and my weekly premiums are even higher.  Needless to say, the cougar nap was out of the question Saturday morning, because I was so pissed by the time I got off the phone with him- after both his and Mom’s tirades- that I figured I might as well screw attempting to nap or read or even to put in a Journey DVD.  I decided I might as well work off some of my aggravation and start the day’s business early.

Step one for a nice, solitary day: turn this son of a bitch OFF!!!

Admittedly since Dad’s surgery and stay at the rehab I have been loathe to turn the phone off just in case there is some sort of emergency.  The sad thing is that I have no way of knowing the difference between a bullshit/nuisance call and an emergency call.  Mom will call me for the most banally stupid things- usually when I am not in a good position to waste an hour listening to her vent about how she’s pissed that the WalMart messed up her scripts, or how much Dad whines about the food at the rehab place.  Believe me, she is going to hear his whining about the quality and quantity of food available to him even worse when he gets home.  He knows how to cook.  I would suggest to him that as part of his rehab and recovery that he get really good at preparing his own meals.

Steve-o will whine and cry to me about virtually everything from how much he can’t stand how hot it gets at work, to how much he doesn’t like having to get up with his daughter in the middle of the night when he’s home, to how torqued he is that he can’t spend every dime of what he earns on playing with his cars.  That gets old too.  I feel for him as he does have a grueling schedule right now, but he sort of brought a lot of that on himself.

There’s no rest for the wicked.  I ended up most of Saturday in WalMart with Mom (I don’t believe in purgatory, but dammit, that comes close- she’s slow and she knows everyone she sees) though I did get about half an hour in the Cougar Pool when I got home.  Sunday I ended up going back up there and spending most of the day with Dad at the rehab.  I hope he gets out this week, because I am going to stay home and in bed at least for a little while this weekend.  Unless I have to bring him food he can actually eat.

I think we all know how to prevent these- but I love antique posters and such.  This one is from WWI.

Not very politically correct, but it sure gets the message across.

Victorian Ephemera and Other Morbid and Melancholy Forays

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Lactated Food sounds pretty gross, but it’s simply an early form of baby formula made from powdered lactose (milk sugar) and various grains.  Infant mortality was about 25% in Victorian times for a number of reasons, many of which are preventable today.  If a mother wasn’t able to adequately breast feed her child this was one of the alternatives.  If you’ve ever tried a taste of modern baby formula, or even smelled the stuff, it couldn’t taste much worse.  Today’s baby formulas are majorly nasty tasting,  but if you don’t know any better and that’s all you get, well that’s all you get.  Unfortunately Lactated Food, while it may have served as a emergency baby formula, it couldn’t do much to prevent the epidemics or correct the sanitation issues of that era which likely caused most of the infant mortality.

The Victorians are especially known for their sense of drama in matters involving death.  Death was not something that was shoved off into hospitals and nursing homes, far away from the rhythm of daily life.  Death was part of daily life.  The guy who built your furniture was the same guy who built your coffin.  They also called it a coffin, not a “casket,” or  “receptacle for remains.”  Mortality wasn’t something reserved for the catastrophically injured, terminally ill, or the aged who are normally shoved off into some sort of facility for months or years before they die- mortality was an equal opportunity proposition.  Death usually wasn’t a lingering thing back then. One day you might be doing your daily business and the next you could just plain drop dead.  I think that’s the reason why there were so many post-mortems taken.  You didn’t have a chance to have so and so’s pic taken when he/she was alive, so now you have to do it before he/she starts to rot.

Was it winter? Did they put her out on the porch to chill until the photographer could make it? ‘Cause she looks pretty well preserved for being dead over a week.

I don’t know why I find post-mortem photography to be fascinating.  It’s creepy to take pics of dead people and even creepier to gawk at them, but I guess it’s more morbid curiosity.  The Victorians raised post-mortem photography to a high science, even developing a sort of guitar stand for the dead so they could be maneuvered into a more lifelike pose:

Now I can explain Keith Richards.

Should I have had the misfortune to have been born in Victorian times, I likely would not have survived much more than a day or two- I was born with pneumonia and had to spend a week in the hospital from the beginning.  Sickly infants were the first to go. The Victorian world made 1000 Ways to Die appear comparatively tame.  If the contagions and bad nutrition and having to wander around in horse shit didn’t kill you, the odds of death by accident or misadventure were pretty good too.

I still admire the artwork of the Victorian era though.  The drawings are stunning and ornate.  The clothing, while beautiful, would have had to have been something wicked to clean and maintain, and I don’t see how any of that stuff, especially corsets, could have been comfortable.  I balk at underwire bras and pantyhose.

I have no idea how these poor women could breathe- but they were probably already rail-thin from always having Montezuma’s Revenge.

 Another hallmark of the Victorian era was maudlin sentiment, which was sort of understandable when you didn’t know from one day to the next who would be alive and who would be dead.  The next birthday you remember might be the last, so yuk it up good.  The cards- and I admit I don’t spend much time or money on paper cards these days- are awesome.  Even the ads are so much more artistic than the ones we are treated to today:

Of course the stuff in the ad probably had lead and arsenic and heroin and cocaine in it, but what a pretty ad!

Patent medicines- basically anything someone could put in a bottle or a tin and market creatively- intrigue me also.  A lot of that stuff proved to be more deadly than anything.  I have to wonder how many people died because the “cure” was worse than the disease.

This looks like someone’s acid trip- and it might just be acid- but if it does something about my lumbago, I might just try it!

I like the little demon drilling on the top of the dude’s head  (center frame on the left.)  That’s a nice touch.

Creative Parenting, Culture Shock, and a Wardrobe Malfunction

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I didn’t think the yellow rose would bloom this year- but it’s doing pretty well.

Oh, where do I begin?  The past week and a half has been absolutely insane, especially with all the stuff going on with Dad.  I have been trying to distract myself from the medical mayhem as much as I can- partially because I’ve already spent way too much time in medical facilities and hospitals due to my own laundry lists of ailments, and partially because it’s really difficult to see him incapacitated in that way.  My sympathies to the people at the rehab center- especially if he gets pissed or starts feeling a little too frisky- but I am very thankful he’s doing well.  Of course, because of Dad’s illness and surgery, I have been spending a lot more time up north, which is always a bit disquieting even when everyone is healthy and things are hunky-dory.  Things move a lot slower in a small town, and that’s different enough, but there are more subtleties for the vigilant eye to observe .  I don’t think I’ve seen white landscapers since the late ’80s. 

I thought only Jerry after a six pack or more, (or Mexicans) could get these things to run.

Here’s a solid case against the sale of multi-colored duct tape, and a caution against painting green moustaches on lame mid 90s GM sedans. Acck.  And this piece of work was sitting in the hospital parking lot. 

Along with the slower pace of life, one encounters a few things in rural areas that aren’t nearly as common (or perhaps as easily overlooked.)   I’ve seen some unholy pieces of attempts at do it yourself automotive body work, though to be fair, it’s more typically trucks that are customized in this fashion. 

It’s really scary that there’s someone out there who thinks the “General Lee’s” color scheme looks cool on an old lawn mower.

It would, however, be cool to be able to jump over cop cars like that.

Worse than the vehicles “pimped” by denizens of the trailer park, are the denizens of the trailer park themselves.  I had to have viewed at least as many bad tats just in the Wal Mart alone (though I admit I did not have the courage to get pics) as one would expect to see during Bike Week at Sturgis. 

Uh, I know this is your sixth margarita, but your pants are falling off…

I used to be a binge drinker, so I really shouldn’t make fun of the shitfaced, ’cause I’ve been there myself.  I really couldn’t help myself on this pic, though.  I was able to take this one relatively safely because with my good friend, digital zoom,  I could stay conveniently out of view.  Suffice to say the take home lesson from this tragic pic (and I cropped it so nobody can see her face or guess who it is) that if you’re going to get shitfaced with your buds, please wear pants that are going to stay up.  I’d even say wear suspenders if you think you can operate them seven or eight Kamikazes into it.  One would think it would be rather breezy with one’s cheek hanging out of one’s pants, but alcohol can hamper one’s ability to keep one’s drawers up- and it can obscure the knowledge that one’s drawers are dangerously low to begin with.  I get to see it all the time at home.

Now I know what to do with Jerry the next time he’s passed out.  Get creative with a red Sharpie.  Sure it’s not technically parenting, but I do have to manage a 55 year old toddler.  I need to have a little more fun with it.

I’ve always been one to practice creative parenting.  I discovered a long time ago that there are ways to keep your private things private.  Boys find certain things to be inherently mysterious and disgusting at the same time.  Nobody’s going to be looking for an extra $20 in the Summer’s Eve box, for example. 

A box no man will willingly open.  Even if he thinks there might be yuppie food stamps inside.

I found a creative way to hide perishables also.  I am not a huge fan of chicken gizzards, although I can prepare them in such a fashion that they are somewhat edible.  Though Jerry will look down at and refuse to eat dishes I might consider as delicacies, such as cocktail shrimp, Jerry and his buddy Bob adore gizzards whenever I can get them.  While hiding things in the gizzard container is not effective at all in deterring Jerry from investigating the contents, Steve-o would always steer clear of this:

Gizzardlyicious!

Even better if I fill those containers with cocktail shrimp.

Crazy as Shithouse Rats, and Nightmares from the Service Lane (Part I)

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I was sort of mulling over in my head the weird people and bizarre incidents that I’ve experienced in 25 years in the automotive industry.  I’ve always been in what the dealers call the “fixed operations” part of it- parts and service as opposed to selling entire vehicles.  I’m more of a techie type than an emotional, “I wanna sell you stuff ” type- so I’m not going to be good on selling someone on the pretty blue paint job and all the bright, shiny chrome.  I can tell you what a timing belt is, though, and why you are in deep shit trouble if it breaks out in the middle of the freeway. (especially if you own an older Honda with an interference engine, but I digress.)

Generally I try not to use much automotive terminology here,  because most people have absolutely no clue what I’m talking about, unless they’re motorheads too.

Most people are not motorheads and don’t understand the terminology, and I’m not into long and drawn out explanations.  Anyone who drives should know a few basic things (yes, I’ve coordinated car care seminars and I’ve gone through the New Car Checklist with hundreds – salesmen are supposed to do that- but are often too busy ignorant to do so.)  One of the most tragic customers I’ve ever encountered was a college student who had bought an ’87 Tercel (which, admittedly, that year and model was one of the very few of Toyota’s four cylinder cars I would NOT recommend) and was in tears when I had to inform her that the engine was blown and not repairable (when there’s a connecting rod blown clean through the block, the only fix is to replace the entire engine.)  She looked up at me and in all wide-eyed seriousness said, “But I didn’t even put 30,000 miles on it.”  The poor girl had run this car for 15,000 miles without changing the oil, because she thought it was only necessary to change the oil every 30,000 miles.  What was left of the motor oil in this car was a clumpy, burnt-up, coagulated mess stuck to the bottom of the oil pan.  I’m surprised it ran as long as it did before it blew up.  Oh, and decimal places are important.  Just so you know, although most manufacturers have since gone from a 3,000 mile to a 5,000 mile maintenance interval.

I had another guy who contributed to a catastrophic failure on his own car by assuming that just because it’s red and it’s a fluid that it’s automatic transmission fluid.  Had he called me (and he was a good customer of mine) I would have told him that while the stuff that comes out of a Toyota cooling system is red, it’s NOT ATF, and putting ATF in your cooling system is a Very Bad Idea.   That mistake cost him about four grand.   Our tech had to flush his entire cooling system, replace the water pump, head gasket, and power wash just about everything in the entire engine and cooling system that comes in contact with coolant.   All because he was too cheap to pay us to do a $79.95 coolant drain and fill- and that would have included the Toyota Red coolant.  Penny wise (no, not the clown) and pound foolish, no?

This is red.  It goes in your Toyota’s  engine cooling system.

This is also red, but does NOT go in the engine cooling system.  Ever.

Certain vehicles are very prone to acquiring foreign objects in the air intake systems.  I loved the older Camrys, but so did vermin, especially in rural areas.  I don’t know how many air filters we discovered torn to hell and stuffed with dog food.  We also encountered a few blower fans (squirrel cages) that ended up being nesting areas for mice.

Mice and blower fans are not a very good combination.

I worked with a particularly obnoxious primadouche technician one time- well two times, at two different dealerships. Lucky me.  He was a gifted tech, and I would definitely trust him to work on my car, but he was a festering asshole of a human being.  He did have a very glaring weakness for one who works with heavy machinery and sharp things though. He could not stand the sight of blood.   He was working on an older Camry on which the customer complaint was “a rubbing sound when you turn on the blower motor.”  As he pulled the squirrel cage out, to his horror, was a nest of chopped up baby mice- which he dropped on the floor as he ran over to the nearest trash bucket and began projectile vomiting.

Always the inciteful person in the shop, (with my iron guts and the gleeful assumption that I’d found Mr. Primadouche’s Achilles heel,)  I wandered on over to see if he’s just being a pussy, or if I really needed to call the squad.   Being that it was the former rather than the latter, I picked up the squirrel cage, dismembered mouse parts and all, dumped it out in a trash bucket that wasn’t being puked in, and then proceeded to power wash the rest of the guts out in the wash bay.  When Mr. Primadouche was done blowing chunks, I calmly laid the squeaky clean squirrel cage on top of his workbench and went back to checking in my stock order.  The rest of the guys in the shop were rolling on the floor with laughter, that the “parts bitch” had- yet again- shown up Mr. Primadouche.

This was the same douchebag who tossed a Celica exhaust (yep, not just the muffler-this unit was complete from the cat back) across the shop at me because he was pissed that he got the wrong one.  He gave me the wrong information when he ordered it.  I know, I should have made him give me a VIN, and from that moment on, I did exactly that anytime he wanted me to special order anything for him or any of his buddies ever again.  I’m just glad he missed, because that son of a bitch would have left  a mark.

I got a little bit of revenge when he and the washboy were smoking their lunch one fine afternoon.  I never understood why he would sit in his truck and smoke the reefer at lunch when there was a highway patrol station next door, but these two would get high out there every day.  This truck looked like something that belonged in a Cheech and Chong movie.  It was a jacked up fugly old Dodge 4X4 that looked like it had narrowly survived the apocalypse.

The belt molding (where the bottom of the window meets the door frame) was just above my head.  So Cheech and Chong couldn’t see me (though I could clearly see that fine skunkweed smoke billowing out of the cowl panel) as I took a rubber hammer, banged on the driver’s side door, and at the top of my voice screamed, “POLICE!  OUT OF THE TRUCK NOW!!”   As I was running across the lot after the two had fallen out of the truck, I looked back and sort of felt bad because Primadouche had been so scared he wet his pants.

To be continued…

Everyone Has a Purpose, Apparently Mine Involves Graciously Accepting Others’ Shit

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Suffice to say I’m not in a terribly great mood today.  The pragmatic side of me says that Jerry was a bit overdue for a drunk-n-stupid episode- it’s been almost a week- so I should be happy with conveniently being out of town and missing the Monday Night drunk-n-stupid.  The only problem with that was I got the Wednesday Night make-up round complete with two of the three elements I hate about the drunk-n-stupids.  One, he started in about money, blissfully ignorant of how much I just plain pay out for his skank ass, and also blissfully ignorant that when you sell crap on E-Bay you have to pay a fee on it, and you have to pay to ship it.  Explaining anything involving money or expenses to him when he’s trashed is like nailing Jell-o to a tree.  I should have just nodded my head and agreed with him- because when he’s shitfaced (even more than when he’s sober) he thinks any crazy shit that pops up in his head is Gospel truth, but I was stupid and decided to set him straight on a few things.  Mistake.   

So I got the oat opera torture until midnight and an attempt at drunken groping that was not only futile but just plain disgusting.  The problem is the only time he even gets horny is when he’s shitfaced, and the only thing he can do about it is slobber all over me and wave his nasty cigarettes around and spill beer all over everything.  Blecch.  My standards admittedly are low, but that’s just plain nasty.  There are a few things that can put an old cougar off doing the wild thing with the quickness:

Cigarettes.  Even back in the day when I smoked, I had the common courtesy to wait until AFTER the deed was done to light up.  Now that I haven’t smoked for years, just smelling cig smoke is enough to make me gag- without waving the damn thing in my face, ashing all over the place, and getting way too close to putting burn holes in my sheets and my skin.

Few people are more passionate about their hatred of smoking than ex-smokers.  Believe it.

Being shitfaced.  Natty Lite is not good for the breath.  Especially when you’re belching up used Natties in my face.  Waving the half-full beer can around in my bed, and possibly even spilling some of that embalming fluid swill in my bed sheets while doing so, does not earn any points for charm either.  Go back to your own hole and be shitfaced by yourself.

If you drink your dinner, do the world a favor- sleep alone.

Country music.  Country music has to be the #1 anaphrodisiac for me, save for extreme body odor.  Being that I am nothing to look at, and am proportioned like a mutant troll I can’t be terribly picky.  But start playing that awful song about saving a horse and riding a cowboy and you might as well understand that you’re not getting any action from me until you turn that torture off. 

I may be poor and white and mostly self-educated, but my family tree does actually fork.

Needless to say, even though he hasn’t had a woody since Bill Clinton was president (and probably never will again), last night was not the time to try to resurrect the dead.  It was certainly not a good time to start in pawing and slobbering on me.

Normally his drunk-n-stupids are just part of life, but last night’s really got on my nerves.  Dad is in the intensive care up north awaiting bypass surgery on Monday.  I spent most of the day Tuesday with Mom while the Dr.s were trying to figure out what was going on with him and what to do.   Now that they know what’s going on and what they’re going to do, they’re pretty much just watching him and trying to get his sugar and sinus infection under control before then. I decided he can watch History Channel just fine in the meanwhile without me sitting around up there not getting anything done except exposing myself to exotic germs and various funky assed diseases- whilst sticking to the god-awful uncomfortable vinyl hospital chair. 

Even so, I’m worn out and freaking out at the prospects of Dad having to have open heart surgery and all that, so I don’t need a ditzy assed drunk keeping me awake and being an obnoxious little titty baby.  Granted, I know that Jerry is both a ditzy assed drunk and a titty baby- he is truly helpless -which is aggravating as hell to me.

Shit: one of the most common elements in the universe.  Stupidity is the other.

This is a guy that if one of the dogs gets a case of the shits and unloads on the floor (fortunately the girls are trained, and this does not happen often) the first thing he will announce when I come in the door is, “Somebody shit on the floor and you need to clean it up!”

Oh, how many times I have wanted to rub his nose in it.  I don’t expect him to get the rug cleaner out, but at least make an attempt.  Scrape it into a bag or something.  It’s just shit.  As long as you don’t eat it, it shouldn’t kill you.

I know he was raised by wolves, but come on.

Creative Use of Free Speech and Feminine Hygiene Items!

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Every time I go up north I get some kind of culture shock, whether it be the chick in the 5X snowman print jammies (with the thong strap hanging out) attempting to single-mouthedly devour an entire Taco Bell, or the dude in the Walmart with a face full of piercings, and arms covered in various white supremacist tats that I wish I had been able to get a picture of but I didn’t have the courage.  I always get to see the cutting edge of redneck culture when I visit my parents, and this weekend did not disappoint. 

Dad did wonder why I wanted a picture of that, until I blew it up and he could read what was written on the Kotex.  Then he had to acknowledge that it was funny, and worth taking a pic.  I am glad that Steve-o never put Sharpie + maxi pad together when he was going through his Puberty Demon visitation.  I am sure he would have left Kotex commentary everywhere.   I know he covered one of his buddy’s cars in them once, but they must not have had a Sharpie handy.

I can think of better pranks, but this one is fairly harmless.

One of my favorite things about digital cameras is just how easy it is to point, click, upload and share.  I know the guys at work have been begging me to get a video camera for the longest time so they can observe Jerry’s antics, but I can’t dig it up in that little emotional stub I have in place of a heart to do it.  Just because it is potential YouTube gold doesn’t mean it’s very nice to film it.  Admittedly, after last night’s oat opera episode I did feel like getting some sweet, sweet revenge, but I plugged in the Skullcandys (they have some really nice noise cancelling headphones) and enjoyed some favorites from the 80s instead.  I don’t know why, but when Jerry gets into his “I wanna crank up bad country music” mode, he goes for the twangiest, most god-awful country station in the area.  Even when I used to get shitfaced (and this was years and years ago)  I can’t think of a time when I was ever shitfaced enough to enjoy Boxcar Willie- or Willie Nelson for that matter. 

Fanny, my behemoth wandering feline, is adjusting much better to her collar, bell and ID tag than I thought she would.  I did get a few days’ worth of stink-eye out of it (and cats are masters of the stink-eye) but once it got through her head that the collar wasn’t coming off she has gone into normal Fanny mode which is, “aw, what the hell, as long as I get food.”  I should also say catnip, because she goes apeshit over that.  Every cat I’ve ever had except Forrest (and he had major Issues) has positively adored the stuff.  Isabel rolls and thrashes in it, as does Fluffy-Butt, but Fanny (who normally is not a fighter) will swat the other two away and actually attempt to box them.  It’s hilarious to watch.

It’s almost sad that I’m reminded of poor Forrest.  He was half-Siamese and had the most beautiful blue eyes.  However, the poor guy also had feline herpes, and had been kicked in the face by his previous owner, so he had a broken jaw that never healed right, and most of his teeth were missing.  Feline herpes is not a social disease in the way we think of social diseases in humans.  It is a disease that can be prevented with a vaccine, but the vaccine has to be given before the cat gets herpes for it to be effective.  The herpes infection is present in many cats that never show symptoms, but for some cats, like Forrest, it weakens their immune systems and predisposes them to wicked eye and respiratory infections.  The first time he got sick he was dehydrated, blowing snot, had to get sub-cu fluids (this is not a fun process) and had to be force fed with a syringe.  Then he had to take the l-lysine supplement for the rest of his life, which did give him several years until he got sick again and he died almost as soon as he got sick the second time.  Poor guy was only 12, which isn’t all that old for a cat, but he had suffered a lot before we got him, and he had a weak constitution.

Oh, well.  Poor Forrest.  And yes, he was named after Forrest Gump, because when we first got him he was terrified of everything and it seemed all he did was run.