travel

A Head Start on Contagion Season, (No I Am Not OCD- Yet) and Other Projects

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I just bought a germ mask, and I will wear it when I am surrounded by sickies.  I have no problem with that.

I really don’t want to be some kind of paranoid germophobe.  I try not to be, unless I am surrounded by people sneezing, hacking and hawking up lung pieces.  Then I get nervous.  I do try to take reasonable care of myself.  I wash and sanitize my hands often.  I refrain from eating or drinking after others.   But when someone comes into my proximity with any kind of respiratory funk (especially the rude mo-fos who don’t cover their sneeze, or who cough and snot into their hands and then finger my stuff) I get a bit more assertive regarding contagion control.

I love disinfectant.  Especially when the loogie hawkers are out there.

When someone starts coughing, hacking, and hawking up contagion all over the place, and especially when they just spread it around everywhere without mind to hygiene, like little kids do, I spray the perimeter of my workspace with Lysol and wipe down pretty much everything I touch with the Lysol wipes.  I hate being like that, but dammit, I don’t need that shit.  I don’t expect people to stay home with head colds and minor respiratory funk, but I do expect them to observe the basic hygiene rules.  Cover your cough or sneeze.  Wash and sanitize your hands, and keep your mitts off of my stuff, especially when you’ve just hawked a loogie into a Kleenex, fingered all over that, and then neglected to wash or sanitize your hands.  I do not need to experience your booger slime.  And the further away you stay from the immunologically weak (like me) the better for us all.

Keep your snot to yourself.  Or I will Lysol your ass.

When I get a basic head cold it almost always turns into a sinus infection, bronchitis or pneumonia (or all of the above,) and a good case of the strep throat could actually kill me, should it morph into rheumatic fever (again.)  I hate being sick with a passion.  It makes sense for me to be a wee bit paranoid, and a wee bit generous with the Lysol.  I do the same for others.  Should I have the respiratory funk myself, I have no problem taking steps to sanitize and refrain from spreading contagion to others.  I don’t want to intentionally (or neglectfully) spread disease to others.

I have had the opportunity to add some interesting tunes to my playlist- I got a Jethro Tull CD for a quarter at a garage sale, and added “Bungle in the Jungle, ” “Too Old to Rock and Roll, Too Young to Die,” and “Sweet Dream” to my MP3 collection.  I also added Kansas’ “Hold On” and REO Speedwagon’s “Back On the Road Again.”  I never really got into Jethro Tull back in the day but I’m really enjoying it now.

If I keep this up I’ll either have to get a new MP3 player or upgrade to a bigger memory card.

Jerry should never, ever let me dress him.

I don’t know what it is straight men have against bright colors and bold patterns.  I know Steve-o is not very good at the whole “matching” concept- as a child he would come up with the most outrageous ensembles, and I couldn’t in good conscience let him go out in public wearing let’s say- a green t-shirt with orange sweat pants and one purple and one black sock- with sandals.  It was probably good for his self-esteem (yeah, wasn’t everything…mustn’t do anything to damage the offspring’s self-esteem) that I would convince him to change clothes, or at least wear two socks of the same color, or at the very least, take the socks off if sandals were the footwear du jour.  I can’t stand to see people wear socks with sandals.  What’s the point?  Sandals are meant to let your feet air out.  If you have funky looking feet wear socks- and shoes.   The good thing was, if Steve-o did manage to leave the house looking like flypaper for freaks, the peer response generally would prevent the same fashion faux pas from happening again.

If you dress like them, they will come.  Hawking loogies and bearing snotty secretions.

Now that Steve-o is an adult straight male, his ensembles generally consist of: loose-fitting man-jeans, white socks, skater shoes, assorted white, black, grey and blue t-shirts, often with catty sayings.  In winter one might add a black Monster hoodie to the mix.  There are no matching skills necessary with his wardrobe.  He wears uniforms to work, which solves the “what to wear to work today” question.  That is probably a blessing, considering some of his own personal attire.

Safe boating?  Probably not.

Jerry’s wardrobe is remarkably similar to Steve-o’s- except that Jerry likes the button-up oxford type shirts in addition to t-shirts.  He likes the same boring colors though- white, blue, black, gray and occasionally brown.  No patterns, and unlike Steve-o, no catty sayings.  Jerry does like a front shirt pocket for smokes though.  I find shirt pockets to be vestigial and at best, decorative, as far as my own purposes.  It’s awkward for an ample-chested woman to use shirt pockets.  Grabbing to get something in your pocket makes onlookers think you’re grabbing your bazongas, which is just about as socially taboo as a woman having a nice long scratch on her nether region.  Besides, if I really want to keep tabs on something, I’ll shove it in my bra.

It’s probably for the best that men don’t generally go for the complicated or outlandish when it comes to attire.  Imagine this:

A world of guys dressing like this would be interesting, but rather scary as hell.

Things that Suck #501- The Fridge Took a Dump, and #502- Drunken Assholes Smoking in My Car

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No, as much as I like the pink fridge, I can’t afford it, and Jerry would crap himself should he have to retrieve his Natties from this.  However, I don’t even think a pink fridge would stand between him and Nattyvana.

The beautiful Central Ohio area just went through a week’s worth of apocalyptic storms followed by interminable stygian heat.  Yesterday wasn’t quite as intolerable as the rest of the week, so I decided I would go to the campground party knowing that if worse came to worse there is AC in our cabin as well as in my car.

It was hot- and I didn’t stay in it too long, but I stayed long enough to munch on some fresh perch (believe it or not, Lake Erie perch is quite nice) and to sit around and shoot the shit for a bit.

Perch is good eating.  Lightly breaded and deep fried.  Mmm, mmm.

By the time I left the campground it had been a nice afternoon, though rather subdued.  Jerry had gotten his drink on pretty good Saturday night, so he was more quiet than usual.  He wasn’t able to get shitfaced yesterday because he had to drive his truck home,  which was fine with me because that meant I didn’t have to deal with driving Tipsy McNumbNuts home.  I live for the small victories.  Attempting to drive 40 miles with a babbling drunken smoking idiot flopping about in the car is most unpleasant, trust me.  It was worse when he and his (now) estranged buddy Terry used to get shitfaced and then demand I take them home at 1 AM.

Joy and rapture.

Paarrtty!!!!!  YEAH, DUDE!

Two drunken idiots, running their mouths, flopping about, smoking, waving around their lit cigarettes (intentionally or not, threatening to burn holes in the upholstery, each other or me) in one car.  I’m surprised neither one of them managed to visit cousin Ralph in my car, though they both came close.  Puke smell does NOT ever come out of car upholstery.  Neither does cat piss, which is why my mother should learn to roll up the windows on her van, but that’s another story.  I would be happy to find an effective method to keep Jerry from thinking the first thing he needs to do when he sits down in my car is light up.

I used to smoke in the car when I smoked- a lot- but by the grace of God I’ve been 10 years without lighting up myself, and now I really despise my car smelling like his ashtray.  I get him back for it though.  Since I love strong scents- they have to be strong or I can’t smell them anyway- I try to find the absolute strongest air fresheners I can find.  One of my favorites is the Chanel #5 knock-off cologne from the Dollar Store.  It probably smells like insecticide to normal people, but with my very limited sense of smell it actually smells somewhat like Chanel.  Jerry hates it even though he knows that’s his punishment for smoking in my car and leaving that god-awful smell in it as well as ashing all over it.  Jerry is not a neat smoker.  Imagine someone with tremor disorder who’s drunker than a monkey with a lit cigarette.  My car actually becomes his ashtray.

I know I smoked for years, but it’s a nasty gross habit.

So I arrive home blissfully un-stressed from a peaceful drive home- just me, the AC on full blast, and Metallica on full blast.  I go take a shower and put on some lounge clothes.  Then I go to the fridge to get some iced tea (strong, no sweetener, and a bit of lemon) only to grab the ice tray and get another shower.  Everything in the fridge freezer had melted- ice cream, (there’s a bloody disaster for you) ice cubes, previously frozen vegetables, and so forth.  Damn, damn, damn.  The irony of this is that the power never went out, the AC unit is (knock on Formica or whatever the hell that stuff is) holding tough and the cable is on.  The chest freezer is plugging away quite nicely, as is Jerry’s small beer fridge out in the foyer.  But the main fridge- the side-by-side 30 year old behemoth fridge that takes up half my kitchen, took a major puke.

I had to move the beer to save the food. Sorry about your luck.

Guess who’s got some warm Natties.

So, because I’m poor and he’s cheap, Jerry gets on Craig’s List looking for a fridge.  There were crazy people wanting $1000 for used fridges- granted they were the high faluting stainless steel ones with the drinky fountains and the ice makers and wine chests and so forth but if I’m going to spend that kind of scratch I want a new one with a warranty.  So Jerry keeps looking and happens upon a nice simple used fridge for $100- about 45 miles away.  I call the guy and tell him I’ll be there in about an hour.  When I get there the fridge is still plugged in, nice and cold.  I gladly gave the dude the money- it’s older, but a nice, clean working fridge- and he and his buddy get the fridge loaded up in Jerry’s truck.

Jerry, of course stayed home in bed, because he’s helpful like that, while I drive off to see some strange people who could potentially be serial killers, who I never met before in my life, in the dead of night, to conduct business.  I knew the neighborhood (not terribly far from where I grew up) and it was in a nicer area than where I grew up, otherwise I would not have taken the risk, (the people turned out to be most personable and cordial also) but sometimes you never know.  I arrived home with the fridge around 11:30 last night, but I did not attempt to remove it from the back of the truck in the dark by myself.  He will regret not helping me unload it last night- tonight when he has no cold beer- but tough titty.  I could care less about beer, so I moved it out to save the milk and cheese.  It’s not as if Natty is going to taste any worse warm.

Does temperature really count for much when you’re drinking canned horse piss?

Today Jerry is supposed to accomplish two things.  One is to remove the old behemoth fridge from the kitchen.  I cleaned it out- at least the big pieces and anything that might rot and stink- so the scrap guy (who is always scrounging for used refrigerators, working or not) can do what he will with it.  The other is to get the fridge I acquired last night in the kitchen plugged in and running.   Let’s see how he does with his assignment.  I have a feeling I am going to be very sore in the morning after I drag these appliances where they need to go by myself.

I get to move this son-of-a-bitch all by myself!

Sheena Loves Cops, and Other Tidbits Better Left “TMI”

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Cops can also be creatures of habit.  I know a couple of them who love to park across the road and watch Jerry when he’s getting drunk and stupid out in the garage.

I’ve said before that my mentally challenged Husky mix, Sheena, has Issues.  One of Sheena’s passions is to escape the confines of our back yard (and it’s not that difficult considering it is surrounded by a rather elderly, oft-repaired fence) so that she can play with the kids at the Drunk and Domestic apartments behind the body shop.  Sheena has never met a human that I know of that she doesn’t like.

This mentality seems so foreign to me in a dog, especially because I am used to dogs being quite a bit more aloof.  Clara and Lilo have to be carefully introduced to new people and strange dogs.  You have to earn their trust.  Sheena is not like that at all.  She is a 75# galoot who will love you forever just for petting her.  This makes Sheena a bit more difficult to manage than the other two in some ways.  Unlike a normal dog she doesn’t really alert on strange people encroaching on her territory.  She only really barks when she wants to go out.

Jerry, as is typical for him, decided to get shitfaced last night.  Jerry being shitfaced is not news, but I was bound determined to get an early bedtime and at least try to get some sleep.

So I turned off the phone and shut the bedroom door at about 9PM, hoping at least for a quiet night.  I should know better.

Around 10:30 I hear incessant pounding on the front door.  Clara and Lilo start in going nuts barking and howling and wanting to eat whatever’s on the other side.  Jerry is running around with no shirt on babbling incoherently (thankfully he still had pants on) until I caught the word “cops” in the prattling.  So I put on enough clothing to be decent and go out to investigate.  Sure enough, there’s a cop car in the driveway, two cops on the porch, and Sheena’s sitting in the back seat of the cruiser sporting that shit-eating grin that only dim-witted dogs can completely pull off.

I apologized to the cops, (who must have really thought I was some kind of a nut job running outside in an old t-shirt and shorts with no makeup and my hair sticking straight up) thinking that either I’d be fined or otherwise in some kind of trouble, but they were cool about it.  They said Sheena was no problem at all, and she got in the car with them most willingly.  To their credit, they weren’t interested in making my life more difficult.  They just wanted to make sure Sheena got home safely.  They could have been dicks about it had they wanted to be- by rights, even though she is duly licensed, because technically she was neither confined nor leashed, they could have taken her down to the Dog Shelter and I’d had to gone to a rather unsavory part of town and paid $125 to retrieve her.  Yeah, it’s easier to just go around the corner and drop the dog off at home, because everyone at the D&Ds, and the cops, because of how often they are called out to the D&Ds, know whose dog it is.  Sheena is rather memorable if only because of her resemblance to the Abominable Snowman.

Close enough…

It’s a good thing Jerry generally doesn’t remember the nasty epithets that roll so easily off my tongue when I am rudely awakened- let alone rudely awakened and then left to deal with cops.   It’s also a good thing that Jerry had a shred of sentience back in that crude reptilian part of his brain that kept him from interacting with the cops, mouthing off, and getting his sorry butt carted off for drunk and disorderly.  In Ohio all it takes to get busted for drunk and disorderly, and to get to spend the night in the nearest correctional facility, is for a cop to see you shitfaced.  Jerry knows this from personal experience, and suffice to say that retrieving him from public custody would be far more expensive and unpleasant (and I would have to encounter a far more unsavory crowd) than trying to retrieve Sheena from the Dog Shelter.

Both Clara and Lilo are terrified of cops, especially two big burly ones like the ones who brought Sheena home, but Sheena seemed to like the attention.

I’m glad the cops had mercy on poor Sheena.  She’s had a rough enough life.  However, either Jerry needs to find Sheena’s current escape hole (not usually difficult as an uncoordinated 75# dog has to fit through it) and patch the fence (again,) or refrain from letting her out the front door (which considering how shitfaced he was last night is within the realm of possibility.)

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.

Travel Envy, It’s Summer- So I’m Busy, and 20 Years of Steve-o

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Yeah, I did get to go to Niagara Falls back in ’04 which was extremely cool.  If we decided to go now either I would have to get a passport, which I am loathe to do in these days of 1984 meets Logan’s Run, or we would have to stay on the New York side which is both expensive and dismal.  I don’t want my car stolen.   I am not arrogant enough to think that someone would specifically want to spy on me or steal my identity, but I do believe in Murphy’s Law.  Give Mr. Murphy and company time to screw about in one’s past records, and Lord only knows what might get added, deleted or screwed up.   I really don’t need to go to Canada that bad.  Besides, the food all tastes like Clorox up there for some reason.  I’m sure there must be some good cuisine in Canada, but it’s sure as hell not at Niagara Falls.

I thought taking Mom and Dad to North Carolina would be a disaster, but it was actually a pleasant long weekend.  The drive wasn’t as traumatic as usual – not a lot of traffic, and no rain.  The only thing that sort of sucked is that Dad didn’t want the stereo turned on.  It wasn’t incredibly hot either like it was last year, and we did get an afternoon out on the lake in the boat which was almost worth the trip.  How anyone can get sunburn in spite of marinating in Factor 50 is beyond me, but my back still itches.  I would hate to think how fried it would have been without sunscreen.

The only sort of drawback to summer is that’s when I’m the busiest- busy at work, busy at home and I don’t get enough time to do relaxing things like float about in the Cougar Pool (which is most delightful by the way) or read interesting books.  I’ve not even been able to be online enough to catch the whole Wiener scandal, which I really shouldn’t find funny, but of course I do.  Of course I adore travel, but I highly doubt I will get much more than a couple of day trips to the campground, up to Marion, or down to Cincinnati.  What I would really enjoy would be a Cougar Cruise, but I don’t see that happening any time soon. 

Steve-o’s 20th birthday is next week.  He wants to spend it down in Kentucky 4-wheeling through the hollers with his buddies.  He wasn’t born a southerner- but should have been one- as much as he is into redneck culture and activities. 

Maybe I shouldn’t have bothered to fix his teeth? 

It’s “Be Thankful It Isn’t Any Worse” Day!

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With a tip of the hat to my fellow cynics and assorted other ne’er-do-wells like me, I’ve come to the conclusion that I should set aside a day to be thankful that things aren’t any worse.  For instance, if for some bizarre reason I were single and decided to troll the wonderful world of online dating, something like the above picture would be bound to show up, less the dog of course, as the dog would be his only redeeming feature.  I can just imagine the troll that some dating service would inevitably choose for me would actually look somewhat like the fashion-challenged ginger above, but would have a profile picture that looks something like this:

So much for truth in advertising. Of course, if he really did look like this, he’d have to be gay.  Straight men are never that hot.  So I should be grateful that Jerry is not nearly hot looking enough to be gay.  We all know what happened to the ugly gay guy. He had to date girls.

I am also thankful that I am sitting here in beautiful Central Ohio.  The weather here usually sucks to some degree, in some sort of way, but one thing we don’t get here are tsunamis.  If there were ever to be a tsunami massive enough to hit Columbus, rest assured that most of the rest of the world has been knocked out too.  We do get floods (frequently, but localized) and tornados, and snow storms on a regular basis, which can be bad enough, but even in the worst of the recent Downtown floods, I’ve never seen anyone in German Village floating on their house ten miles out at sea.  Granted, the Great Flood of 1913 was really bad, see the pics here , but that was before the Army Corps of Engineers built the series of dams and reservoirs on the Scioto and Olentangy Rivers.  I have seen Infiniti Q45s towed in filled up to the belt moldings (where the window glass meets the door) with poo-filled sewer water, and a whole shipment of used Corollas acquired in a rather shady auction deal with bizarre electrical problems and shift consoles packed in flood mud, but that’s pretty piddly compared to what’s going on in Japan.

There can be earthquakes in the Midwest, but generally the Central Ohio area is a geologically stable zone.  We likely wouldn’t get severe damage if the New Madrid Fault were to generate earthquakes as it did in 1895.  It would, however, really suck anywhere along the Mississippi or Ohio Rivers.

At least I’ve not gotten motivated to get these memos (yet):

I haven’t descended into that dark a level of depravity.  It would be fun to see the expressions on certain people’s faces should they receive such a memo though.

I am thankful for flush toilets and for not having to use them outside.  The thought of having to use an old time latrine or outhouse like we had to do at the Girl Scout camp is downright frightening.  There’s something most off-putting about having to a.) use a flashlight to get to the latrine, then once you find the latrine you have to b.) shine the flashlight in and around the hole to check for unauthorized insect, arachnid and reptile life, and c.) smell the acrid stench of hundreds of other people’s decomposing urine and feces.   To add fuel to that fire, I’ve not entirely overcome my fear of flying and crawling insects or wayward arachnids.  Reptiles never really bothered me, probably because there aren’t very many venomous species in Central Ohio.  Usually on the rare occasion anyone happened upon a snake, it was a small, harmless garter snake.  There are copperheads and rattlesnakes, but both copperheads and rattlesnakes are fairly rare and are found mostly down south.  Nothing terrified me more as a child (and everything terrified me) than flying, stinging insects.  I hated them- bees, wasps, hornets, anything with wings and a stinger- and there is no shortage of any winged stinging insect around here in summer, especially mosquitoes- believe that.  I can thank my sisters for that hyped-up terror, as they found it most amusing to throw flying, stinging insects in my hair.  

I’m thankful that not too many people would find it amusing to throw live wasps in my hair today.  Cougardom has its advantages.  So does short hair.

I’m thankful I don’t drink anymore, therefore I am not subject to hangovers.   I am still subject to Jerry’s “drunk and stupids” followed by the sappy, lingering,  pathos of his hangovers, but there is humor to be found in that, so it’s a wash.

I am also thankful that there will soon be a day when we no longer have to hear about Obama.

I am thankful that there will be a day when Steve-o is out of school, gainfully employed and fully financially independent of the parental units.  The sad part about that is he will probably move down South and then I’ll only see him on holidays.  But that will give me an excuse for a road trip and somewhere to go on vacation, so that has its advantages as well.   I might not be terribly averse to retirement in the South, as long as he doesn’t move into some backwater holler straight out of Deliverance.   I like living in the city despite the crowds and traffic.  You can find things like food and medical care and employment a whole hell of a lot easier in the city.

I don’t get to travel and stay in hotels, therefore I don’t have bedbugs.

I have three nice warm dogs who love me even when everyone else on the planet is screwing me over.  I think I saved the best for last.