Vacation

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.

I Will Not Pander to Sappy Sentimentalism, Truth in Advertising, and Thinking About a Vay-Cay

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Dogs and cats on motorcycles?  I have seen people carry around ankle biter dogs on bikes, but I couldn’t imagine a cat putting up with that racket.

I really can’t stand those goofy-assed stick figure family stickers.  They’re too damned happy- in a really sappy way- for one thing.  The last time Jerry sported a shit eating grin like the cartoons on those decals it was because he had just won $200 on his Pick 3 tickets, and he was butt drunk.  As for my emotional state, I am doing good to stay on a nice, neutral even keel.  I get angry pretty easily, but as far as the shit eating grin, I would have to say that was some time back in the 80’s, if ever.

If I were to display those horrid stick figures on my car, I would have to design my own so I could at least have some truth in advertising.  Here’s “Beer Drinker” and “Woman, Fed Up.”

I wouldn’t go so far as to add all three dogs, all three cats and the two snakes.  They didn’t ask for stick figure humiliation, and I really don’t want the general public speculating as to whether or not I’m some kind of bizarro animal hoarder type.  It would look pretty weird to some people that there are four times as many critters in the house as there are humans.  The good news is the critters generally don’t sass, and all of them put together are cleaner and require less maintenance than Jerry does. 

It’s pretty sad, but I probably am scowling most of the time.  I should work on that.  The glass is also half-full. 

I actually scheduled a bit of vacation time.  Now let’s see if I can scrounge enough money to take a two or three day excursion to the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia- by myself if need be.  I am just weird enough to consider a foray into the wonderful world of antique medical ephemera to be a fascinating vacation.   Jerry, on the other hand, would probably be grossed out and would fail to find anything involving a museum to be a vacation.  His idea of a vacation is keeping me busy pandering to his needs so I don’t get a vacation.  This is why I am considering taking this trip on my own.  Steve-o can’t go for obvious reasons- he’s got school, work and his family to tend to.  It’s kind of sad because of all the people I know Steve-o would enjoy it the most.  But he’s an adult now and is very close to the becoming independent of the parental units phase of his development, and I would not want to do anything to interfere with that.  I should have took him to the Mütter back when he was in high school and he had nothing but time. 

 Then again, if I had the whole parenting thing to do over, and the resources to do it better, I would have done a lot of things differently.  I wish I would have been able to afford to do home schooling or to send him to a Christian school, but I wasn’t able to do either.   I know a lot of people in the educational bureaucracy would be very afraid of me (or anyone else of my political and/or social outlook) doing any kind of home schooling, but at least my son (on my insistence) actually has read the Constitution and several other things high school kids should be required to read but aren’t, such as 1984, Animal Farm, Atlas Shrugged, and The Federalist Papers.  I did make sure my son could read and communicate using the English language beyond the level of  “Whassup, dawg?”

Even though he did have to go to public school and didn’t get total immersion in the World According to elysianhunter, I won’t blame the public schools that my son can’t spell.  Most techies can’t spell.  It has something to do with the way their brains are wired.  They can get the math and the spatial skills, but for him, correct spelling makes about as much sense as algebra does to me.  I will laugh at his auto-correct fails though. 

Here’s another Truth in Advertising (sort of stick figure) decal for the car:

Putting the “SH” in IT, Central Ohio Winter, (Behold the White Death,) and Nasty ’70’s Cars

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Why is it that technical people (and being a techie type I have to include myself in this critique also) can be so dour?  Computer professionals, especially, seem to have especially shitty attitudes.  I can’t blame them based on the capricious nature of IT in general, but a joke?  A smile, maybe?   Perhaps it has to do with being emotionally stunted or having an undue emphasis on the life of the mind versus the life of the heart.  It’s just not a balanced way to live, and sometimes the emotional demons break through at the most inopportune and irrational times.   I trust my mind most of the time- it keeps me on the steadfast and staid (though often boring) path of reliability and predictability.  When I “follow my heart” it almost always leads me to trouble- although the path to trouble often includes some intrigue and adventure.  Though it defies my sense of rationality and order, a little unpredictability and intrigue is essential for mental health.  So from time to time even I have to go off the deep end, even as much as I despise maudlin displays of emotion. 

I think it’s interesting that it’s occasionally necessary to simply take a mental vacation (especially when a physical vacation isn’t feasible) and just do something goofy for the hell of it.  Perhaps this is the logic behind the human need for humor.  All work and no play makes me even more boring than I am already.  Lately I find myself so boring I put myself to sleep- so I have had to find a few irrational pursuits.

Target had some novelty fart putty cups for $1 apiece in their discount section.  Of course I couldn’t pass up something this crude and sophomoric at such a discount price. Fart noises are always funny, so I have periodically been annoying my coworkers with fake flatulence.  Everyone needs a hobby.

Vacation is one of my favorite movies.  The car is a modified (tackily, but that’s the point) Ford LTD Country Squire station wagon.  Mom actually had one of these (without the modifications.)  I think that was the last V8 Dad let Mom have.  It was a typical old Ford in that the steering was horrid (the wheel had about 2 inches at least of play in it) and the suspension was spongy- but it would go like a bat out of hell in a straight line.  I think Mom got the 95-in-a-25 violation in the ’77 LTD sedan, but both the ’75 station wagon and the ’77 sedan had the 351 Windsor engine that Dad liked.  Both cars were horribly fugly, a handling nightmare, and did good to get 12MPG- if you kept your foot out of it.  I think Dad disengaged the secondary advance on the ’77 after Mom got busted in it, which is sort of like closing the barn door once the horse has run away.

70’s domestic cars were most abysmal.  FYI: The “wood grain” was actually adhesive stickers.

Mom actually had a 70’s car worse than the LTDs.  At least the LTDs would start and run.  The Dodge Aspen wagon generally wouldn’t even do that if the temperature dropped below 60 degrees F, which is quite often in beautiful Central Ohio.  If it got hotter than about 70 degrees, the thermostat would stick shut and it would overheat and/or the fuel pump would vapor lock.  I can’t remember how many times Dad had this POS towed, or how many fuel pumps, carburetors and thermostats he put on it, but when all was said and done I think he wanted to fire bomb it.  It was simply a piece of really shitty engineering.  The plus side of the Aspen, at least as far as Mom’s driving record went, when it did run, is it was a very underpowered 4 cylinder.  If you were lucky enough to get it up to 60MPH it would shake and shimmy like nobody’s business, then it would sputter and die.

Fugly, and not terribly functional.  The 1977 Dodge Aspen Wagon.  Now you know why I drive Toyotas.

These things, by comparison at least, made a beat up old VW Rabbit look like (and perform like) a freaking sports car.

Today we are supposed to get some snow and freezing rain.  I’ll believe it when I see it, but I am sure that the local redneck population will be clearing the stores out of Velveeta cheese and Marlboros before the end of the day.  Some things never change.

At least the cop got HIS smokes.

I sincerely thank God I don’t smoke anymore.  And I already have Velveeta cheese.