disclaimer or something

A mummy-hand holding, (former) biker gang affiliating, hippie influenced semi crunchy granola mom's ramblings and reminisings on an off-kilter life
Showing posts with label my life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label my life. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Welcome to Arizona, no bra required

I was bra-less in Arizona a few days ago. No I wasn't going all Girls Gone Wild at Havasu but yes my bra was not in my possession. °°°°°°°°°°°°°°

my son had survived me being gone for five hours, his longest time without me EVER, when I had an interview (see my previous post, below). He survived because I guess he had found my pajama top and was snuggling to it in his crib all day. So......after a long drive with many more hours to go ,as we cross into Arizona, i think....crap my son will not last. He hates the car seat and needs to be held. I can tell. But you can't do that in a moving car.crap. then it dawns on me, get him something that smells like me, like when he snuggled to my pajama top. So... I brainstorm and voila! I unhook my bra and like a girl at a Beatles concert ,I fling it into his awaiting eager hands. Success! He smiles and sniffs my bra and snuggles to it like a teddy bear. And falls asleep. But like the feminine napkin on the light during our last road trip,my hubby looks back and is all wtf?did you know our son has your bra? Why?

unemployed but no, I won't do that no no I won't do that

I think anyone rreading my blog or who knows me knows I have been unemployed for 14 MONTHS so I am getting a wee bit snarky about it. I was thinking I must smell funny and just no one has had the heart to tell me, except that I have only had 5 interviews out of over 500 job apps so I can't smell on paper or via an emailed application. But what the f*ck gives?
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°° So I applied to over 50 jobs in the Midwest, not where I live, and got an interview!yes an interview! So I drove over an hour there and had a 5 hour interview. Well really the interview itself was super brief, most of the 5 hours were spent with me typing a 8 page response to some rubrics and case studies and stuff. The interview I probably bombed because it was so....weird. The interview panel was dressed down, like they were at the grocery store while I was stuffed into a black hot suit in 100 degree weather, since it was an administrative position (has to look " in charge") and going in a bikini wasn't optional. So then the questions were funky. They were "explain a time when at work you didn't feel you got the recognition you deserved. Explain a time when you struggled with a deadline. Explain a time...." And I felt like an idiot. I am usually rapid fire speaking,like an auctioneer ,at an interview and suddenly it was like I caught stupid. Umm, hm...(pause) let me think (pause..search ten years of work experience in seconds) umm..oh! Well this one time...(no not at band camp). The panel gave interview stink eye, like, you have to have an answer and never isn't the answer ,so hurry up you idiot.
°°°°°°°°°°°°°So I didn't get the job. Not even a courtesy call, email, or letter ,youk now, "thanks for showing up and wearing a hot dark suit in blazing heat when our a/c wasn't working. Thanks for your interview and you didn't make the cut because you are dumb. And your essay questions show you care about children so obviously you don't fit in. Besides, when we checked your resume and references,flames shot out and a demonic ghost said to not hire you. So here is your official letter of rejection .f*ck you.". Nope
 °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°So what do I mean about caring about children? Well, while I need a job, I am glad I wasn't hired. Like that Meatloaf song, edited for my situation , I'd do anything for a job but I won't do that no no no I won't do that. So..ok...would you send your child to a school that.. 1. Does not have recess. For your kindergartner. ( well, kinder through 6th grade), not even a break where kids can run around or socialize or sit and zone out. 2. For a technology centered school, they had a computer lab with old desktop pcs. That is it for technology and you would come in once a week to do test prep on the computer. 3. They had lunch of course but only 30 no...20 minutes. With no recess, they would just sit and eat. In assigned seats. With only the kids in their class, so if you wanted to eat with your friend in the other 5th grade class, too bad, they had a separate lunch periods? 4 OR WHATEVER SINCE MY NOOK IS ONLY LETTING ME SEE THE LINE I AM TYPING the students never got rewarded for good stuff .sure, you need intrinsic value to want to do well. But sometimes you really need a hello kitty eraser to motivate you to turn in your damned homework. And with no recess, imagine how the super hyper misbehaving kids would be. Hello, sometimes even the teacher needs the kid to get a "bribe" to be good. If little Billy can stop cursing the teacher out, slapping girl's behinds, and throwing spit wads, because he gets a stickers for having a good day ,give him the damned sticker already .that way the teacher can go home and not empty a bottle of vodka to unwind. 5. I believe in academics and I am always blabbing about more rigor and academics in school...heck I am writing a book about it (been om hiatus for 4 months, so what). But academics and rigor needs balance and options and ways to help all learners and encourage learning ,blablabla .so when I inquired about music or art programs ,I was told they did not have them. Ok sure, my state is like that, they cannot afford an elementary art teacher but on those rare easy days, or for Lincoln's birthday or whatever, you make a macaroni Lincoln or you fingerpaint a pretty picture ,right? Sorry, no .at this school even that was seen as non academic and thus not allowed ever.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

who am I and where do I live again?

So let's see.....we leave Indiana Saturday afternoon and encounter severe thunderstorms so we stop early, at sundown in Missouri- one town before one that had 70 mph winds and damaged homes! Then we get up early and are road bound by sunrise. We head to Oklahoma city for the rv. Turns out the one main Chevy dealer in the state is closed on Sundays. Freaking great. Luckily a security guard greets us and we are al, umm you guys have our keys to our rv. Nope no they don't apparently. So they call the boss as we hold our breath.m.voila, he had hidden them somewhere. Keys in hand ,we head to the rv...which is blocked in by multiple vehicles with out keys. Over an hour later of inching the rv around, we get out and drive to the edge of OK and spend the night in a hotel because of fore casted hail. Up at dawn the sun rises as we start the rv. And we drive and drive and drive until almost 11pm, past Flagstaff .we pull into a campground and I am tired and this campground is different than the other one in AZ... no special envelope with my name and campsite number, just a late registration packet. Where it says campsite # it is blank but the packet says in scribble on the far corner, 117 .i figure someone had used the packet before and scribbled stuff on it. We park in site ten and rest. For not even three hours .we pull out at 2am. Why? Well the desert was 115 the day before and our old, mileage a plenty rv does not do well in that kind if heat so we have to beat the heat,but needed that short rest to give us enough energy to continue. So we drive and drive and get home at 10am which my brain things is noon central time, but after a 2am wake up.....I am on twilight zone...where am I again? What day is it and what time is it? Did I eat yet today? °°°°°°°°° so..our neighbor has many moments of senility. So come to find out, he thinks we are not, well, who we are and that we have broken into our house. So to end our dramatic vacation, the county sheriff is on his way. Sigh.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

ay chihuahua

...said the housekeepers.°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
So as we have been in a hotel for what....3 weeks now? They have housekeepers who come daily to get new towels, empty the garbage ,etc. They did only garbage yesterday and the housekeepers "forgot" half the trash. Add that to the fact that my son was so ill for the past few days that I didn' t even shower, and well...the tidyness of the room was not a priority.

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°Today they come in and my son is napping so I stay while they clean (which means dirty linens since he was asleep on the bed, boo. I mean at home I go weeks without fresh linens but in a hotel, hello, treat me like a queen!). The housekeeping staff is Hispanic and they start chatting to each other en espanol. Now I am not fluent but I can get the general gist of things and so I was able to comprende their conversation. They said, among other things, "ay chihuahua la basura!". I do have to admit, our basura -garbage- was ay chihuahua worthy, I won't deny that. But they they snicker, jajajaja about my muchachos garbage next to his computer....whic hI secretly, silently jajaja about, because I always tease him about his next. Seriously, you set him down with a laptop and bam! He attracts crap like a magnet ,soda cans, dirty socks, tissues, ripped up receipts.... but anyways the housekeeping kept dissing us for our mess. I did not want to go ahem, habla espanol mamasitas, because then they would be all embarrassed and apologetic and we already did that to the desk staff when they tried to kick us out

.°°°°°°°°so a quick insert about that ,we were going to get a two room room so my father in law could crash with us, but then last minute he decided to not come, in between all this, we had come back from the doctor's and my son was ready for his nap, an sick and miserable ,and they said "umm we need you to move rooms. Now." Hubby got all "no she didn't" on them because he has stayed at these brand of motels probably....seriously...2 entire years in ten years, hell they should name a hotel after him .and we had a sick kid. So he did get all papa bear rowrrrrr on them. And we did not move rooms, my son napped, and when we came back from getting his prescription, we were met with gummy butterfly candy, a handwritten apology, and a teddy bear with a hotel shirt on his little furry bear body. I will post a pic in this blog when I feel like it.

 °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°° so back to the housekeeping, they are nice hardworking ladies and I would probably talk behind my back about my garbage and mess, too...especially if I did not know the people had a very very ill child and so they were like f*ck cleaning. So instead I kind of relished in my knowledge of Spanish because I put it to good use. And now as my son's health is improving, I am leaving the room a little less messy.

Saturday, June 30, 2012

when ya feel the need....

?..to blow sh*t up at 3am, look no further than Indiana my friends! The Hoosier State is East Missouri so to speak, for her plethora of both fireworks and adult entertainment. But just like part II movies, Indiana (East Missouri or Missouri part II) lacks the tetanus causing joy of rusty crap and the 5th grade humor of kum and gos. And Hoosiers don't have adult arcades or adult supermarkets. But yes...Indiana is full of fireworks. TO a person (me)who lives where you aren't even supposed to smoke and drive, its so flammable out, I still flinch to the increasing occurrences of Sh*t is that gunfire? Fireworks episodes in a state full of explosives. Truly, I have heard over 40 fireworks today (who knows, statistically one had to be gun fire) and it just keeps coming.°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°(why do I do these °°°°? Because my tablet and blogger don't understand a break between paragraphs°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°° And as said, when ya feel the need at 3 am to blow sh*t up, there are indeed 24 hour fireworks stores. Man I would pay to see (and photograph!) The clientele at 3am and hear their stories. But alas, since I like sleep, don't like the town of Gary at 3am for its ghetto-scratch that un p.c. term- urban enterprise zones, and am not fond of things that can kill me, I won't go.

Monday, June 11, 2012

borderin' horderin'

borderin' hoarderin'

it is a buggy, you pervs
see, a buggy.
The show Hoarders scares me, but who doesn't it scare? I had friends growing up whose parents were either hoarders or slobs, with paths through a mess three feet high, no joke. I am betting on slob though, because my friend's cabinets, the color of pine tree trunks, were magically a light maple when I went to visit a friend who moved into the house after the pine-cabinet-slob friends moved out. I complimented the pretty new cabinets they had installed, and was told nope, all they did was clean the cabinets. Eww. Double eww.

One of my mom's many mannequins.
I'll admit she is pretty, she has over
1,000 rhinestones, and is only
part of my mom's collection of both
mannequins and jewelry. Her name is
Liz- the mannequin, not my mom.
 Anyways, my mom is not a hoarder like that, or those you see on TV, but, she is obsessed with yard sale "treasures", jewelry, 1930s stuff, and anything artsy.   And she is obsessed with mementos. This sickness was passed onto me, so I had kept every letter passed to me from elementary on ,every toy I had owned, clothes that no longer fit, every piece of homework...you get the point. I purged my junk and my habit when I went to college, except some stuff I forgot about at home and what, almost 15 years later, its still there. I have nightmares, honestly,where I am back at college in the dorms but keeping every little thing, and I have to move or clean or something and haven't any time and theres just too much stuff....then I wake up .

 So my mom brought three boxes over yesterday. I did actually find my kindergarten report card cool, but that's more from a nerdy teacher perspective. I have no use for 25 yr old dusty books from third grade, and I doubt my son will be into "Are you There, God, its me ,Margaret" but my mom thinks otherwise. I don't need a planner, used, from 2006. I don't need an unused notebook from my frosh year in college. I don't need a used giftbag from 1995. I don't need my student of the month award from1st grade or the free ticket to Knott's Berry Farm, 1991, awarded to me. Apparently, my son will want this stuff, because my mom says so. Also he will totally want my teeth. Yes, my teeth,because my mom has every single baby tooth I ever lost plus my letters to the tooth fairy. Since Santa never ate the milk and cookies, obeyed my wish list, or wrote me back, the tooth fairy filled the gap. My mom was all pouty and said fine,she'd keep my teeth and tooth fairy letters because my son will indeed want them. My mom says there is something wrong with me since I do not keep momentos. She said she kept her first boyfriends cigarette butt for over 20 years, yet I am the one with a screw loose. Lose? Loose? Loo-s not loo-z. Anyways. She has kept every single doodle I have EVER done, fro mage 3 on . And lemme tell you, I was a doodle fiend and probably drew at least 5 things a day, no joke ,as I recall at age 4 I had insomnia one night and drew unicorns until midnight. What the hell do I need 100 dusty unicorn scribbles for? Yes. Yes I ended up with, well, not 5 boxes of unicorns but a booklet of awesome 4 year old drawings. I knew at the very least, not only would I end up with 3 boxes of "precious mementos" (I was able to "return" one for my mom to keep because I was banned from tossing it) and some good blogging opportunities.
drugs are bad m'kay? As I see it, the octo-armed person riding the bees is
smoking drugs, he's on the right, and there is a psychadelic
spiderweb monster plant growing in the sunshine on the left.
This is why parents should not smoke.

I see a teddy bear don't you? He has sideways limbs, boxing gloves, and....I dunno
the rest of it.

Government Health Care

government health care

QI dread it. DMV and the IRS suck, so healthcare will. Last time I had to go to the DMV (triple A is so worth the money btw) I waited in line to, guess what, wait in the check in line. See we had a car without plates. For a year. Only DMV could fix it. After baffling the check in guy with my scenario, I was directed to fill out a form...no pens available of course...and wait in line again. While waiting to finally get service (like bingo, c'mon B16 at window 5, no....B 19 at window 5 may you be cursed!) I decided to use the restroom. I went in and you couldnt hear your bingo call so I came back out, doing the potty dance only to be called and told to fill out more forms, pay $40 for replacement plates (see I did get plates, lets say it was 1abc234 but the accompanying paperwork claimed they wrre 2 ACD234 and i mailed them back and DMV lost the mail after confirming it was recieved) and be told to come back once the 40$ that was NOT my responsibility, I didnt give the wrong plates or lose them. Pissed off and full of piss, I used the restroom. Great. The lock on the door was broken and their was no soap. The government wants torun our healthcare but cannot keep a sanitary bathroom. Then I just called IRS and waited on hold for 25 minutes. The man who finally answered spoke vveerryy sslloowwllyy. The IRS tax code is the longest book in the world. So all I needed to do was ask for a direct debit form to pay taxes. It took, after the 25 minute wait, an additional 20 minutes. He explained form 13,768.908 C and its intricacies as opposed to form 13,798.907C part A andI thought, with something this confusing, what if they accidentally send me 17,758.907C paet B? Would I know the damn difference? I mean if the DMV can incorrectky transcribe my plates, lose them, and charge me, what couldthe IRS do in an oopsy situation? Suddenly I could have the IRS version of men in black, all swat style, staking out my house, pricing my dandelion weeds perpound as part of their collection plans. I DONT want to end up in prison. I failed as a college room mate and I dont find big bertha cute enough to drop my soap for, and I doubt prison would be gluten free and organicfriendly, so I would just poop my brains out in the floor pit toilet for all eyes to see. Because see you dont mess with the IRS because who is to be believed, a petite glasses wearing prisoner who poops too much, or the power wielding IRS. Which is why health care scares me. I already have to schedule doctor apointmentd SEASONS ahead of time, and spend 3 hrs at the hospital obly to seethe doctor for 3 minutes. It CAN get worsefolks. I think of national geographic, where you see a bus with people on the roof, standing on the bumper, sitting atop one another....slap on an ambulane sticker voila ER care. You arrive, hop off the roof and standin line. You think disneyland has long lines? A water park on a 100 degree holiday weekend? You aint seen nothing yet. 3 Hours later you get to a desk to fill out a form and theyre out of English. Sprechen ze deutch? Habla espanol? Whatever Tingrinya, Ilocano, Kazakh? Missing your hands in an industrial accident? Too bad fill out the form please, no hands is no excuse, policy says fill out the form. Sit down. Use phone to call 1-800-URSCREWD . If you are blind press 86. If you are deaf press 735. If you are missing limbs dial 62. If you are bleeding profusely dial 93 but do not wet the phone or the call will terminate. If you are having a heart attack, Boo! Ha! Scared you! Dial 037. Please enter your student id number from 3 rd grade and the marriage date of your great uncle's2nd cousin. Im sorry we are closed our office hours are 10am to 2pm every other tuesday, pleasecall back with your emergency during business hours. If by chance it is businesshours, you are let in to wait in line c. As you reach the line c desk gal, she informs you this is the lost limb line and you had a heart attack, please resubmit your paperwork and proceed to line f. You do that and see a doctor and well, they lost your paperwork and cannot treat you, they dont know your name or symptoms. You provide it and since they dont have the paperwork, they cannot believe you so you are referred to a regional office 300 miles away to process your heart attack claim. Or, to reflect on unemployment, which claimed I had my wrong social security number. Twice. When I own my freaking card. Same number for over 30 years. They then make me go to the social security office (Hey, Amber, your favorite place) to "proove" I am who I am. Then, my proof gets lost. I have to again go to social security, get proof, and something along the lines of blood type, name of my first grade teacher, age of menstruation, food log from Tuesday, birth certificate, umbilical cord, afffadavit from my boss 3 years ago..... they get the proof. I'm set, unemployment here I come! Except that they lose my continuing claim twice, so when I began filing in May, it is September until I get any money. Then, you call unemployment and it's all, bienvenido a del programo del empleo. If you wish to continue in English, press 1. I know America doesn't have a national language, but its unofficially English. To gain citizenship you have to freaking speak English. The citizenship test, most native born Americans cannot pass. So why is it assuming I speak Spanish first, then have to indicate, no, no, I speak English? Why are possible non-citizens, since, well, they can't understand the English needed for citizenship, getting priority treatment and benefits? (And yes, I speak Spanish and French so I do believe Americans should be multilingual. But America speaks English FIRST.) Then you get some long lengthy bla bla bla message about some change in the law. Then, a menu of "press 1 for yes. Press 2 for no. To repeat the question, press 8." But the recorded voice says it slow. With pauses. As if I'm a freaking moron. And ok I've called in for a year. I think I know by now, 1 is yes, 2 is no, 8 is, I no speaky inglesh, i be too dumb to done understand y'all, or, sometimes in my case, must shut up screaming baby. Because see, ok, if the question is asked and I know 1 is the "answer" I should be able to, after hearing it 52 times, press 1 at any time. But no, I must wait for 2, and 8. And then if I do not press my selection with hair-second-trigger efficiency, RIGHT THEN!!! It threatens to end my call for no response. So any smart person slams the 1 button. But no. It repeats the entire question and 1,2,8 prompt. So I imagine health care, after you press 8-2 on the health care phone system, it goes... "if you are having a heart attack, press 1. If you are having heart pain but no attack, press 2. If not sure, press 3. If you are instead missing a limb, press 4. To repeat the question, press 5. " So I mean you're having a HEART ATTACK so you quickly press 1! 1! I'm dying! heart attack! I'm sorry, your response could not be read. Press 1 if.... and 5 to repeat. oh crap! pain! wretching pain! can't move! I'm sorry but you were to make a selection, Please call back another time. RRRRRR (dial tone.)