This and That

I've been thinking about writing for a while now. I've thought about writing a testimony about why John Mayer's "Daughters" isn't cheesy. Seriously, his singing is kind of annoying, but those lyrics are great. Being a daughter myself to a man who was a bit rigid at times while I was growing up, as well as being a social worker who has seen girls whose dad's ditched them or worse, decided to have sex with them, I think any song that encourages more healthy treatment of (and thus future relationships for) daughters is fucking great in my book.

I've also been meaning to write about tonsil stones. The picture above are some from my own tonsils. I didn't know these things existed until recently, and now I'm obsessed with constantly cleaning them out of my throat. They are gross and have a pungent smell, but before you judge, chances are if you have tonsils, you have them.

Also, I took pictures to illustrate any writing I do about when I angrily cleaned out Joe's car last week and threw everything that was in it on to the front lawn. But, the pictures are still on my camera, and that's a lot of work.

All of those things, however, are not nearly as entertaining as what's been going on the last couple days, specifically today. First, Dex did great at the kennel. In fact, he liked it so much that when Joe picked him up, he ran back to his pen, not wanting to leave. Second, I survived my whirlwind trip to SC and really enjoyed seeing my old friends. I also managed to fall in love with a Mexican restaurant in Augusta, GA. Oh good golly it was delicious.

On Monday of this week I managed to spend the only full day out of a three week span with Joe. It was good, although in the evening, I had to attend a welcoming for the new battalion Sergeant Major's wife. That was interesting. Many officer's wives. Sort of intimidating. But I smiled and chatted. And drank before I left my house. For sure.

A few things have happened since then and now, but I guess nothing too notable. The furniture store we bought our stuff from tried to screw us, but I got it straightened out after about 467 phone calls and having the furniture store finally admit they signed up for 30 days interest free instead of 48 months. Douche bags. Can't trust no one. Today, while similar in theme, had a different outcome with our credit card. I checked out the online account today and noticed two $185 pending transactions for myfloridacounty.com. I googled it, and found that it's a Florida website to pay child support, alimony, etc. Joe knew nothing of it and maintained that he has no bastard children in FL. If Joe's being honest, and I'm pretty sure he is, then yes, we had our identity stolen. However, it seems like it's going to be pretty easy to nail the guy (I assume it's a male) since the money most likely goes to a very specific account. I called USAA and they put a fraud alert on the transaction, so when it posts I guess it will notify the institution accepting the fraudulent payment, which will call for them to immediately go into ass-kicking mode. I'm interested to see how it all plays out. I mean at least the dude was trying to make his payments, right? Guess that's better than most. Just not with my credit card, dick.

That's the big news of the day. Well for me at least... Joe got raped at the doctor's office. Apparently if you shit blood, they do some pretty intrusive testing. Poor guy experienced all of that just before my frantic phone call inquiring as to whether or not he has kids I don't know about. Whoopsy.

Anger Ball

This is what I'm going to tell Best Buy tomorrow. We bought a printer from them last week. The model I wanted was back-ordered, so we bought the display. I was trying to set it up tonight, only to find they didn't give me all the parts. I called them to ask what could be done. Granted I called 20 minutes before closing, I still think I could have been treated a little better. I asked the store operator for the computer/printer department three times, and each time I was looped back to the her (the operator). After ten minutes of this bullshit, the operator stopped picking up. I was and still am quite livid. What the fuck. I'm going in there tomorrow with my arms full of the damn display that they are going to return in exchange for a new one. They WILL sell the new printer to me at the special price I got the other one for. Not the display price. Just the special that was running. And I will not leave, unless it's with a security escort, until my requests are granted, and I have a new computer with all its parts.

In slightly better news, the kennel at which I want to board Dexter this weekend finally confirmed my reservation. The e-mail even said. "We look forward to meeting Dexter and his human family. (We love the show "Dexter.")" Oh HELL YES - Dexter was named after that show. They must be cool. Hopefully they're competent as well. Now if only I had a three in one printer/scanner/copier with which to make copies of Dexter's shot records that the facility requires...

Yes, my time alone is drawing to a close. I'm glad. (And not just because I locked myself out today and had to climb in through a window, quickly turning the alarm off before it signaled.) I think it's starting to mess me up in the head a little bit. Also, I do miss my husband. Still, I've had too much purposeful seclusion...which I guess really isn't because Joe is gone. It's more my choice. But, I did hang out with my neighbor today. And another chick yesterday. I guess I haven't been too terrible. Also, I did start to get the house cleaned up today for Joe's return. Dexter finally started shedding this month. I didn't think he was going to be a big shedder because it took until now for it to really kick in. His hair suddenly seems to be everywhere, and I soooo don't want to be that dog owner. I already vacuumed once and emptied the canister. I'll be doing it again tomorrow. My house doesn't smell like a dog, nor will it look like one.

And so, I'll get the house back into shape, if not better than it was before. Get everything squared away to go to South Carolina for the weekend and get Dexter dropped off at the kennel. I'll hit SC by Friday evening. Joe will get home Saturday evening and pick up Dex Sunday morning. I'll visit with my girlfriends and hit one's wedding shower briefly Sunday afternoon before driving the 4.5 hours back here Sunday to see Joe for a minute before he goes back to work on Monday. Whew.

PS. I just started reading Are You There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea. I just finished the chapter where she goes to the state women's prison for the day. Fabulous. I was going to read David Sedaris's Me Talk Pretty One Day because I still haven't, but when I came across the library's only copy not checked out, I thought better of it. The cover looked like it was coated with the grease and grime off of a thousand hands that had never seen soap and water. Additionally, it appeared that some sort of brown liquid had been spilled across pages of the book while it lay closed, making the edge of each page extra crispy. No thank you.

Finally: A Home of My Own to Be Alone In

And indeed, it does look something like this. Minus the smoking.

Joe left town early yesterday to assist with some training in another city. I've been kind of wondering if he's good at his stuff, and I guess his being asked to go on a training trip to assist pretty well confirms that he is. Even the company commander is there with them. All five of them. Baby boy movin' on up...which means I am too! Well, sort of....

It has been well over a year since I had my own place to be home alone in. This usually only happened when Dad and Jan left town. Not no more. This bitch is mine...and I am trashing her. Well not really. I'm just choosing not to do a whole lot of extra. Mainly, it's not having to cook and clean (and clean up after) for Joe or set any kind of standard for living. It's just me and Monkey Man, Dexter. That said, I haven't cooked, done laundry, and hardly showered over the last two days. I was probably only truly productive today for about three hours if that. It feels good. I think. My new neighbor (a military wife that I've become friends with) keeps checking on me. I hope I'm not giving off an air that I'm over here slitting my wrists without Joe. I don't think I am - I guess I'm just not used to people in this neighborhood being nice. I also very much like to hole up sometimes and not have human contact, so I'm actually rather enjoying this stint. Slowly, though, I'm realizing the degree to which I do that isn't normal.

So it's just me and Dexter...and occasionally the neighbors too. I'm concerned about who all it could be tomorrow, as a couple of Joe's buddies are threatening to crash the house tomorrow for Sunday Football. And they know he's gone, and I'm here. We'll see. Speaking of Dex, though; the best thing so far that's happened since Joe left involves that dog. Yeah, we were on our first walk yesterday, and he was being a bit of a dick. Pulling, eating everything, and even grabbing the leash in his mouth and jerking it around. Well. It was trash day yesterday, so many a can still lined the sidewalk. In one of Dexter's instances of idiocy, he chomped down on the leash and trotted along looking at me defiantly. Since he was looking to his right (at me), he was not looking to the front at a trash can. Ran right into it. It was glorious. Just hearing the thud alone was enough to make me burst out laughing. Looks like he won't do that again. And that, children, is damn good parenting.

What He Said

Yes, let us.

While lots of other people seem to be actually getting jobs, I finally applied for my first ones today...after living here for four months. Um. Yeah. I'm that chick. Anyway. It feels friggin' great to have merely applied. Like it's a sure thing already. It's so not, but oh well. I applied for two jobs with the state - one with the Division of Family and Children Services in a Masters Level position entitled Social Services Protect and Placement Specialist - and the other with the Department of Juvenile Justice as a Probation and Parole Officer. I know that the latter of the two might seem like it would be somewhat beneath a Master's degree'd person, but I'm almost more jazzed about it than the other. Something about not being responsible for someone to positively change, but instead to just nail their ass to the wall when they screw up is really appealing to me. The kick in the pants part about it is that it doesn't even really require a bachelor's degree as long as you have experience; HOWEVER, there is hardly a difference in pay between it in the Master's position with DFCS. The world just loves its MSWs.

Speaking of productivity, I even shaved my legs yesterday. Which means I went to the gym. I am so pissed off that I let everything go that I worked so hard on last year. (I guess I fell off the wagon with Oprah.) I was really starting to get pretty toned. And I enjoyed it. It's just been so hard finding a new schedule, gym, environment, etc, as well as the motivation to actually go. I paid for two full months and never went. Yeah, I am so that person. Or I was. But no more. I am going again tomorrow and the next day, and so on. I hate not having energy and not wearing my clothes well anymore. Uggh. One negative about my return to the gym - I'm now a member at Gold's gym - is that somewhere in my two month plus absence, they stopped their towel service. I asked for one yesterday, and she told me that she didn't have them back there (behind the counter) anymore. I asked where they have them now, to which she told me that they don't have them anymore at all. It seems like she could have answered my initial question with that information, but whatever. I mumbled something about not having been in a while and walked off. I didn't think about it too much until later when I was at the library. I was returning David Sedaris's When You are Engulfed in Flames (great book - I soooo wish I could write like him) when I happened across a kiosk book return I had never seen before. It had a conveyor belt and a little touch screen, and when I put my book on it, it read the barcode, and gave me the option to print my reciept, to which I gave the appropriate touch to the screen to do so. It was then that I realized that my free library service has a super tricked out book return, and the fucking gym membership that I pay $50 a month for can't even give me a damn towel.

At the Risk of Sounding Too Negative...

Joe has been asleep for the better part of three hours now. We drank early today, as we watched the Eagles game that started at one, on down to some point after five when we hopped across the street to the neighbor's for the end of a small bbq. Out of the three other couples there, I was the only girl that could drink, that being because I was the only chick not pregnant. Those women had each trimester covered between them, and as this was announced, I informed that I was the "before" altogether and took a swig of beer. I'm pretty sure I was the oldest of these girls, and with the potential for feeling pressured by age mixed with babies, I'm glad I feel 100% secure in the fact that I only have a dog right now and not a kid.

Let's back up and erase babies from the mix altogether. I am intrigued by couples. I like to watch them - in person and in writing. I always wonder what's under the hood. No, not what they look like naked, but what the relationship is really like. When things seem too good to be true, I always figure they probably are. That said, when a partner in a relationship repeatedly describes it as being "wonderful" and "amazing," I'm usually trying to figure out what's being hidden. I probably sound pretty pathetic, but I'm just not convinced. Maybe it's because the words are overly joyous, or because the repetition makes it sound really forced and frilly. I just think the idea of everything being great all the time negates the very possibility. At least in my relationship, I don't want Joe and I to agree on everything all the time. I think that would indicate one of us is holding back, and I think that would be boring. And I'm not saying I want a knock-down/drag-out, but dang, that which makes me love and desire Joe deep in my heart also makes me want to hit him with my car sometimes. But I guess to each his own.

And so here it is in the wee hours of Monday morning. The weekend is officially over. My sister and her fiance came for a visit, and I really enjoyed them being here. Unfortunately, it just wasn't long enough. We did do some shopping, some eating, and some sight-seeing. I also got to see her beautiful wedding dress and to look through some pictures of cakes with her. I can say in all honesty that I am truly excited for her wedding and am hoping it turns out wonderfully well. She really does deserve it.

PS. The Eagles are playing for the NFC Championship next weekend, as it was they beat the Giants today. Sorry, Eli. GO EAGLES!

Everyone Needs a Little Bromance

Or at least these two do. This is Joe and one of his best friends, Cody. Cody and his fiance, Carla came to visit us after Christmas, and we all hung out for about a week. It was a really good time. We checked out our minor league hockey team and really enjoyed all the fights. For New Year's we tried to enjoy a supposedly upscale steak house, and while the service was so poor that it rendered our entire meal free, we still managed to hang out and have fun with each other....for four hours. We did sushi together, walked around the Riverwalk, and video gamed until we all needed new glasses prescriptions. Yes, it was a lot of fun. However, part of me wonders if the guys would have had a better time without Carla and me.

Yes, seeing Joe and Cody hang out was an eye-opening experience. Joe was not quite the Joe I'm used to. From my perspective, he was louder, more boisterous, especially in his talk of things Army and HK USPs, and operated at a maturity level below that of his norm. I've also never seen him light up quite the way he does around Cody, nor have I seen him play so many video games. I almost wondered if he'd be happier if he and Cody lived together. I mean hookers aren't that much. They could probably order all their food in and play video games nonstop. I dunno who would clean or do that laundry, but I'm sure someone could be hired, what without the added costs of significant others. (With all that a possibility, I'm not sure why I'm necessary, but I'm assured I'm wanted.) And more than their deep and undeniable love for each other, is each of their need to be entertained...constantly. I've known this about Joe - hell, I live it, but I didn't know there was someone else who shares almost identical needs. If we were at the house they needed to be gaming - either on Cody's Wii or Joe's 360. When they broke from that, they were either reading, on the laptop, smoking cigars, smoking pipes, etc. BUT THEY HAD TO BE OCCUPIED IN SOME WAY AT ALL TIMES. It exhausted me to watch, and the longer they spent together the worse it got. Carla and I had a good chat amidst it all, though, and I think we helped each other to stay sane.

Cody and Carla left Saturday, and thus the bromance has gone back to being long-distance in nature. Things here are returning to normal as well. We've put most of the Christmas stuff away, took the tree down, and of course Joe is back to work. I'm doing massive amounts of laundry today and am trying to get the house cleaned and reorganized. I have a plan this week to start a serious job search. The feeling of dread finally lifted yesterday, and it finally feels like it's time to get my part of this life rolling again. That said, I feel ready to hit the gym again too. Perhaps instead of being functionally depressed, I'm returning to just being functional. Well, as much as I can be.