Thursday, May 22, 2008

Florida

We are going to Florida for Memorial Day Weekend.

We are driving from Ft. Lauderdale to Ft. Myers.

I am worried about breaking down in the middle of the wang-y part,

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where there is a vast expanse of fucking nothing and getting raped by crazy swampbillies (attractive when they are really trust fund kids who are seeing The Cramps and have impressive pompadours, not so much when they're single-toothed and into raping you) or eaten by a python or something.

I have bought cheap beach wear. In my mind, I will look like this but in reality I always end up looking more like this. The one consolation is that the folks depicted in the second picture look like they're more up for piña coladas. The other one probably drinks half a glass of sparkling wine and proclaims to the nearest bro how totally wasted she is, and how she hasn't been this drunk since she was taking her gap year in Uzbekistan. I hate you, bitch.

I might have my period while I'm in Florida, so if I don't ever update again, it's because I got eaten by a shark.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

The Pool

We are failures at upper middle class suburbanites. We do not have a personal pool (which is a lot like a personal quesadilla in that jumping wholeheartedly into either the morning after a bout of heavy drinking is a surefire way to cure a hangover, but one has significantly less cholesterol than the other). No, we have to avail ourselves of the "semi-public" pool at the Klub, which is convenient for the fact that we can proceed to get ourselves hammered while being brought drinks by undermotivated high schoolers, and inconvenient for the fact that we have to be around a bunch of assholes the entire time. Please note: we are not discussing the irony of me discussing the assholes at the country club pool when my husband and I, for all intents and purposes, appear to be one of them. This isn't supposed to be some sort of self-realization or any crap like that wherein your intrepid author realizes she is no better than the people she has willingly associated herself with, knocking herself off her ledge of smug faded-hipstery self-satisfaction into the murky depths of "oh my god, I'm one of them."

Some of your typical asshole varieties at the country club pool:
  • Wasted golfers - these are the guys who've been out knocking around balls all day (ha ha ha, it's a double entendre, stupid golfters) and getting plowed in the sun. You can easily recognize them by their fratty attitudes, blatant slurring, domination of the main pool to throw a football back and forth while calling each other derogatory slurs questioning the others' sexual orientation. These are the guys you hated in high school, and bad news, they all have lots of money and are still totally self-entitled and douchey.
  • Mommy cliques - I think these are less of a country club mainstay and more of a Mainstay of Suburbia, but at the country club, they're even more horrible. There's always the One Super Tan One, who is hellbent on acheiving the texture and color of a perfectly ripe date, and she tends to be friends with the Trophy Wife Trio who have, as their accoutrements, Chanel sunglasses and horribly behaved children (I'm looking at you, kid who stole our frisbee for like, two hours until I had to come get it back from you all while being glared at the one person who wears heels to the damn pool)
  • Creepy older daughters of former trophy wives who are giving all of us the creeps, thank you very much - these girls usually land in around about 16/17, and they are only visible during the summer. They are prone to sharing iPod headphones with their best friends, wearing incredibly skanky white bikinis, and sitting on the laps of friends of their fathers and flirting like 35-year-old women. Am I jealous of their figures? Yes. Am I jealous of the clear emotional problems these girls are setting themselves up for? Not so much.
  • The occasional freak - this is us and the occasional other person, like that lady who's got an entire thigh tattoo (rock on, ugly tattoo lady, let's get falafel or something). We go to the pool to get wasted and goof off. Not only do we have this incredible knack for being the best cocktail viral marketers at the pool (my husband orders a Bloody Mary or I decide to get a daquiri, there's a run on them. Damn, do those trophy wives love their liquor through a straw), but we also make up really lame games. There is one that we've got that is pretty sweet - get a couple of the kickboards that the swim team uses, and stack 3 of them on top of each other. Sit on the kickboards, in the deep end, and the goal is to get the other person off the kickboards without losing your own. It's not easy, okay? We're the goofy ones who coordinated an ad hoc synchronized swimming routine with our niece and nephew the last time they were down, in the middle of the pool. Conventions be damned, I say. I'm not paying $7 for a margarita to just sit there and slowly get cancer. For god's sake, I can't even smoke.

The pool opens this weekend. Lo! Summer begins.

Friday, May 9, 2008

The Creepy Little Pyromaniac and His Mother

When we moved into this house, we were visited by our neighbor down the street, who proceeded to grill us on whether or not we were in the market for a church(no), or if I was interested in joining one of those "Suburban Women Get Hammered On Sugary Drinks and Gamble" deals (no), whose car was whose, etc. etc.

I was, at the time, hung over and tired and grimy as shit because I was moving. This was not exactly the most desirable experience for introductions to the neighbors. Especially being that we're creepy on the first hand since we're younger than everyone else and don't have any kids.

She's got this kid, right? And this kid, for lack of a better word, is a total weirdo. Awkward, strange, trick or treats alone and dressed as weird, adult-Halloween-Party-topical-esoteric costumes, when he is probably around 11. Nice kid, weird kid. Weird family.

She doesn't stop talking, ever. Ever. Evasion is fruitless - whenever we're outside, smoking or drinking or whatnot, we're always aware. Like partying meerkats, one ear/eye is pricked to the horizon as an avoidance technique.

We have, however, become lax over the recent weeks, combined with a relapse of cigarette smoking - this causes us to be outside more, and since we do not have church or children, we often hang out outside late at night, drinking and smoking on our back porch. We do not get raucous or wild, but we will talk quietly and laugh and other earmarks of "conversation."

So she's started getting weird and passive-aggressive about it. She mentions all the time how she was up at some ungodly hour of the morning and saw that we were awake, and makes comments about "how nice it must be to stay up until past 3 in the morning." We nod enthusiastically, hating her, and then try to extricate ourselves from the conversation.

Finally, we have ammo.

The other night, it was a Saturday at around 10 PM (which in my mind, is just when Saturday nights start getting good), and we were outside, drinking and smoking (so we're not obsessed with variety but what we do we do well). Suddenly, there was this big, deep *FOOM* coming from behind the houses across the street (one of which is said neighbor's house). Now, to clarify, there is a greenbelt behind their houses with an old abandoned house that hasn't been lived in since the 80s - the land was sold, the greenbelt is thick and undeveloped (as of now), and in my mind, the combo of "abandoned house" and "we live 5 blocks from the high school" = naturally, extreme mischief. So whatever, some psycho kid is blowing shit up in the abandoned house. Obviously, we're not completely blasé, since we don't want the greenbelt to go up in flames, but it's been relatively moist, and so, whatever. Nothing to get all het up about.

It was a pretty fucking big explosion, though. We didn't see anything, but we could feel the vibration, and it was loud.

And then we heard something else. The neighbor's voice, keening and high-pitched, screaming at what we can only assume was her weird freako kid. We couldn't make out words so much as tone, but the lady sounded pissed. We thus inferred that no, the explosion didn't come from the abandoned mine shaft, but instead from the back of her house, where Creepy was I don't know, blowing up hairspray cans or something. Later conversations resulted in her claiming not to know there was an abandoned house behind her fence (it's plausible, there's no way to see for the trees), which makes us even more certain that her kid is the perp.

So the next time I get a "oh blah blah blah stop talking in your own yard at 3 AM on a Saturday" I will mention "oh, you know what I heard the other night" and see if that shuts her up.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

The Homeowner's Association

I live in shivering, quaking, rigdly infuriated fear of the Homeowners' Association. Like I've mentioned before, I live in a "Country Club Community", and while we are not even remotely fancy enough to be Golf Members with, I don't know, the baby-hunting rights you get when you drop 15k in initial fees and then $500 a month after that, we are "Sports" Members. What that means is that we are allowed to play tennis if the courts ever get built, and go to Special Social Events That The Rest of the Plebes Don't Get To Go To, but we are only allowed to play golf on weekdays, kind of like letting your freaky Uncle Fester out of the house but only in the backyard, only on weeknights past midnight so he can raise his aggrieved, disfigured face to the moon and howl. Or whatever. Okay, that was kind of a tangent, but when you live in a Kuntry Klub Kumunity, the people who share your amenities can, and often are, some of the most uptight, megalomaniacal, asshole pricks on the face of the planet, who can stand nothing, and I mean nothing, that is, in any way, different or unusual. Hence this whole thing, not just talking to you about how I can play golf on Tuesdays at 10 AM.

AAaaanyway. We took a week off from work together, in order to bond and also do some gardening, because my lofty plans for my house were to rip out all the faux-deserty-Southwesternish stuff that had been left there that we had not already exorcised from the flower beds, and my husband had this fantastic dream to build a new flowerbed by the side of the driveway and, I don't know, fill it with tulips and shit. He has a lot of fantasies that he retains, unhindered by such inconsequential things as "Hardiness Zones."

It is the policy of our Homeowner's Association that all landscaping and visible changes to the house or yard or backyard or even if you are maybe walking naked in front of your window, that these things must be 30 days approved, with advanced notice and a nominal $50 fee submitted, which will not be refunded, regardless of approval status (note: this is the same HOA that replants every median at least 6x a year because they don't know what else to do with all the fucking money they have, and you know, dropping rates isn't an option). Our philosophy, after installing Floyd, was "oh, go fuck yourselves" and figured it was better to ask for forgiveness than beg for permission.

So, we said fuck it, dug up a lot of stuff, planted a bunch of new stuff, dug up a bed, planted a plum tree, you name it, we went apeshit on our yard. Which looks lovely now, I might add. Well, lovelier. We are having a bit of a weed situation.

But I was convinced, every time a car drove slowly past our yard (we live on a corner lot, a little bit down from the mailbox, and often people drive by our house to turn around), that they were the HOA Gestapo, writing down that our mulch was black, not dark brown, and that we had exceeded our allotment of front yard trees, and the questionable nature of a plum tree qualifying as a native tree to our location.

Having gotten snippy letters on bright green Kinko's Birthday Party-style cardstock reminding us to "please edge your lawn" or weird, blackmaily pictures taken at 8 AM Tuesday morning of our trashcan left out on the curb (Monday is trash day) reminding us in no uncertain terms that we don't give a fuck that you both were sick as hell, move your goddamned trashcan inside, assholes, I am constantly all aquiver that we are going to receive the Remove That Fucking Tree letter from the HOA. And yet, at the same time, I kind of hope for it, in a Norma Rae moment, where I can stand up and tell all those uptight 65-year-old assholes to stick it up their pooper and I dare them to take me to court.

I'll probably just get rid of the tree, though.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Floyd

One of the most aggravating, soul-sucking, hateful things to do in the entire universe is gardening in the suburbs. Technically, in our neighborhood, you have to file a request with the HOA (each filing has a fee, which I think is anywhere from $25 to $50) whenever you make any "landscaping" changes. That essentially means that anything that isn't in a flower pot will, technically, cost you an extra $50.

"Fuck that", we say. Figuring that we can risk it and not spend the money, or pay the money and run the risk of not getting approved, we figured, better to do and get punished later than get shut down by the Robot Corps of Engineers.

We live on a corner lot, with three (3) officially sanctioned tree species, all native but non-invasive. One (1) of these trees died. By which I mean, it stopped growing. We are in a fairly new development. Our house was built in the 21st century, so the tiny little trees are still relatively small (although relatively less small that our neighbors, being that we bought one of the first houses on the block). Said tree was not growing leaves and looked ugly and gross, so we cut it down. With a chainsaw. After an aborted first try which made us incredibly confused why the chainsaw wasn't working (turns out the geniuses at our local Giant Orange Store Where Nobody Helps You put the chain on, oh, backwards. We did almost start a trunk fire, though. It smelled nice), we got a correctly assembled chainsaw (this time, with gas!) and cut it down.

Here is something that you might not know. Stump removal, even of a smallish tree with a trunk diameter of oh, let's say, 12", is not, well, easy. It is, in fact, incredibly shitty. Especially when that stump is on a hill. It took us sitting on either side, rhythmically kicking the trunk to either side, like an arboreal, stationary version of those oldentimey hand cars.

After much toil and trouble, the stump was removed, and we were ready to quest for a new tree. Yours truly has always had a fantasy to plant a great, gorgeous icon of the South that would shade my lawn and provide a convenient place to fan myself and bemoan the state of things over a mint julep. Off to the nursery we went. Fortune befell us - sometimes, kids, procrastination works in your favor. Since it was, for my climate, far past optimal tree-planting time, there was a half-off sale on trees. Hooray. And so, after searching, I found a lush, 10' tall tree with one seed-pod thingy on it, evidence of a blooming-age tree (this is a good thing, as these trees apparently take forever to bloom when they're small).

After purchasing the tree, we attempted to cram it into our midsize Sport SUV. This actually turned out to require dropping the passenger-side seat all the way down, shoving the tub part (you know, the root part, the container that the tree lives in) way up to the front windshield, the back door open, and my devoted husband leaning out and hefting up the top part of the tree to prevent it from dragging on the ground.

Only when the tree was already loaded in the car (look, it took a lot of work) I noticed, in pink chalk, was scrawled "Sold: Floyd".

Whoops. Well, I thought, it's not really my fault that I didn't see it and the store sold it to me, right? And it wasn't like I was about to take that fucking tree OUT again and put another one in. Fuck Floyd, we thought, and took the tree home, and planted it.

After a couple of weeks of uncertainty, our tree (obviously, named Floyd) is now doing very well and is slowly growing new lovely leaves and I am hoping will bloom in a couple of weeks. I still feel bad for old Person Floyd, but I would like to believe that this tree in particular would have died in whatever horrible location he would have put it in. More likely though, the person got totally screamed at. Sorry, nursery employee. Sorry, Floyd. The tree is good, though. We might be able to arrange visitation rights.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Malaise

I have been having weird dreams lately, mostly about motherhood. I don't currently have children, and for a long time, did not think that I wanted any. I am slowly changing my mind, because apparently, regardless of what my rational brain thinks, my lizard brain, that is directly piped into whatever shit my ovaries are laying down, is all "dame un bebe, por favor".

So I woke up the other night, kind of weirdly creeped out, having just dreamed about breastfeeding my cat, who was sleeping, innocently, in between my husband and I, and thought "oh holy crap, what the fuck is happening to me?"

I am currently affected with some variety of life ennui that is causing me to hate everything around me. I hate my house, I hate my job, I hate my coworkers, I hate politics (well, I hate Hillary Clinton, because I love Barack Obama), I hate everything. I hate that my country club is getting sold to someone, and I don't know how that's going to work. Either it's going to be totally mellow and awesome or it's going to be horrific and buttoned up, and they are going to charge even more at the club dining hall for stupid buttered pasta with garlic.

Maybe I should just crap out a couple kids, stay at home, and join the Junior League. I don't really believe all this crap about it being the hardest job in the world. I'm pretty sure it's hard for the first couple months and then you can like, leave them on the floor while you watch The View. And besides, what are au pairs for if not to wheel the kid around the park and cry about their Swedish boyfriend?

No, no, on second thought, I am pretty sure that I might have to kick my own ass if I stay home with my kids and have an au pair. I could get a Roomba, though, right?

I am so bored. Bored, bored, bored. Maybe I should get some golf clubs and actually, you know, use my membership privileges. Or maybe I can convince that guy I work with to have a torrid supply closet affair. I know my husband won't mind.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

More drinking

I am trying out Drunkorexia. At least, I did. The other night, when I went out drinking irresponsibly and drank many beers (oh, double foul) without eating a single thing all day.

Turns out, 6 pints + > 24 hrs. of no food = drunk as hell. You'd think I'd have figured it out, but I'm going to be honest with you, I have not really ever been the kind of girl to skip meals.

I've lost like, 7 pounds though, so that's good, right?

My husband and I are planning on starting a running regime. We will get to be lucky little cookie cutter couple in running shoes together. It's very romantic.