We won’t be around the blog that much for the next few days, and you probably won’t be either. Our international kiddie porn searchers will be still at it, of course. And we imagine the search for “lauren london naked pics” recognizes no holiday.
Weekend plans in comments or tell us how you came up with the name for your blog.
The earbuds for my iPhone broke. I finally had to pull them out of the phone and actually hold my phone against my ear. Who holds her iPhone to her ear? I saw this woman once in Little Caesar’s pizza talking on her iPhone like it was 1975 and she was in her kitchen with a yellow banana receiver cradling the entire left side of her face. Not a good look.
So on the way home, I had to stop for $30 earbuds. I will pass right by the Apple store if I go a certain way, but it’s located inside the mall, and I didn’t feel like looking for a spot in the midst of all the tax rebate shoppers. I drove the extra two blocks to the AT&T store even though I hate AT&T with a white heat and try to forget the fact that it holds the contract for my favorite Christmahanukwaanzakah gift ever.
Inside, the AT&T girl who I already hate with a white heat just because she is wearing an AT&T golf shirt and carrying a clipboard asks for my name. Why? Why? Does she not remember when I lost my mind a few years ago in Walgreen’s because the tech needed my name to simply sell me some fucking Sudafed? When I am in your establishment for a cash purchase, you and I don’t need this type of information exchange. For any reason. I get prickly, she gets defensive, and she tells me I will not be served at the register until my name is engraved on her clipboard.
I really really needed the earbuds. Did not need the following: me standing in the middle of the AT&T store, name on clipboard, idle. Watching people at registers placing bets on how long they could get me to stand there without my bursting into flames. Clipboard girl not ringing me out because she couldn’t take cash at her, uh, cash register. Bad perm lady who can, in fact, take cash, pretending to be helping absolutely no one at her checkout. Q in my ear singing kum ba yah, being much too far away to post bail.
I threw (toss, it was a toss) the earbud box onto The Clipboard and left, convinced I was being filmed for some sort of irate customer training video. I was screaming into the banana receiver while driving across the street to the mall where this long ass post gets much shorter and simpler.
Apple Guy 1: Hi!
Apple Guy 2 (cracking himself up): You haven’t been crashing into walls wearing your earbuds have you?
Apple Girl at cash register: Getting new earbuds? Are these your old ones?
And she opened the new ones, handed them to me, put my old ones in the box and sent me on my way with have a nice day. Cost for me: zero. Gain for them: a family of Apple consumers for life.
Life, I tell you.
If you have any of the answers, please feel free to share.
1. What happens if your cards (all of them) are declined in a restaurant and you have no access to cash? Can you leave with an IOU or something? I’ve always wondered that.
2. What is the real dollar cost of properly raising one child? Do non-wealthy parents actually have the money? (Yes, my account is overdrawn again. Why do you ask?)
3. Why is it so much easier to believe the negative stuff people say about us while pshawing away the good stuff they say?
Unrelated: now that I have lost interest in the political season, I have been delighted to substitute most Web surfing and all television watching with playing Scrabulous with Q. His brain is better suited to the game; I am usually terrible with word games, but I am creating a strategy that works on most days he is not on his A-game.
Even more unrelated: Q harnessed the power of teenage bribery to get Jordan to do a whole bunch of stuff I’d been previously unable to get her to do on a regular basis. Tonight will be her 30th consecutive night of maintaining a clean personal environment before going to bed. One whole month. I’ve been carrying her New Shiny Thing in my little black bag and her heart skips a beat whenever she thinks about it. She can have it tonight, and we’ve already outlined her personal responsibilities that will allow her to keep it.
Dangle the prize as incentive, remove the prize as punishment. Life begins at teenagery.
Q and I ran into one of my childhood next-door neighbors a few weeks ago. My brother has stayed in contact with John, the neighbor, for all these years and, last Super Bowl Sunday, attended John’s annual party with his wife and daughter.
Sometime between the party and just last week, John’s teenage son and my teenage niece hit it off and started hanging out. Coincidentally, and these are huge coincidences since I very rarely call my niece on the phone and I never ever ask about her adolescent love life, my niece told me that she’d recently broken up with John’s son because he was becoming too serious too fast.
So yeah, I am always the last one to know so when Q and I ran into John and John said “have you talked to your brother about Taylor and my boy?” who knew he was talking about the original getting-together? I thought he was asking had I heard they’d broken up.
Just call me Breaking News Fringes cuz he had no idea. And now I’m worried that his boy had no idea either since maybe my niece told me before she’d had a chance to say anything to the boy. How would she know I’d run into her not-yet-ex-boyfriend’s father after not seeing the man since the day I left for college in 1985?
Argh.
I should call her. I’m sure it’s no big deal. But what if it is, and she’s not speaking to me anymore because Auntie has The Big Mouth?
See what happens when you join Facebook for the first time at 40 years old? I’m back in high school and all its inherent drama. Maybe tonight I’ll sneak out my bedroom window and buy liquor from the guy behind the iron bars at the corner store. Flash him my fake ID and buy a pack of condoms just to fuck with his head.
