Take Your Shoes And Shove Them Up Your Ass

Dear Neighbor,
   You gave me the dirtiest look as I stepped out of my apartment today. I was fully dressed. Jeans, not sweatpants; a t-shirt, not a pajama top, which seems to be the fad. The only thing weird was the fact that I was wearing flip flops. Yes, I admit, the temperature outside is 37 degrees; the ground is covered with frost - but not snow. That is valid, there is no snow on the ground. Flip flops may not be most people's choice of shoes in this frosty (but not snowy) weather.
   However, I am not most people. I just don't like shoes. Yes, I own them. Yes, I wear them, but only when required to do so. It's my day off, there is not a required uniform that I must submit to on this day. I am not going hiking, or doing any type of extensive, rigorous walking that would require the use of more supportive shoes. I am just going up the road to the mailbox. It is not so cold that I am going to get frostbite in the five minutes it takes me to get to the complex's mailboxes. And yet, even if it was, that seems like frostbite would be my problem. My shoe issue just seems like it wouldn't affect you at all. Maybe I just don't feel like I need all ten toes. Maybe I can make do with nine. Shit - I've broken them so many times that half of them don't even bend properly in the first place. In fact, part of my issues with enclosed shoes is the fact that my damaged feet, broken, sprained, and strained many times over the course of my 34 years of life, just don't feel comfortable in enclosed shoes. In fact, enclosed shoes can, over extended wearing time, cause my feet actual pain. The other issue is, I was raised Southern country, and I just didn't grow up wearing shoes. I was outside barefoot, with all the poisonous snakes, bugs, and snapping turtles, with bare feet most of my childhood. So I just don't see shoes in the same light that you do. They aren't really necessary.
   Okay, dude, I admit - if the world ends by a new ice age - I am ill-equipped. I will probably die, and I will probably be among the first. But... again, not your problem. More resources for your superior ass. Have fun with that. In the meantime, I'll continue to check my mail, in 37 degree, frost-covered weather, wearing flip flops. If I can listen to your loud-ass TV, then you can deal with my flip flops and wind breaker.
Sincerely,
Your shoeless neighbor.

I'm Melting

   So last summer was a bitch, and I sat in my apartment and was miserable. This summer, I vowed that this would not happen. I would not be hot and miserable like I was last summer. But in the area that I live, none of the apartments come with a/c, so I had to take matters into my own hands.
   I decided on a swamp cooler, also known as an evaporate cooler, which works by somehow turning the tank that you fill with water into cooler air. There is some kind of science involved here, folks, but the hell if I know what it is. I just know that the cooler was working. It was too small to cool my entire apartment, but it cooled the couch area so that we had an area of relief in the apartment.
   Then one day I noticed a slightly damn spot on the carpet. It was leaking. I turned the cooler off and let it all dry out and went to my sister's for a couple of days (her apartment is cooler than mine, and even though it freaking haunted, there comes a point where you'd just rather deal with ghosts and ghouls then BE HOT FOR ONE MORE DAMN MINUTE. I was at that point.)
   When I got home I unscrewed all the back filter stuff, cleaned everything out, tried to find anything like a crack in the water tank or something disconnected, but could find nothing. So I got a trash bag out and set the cooler on a trash bag in order to protect the carpet and I turned that bitch back on. Leaking be damned, I was going to be cool. So I let it run, but it wasn't leaking. Yay! I had fixed it. Then, being that I live in Washington, the weather decided to revert back to normal and stop with the heat in the 90's bullshit it was pulling, and for a few days, I either didn't run the cooler at all or I only ran it for a couple of hours. Life was livable.
   Except this weekend, that 90 degree weather was all like, "Guess what, bitches? I'm back." I ran that cooler nonstop. And this morning when I woke up and walked over to the cooler, the freaking carpet was so wet that it splashed when I walked. Fucking A. What is this shit? Water had run off of the trash bag and pooled into the carpet, and I didn't have time for this bullshit because I had to go to work. But I filled the tank up with water and turned it on and kept an eye on it so I could see what it was doing while I got ready, and in less than an hour, half the tank was on the floor. So I turned it off. It's still got half the tank of water in that cooler sitting pretty, so the tank is not leaking. I'm letting the little bitch of a cooler dry out. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the damn thing other than the fact that it's upchucking water all over my carpet like it's freaking Linda Blair. In a couple of days I bet it's back to working fine again; I think what is happening it's running too much for the filter thing to keep up with the flow of water, and once it becomes oversaturated, water starts to leak out. That is where the leak is coming from at any rate. It's only a little cooler, I think I need a bigger model. But I could be totally wrong, but wrong or right, I have to let my damn apartment dry out before I get mold, so I can't turn the stupid thing on.
   And of course, today it hit 93 degrees; I'm sitting here yelling at my daughter, "Light is heat! Turn that shit off!" Bullshit, I call bullshit. This is not the South.

Why Doesn't My Daughter Know That There Are Monsters In The Closet?

   Bam. I'm back; it's been so long! I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I had computer issues major, and then I guess I just got out of the habit of writing. Such a bad thing for a writer to do. No good. So here I am, back, and with lots of stories to tell you.
   We are going to jump right in with one about my lovely daughter; thirteen now. A moody teenager who likes to sit alone in a dark, dark closet.... Yeah, that's not a joke. My daughter recently decided that her bedroom closet made a great hang-out. She sits in there. In the dark. With a flashlight and her Ipad. What the heck, child!?

The culprit

She uses that purple thing as a pillow and stretches out.

   When I was younger, closets in the dark meant monsters. There  was something in there; I was sure. Some creepy, slimy, green skinned boogeyman that would jump out and eat me alive. The closet being open a mere crack would be cause to frantically jump out of bed and turn the lights on to check that everything seemed good - and then to go get in bed with my mom or my sister. Yup. I was THAT kid.
   This one I've got makes it a freakin' fort. One of her best friends came up to me at the store where I work the other day and asked me, "What's with her and the closet?" Yeah, she is that obsessed with being in the closet. She even takes phone calls in the closet. It's her office; all her friends know that she think thinks the closet is the place to be.
   Really, child?! Don't you know that the closet is where the monsters live? 

Random Thoughts And A List Of Things That Scare Me

.  So here I am, in a much better mood, still using my daughter's IPad to write my blog posts and still needing to charge the Bluetooth keyboard that she has for it. So many things in this apartment needs to be charged that one of the first things you notice when you walk in the door is this massive pile of chargers by the door plug, which we never use for anything but charging various devices. Silly, but there you have it.
   I'm in a better mood because, despite my fears, I was able to manage to pay all my bills by their due date. Late bills are just a real fear for me, I guess. Until this last month, it was a fear that I wasn't really aware of. I mean, I knew I didn't like to be late, but I didn't realize that late payments would throw me into massive panic and an emotional breakdown. And it's fine if that makes you roll your eyes, because trust me, mine are rolling away. Good grief, Marie. And on that note, I'm releasing in today's post, a list of the ridiculous fears that I harbor, because why not? If you can't make fun of yourself, then really, you shouldn't dish it out, and I like to mock ridiculous things, so there you have it.
   And here's my list.

• The dark
• Lice
• Late payments of bills
• Working self check
• Register 6
• Dolls
• Strong body oders
• The check lady who goes through my line and acts like the girl from the exorcist when ID her
• Demons
• Ghosts
• Rats
• Too much perfume
• The church guy who chased after me while I was trying to pay rent to give me his church's business card
• Aggressively friendly people who smile too much
• The person who comes through with 10 WIC checks, and they're all wrong
• Everything else

   At any rate, those are real fears. And in closing, and completely unrelated, but who cares, my daughter has gotten really into the Sims. And I know that nothing competes with the computer versions, but my computer is garbage. So for Christmas, I got her a Sims Pets for the Xbox 360, which was mine and in the living room, but somehow ended up gravitating to her bedroom. I digress though, Sims Pets, that was what I was talking about. My daughter is making a crazy cat lady with her Sims game, and I was cracking up, because it's a real thing on the game. You have to make a woman with traits of insanity and cat lover, she has to have 5 cats and she has to become best friends with all of the cats and she has to declare the social services person her arch nemesis. Why does that crack me up so much? Whatever, it does.

   Have a good day, folks.

Benefits Of Gaming

   Strike not having a good, week, I've been having a bad month. Things just aren't going right. I say that not to garner sympathy, but to clarify that I am in a BAD FUCKING MOOD. I've been in bitch-mode for weeks now, just so we can set the tone here a little. I've had to cancel plans, I've had to downsize my grocery bill, and I've had to pay a bill or two late, and I HATE paying bills late. I can't stress that enough. This month constitutes the first month I've paid a bill late in over three years, and yes, I remember that, I can say that for sure, because the last time I paid a bill late was December 2012. I remember that shit. I have anxiety attacks when I pay shit late. It's like, two days late, and I think they are gonna shut my cable off and turn off my electricity and own my friggin' soul, over the overdue doctor's office copay. Yeah, something's wrong with me; my sister calls it paranoia. Whatever.
   So I get on facebook, because maybe taking to some of my friends will help me feel better. But whenever you are feeling badly, getting on facebook is a bad idea. After two seconds, I'm having a heart attack because someone's been shot, someone's committed hate crimes, someone's hurt children, someone's hurt animals, and there's been a twenty car pile up or some God-awful shit, and everyone has posted the videos, and for some reason, all those damn videos start playing as soon as you get on facebook. It's like, shit, you thought you were feeling bad before; look at this bullshit stupid assholes get up to. Don't you feel better now?
    No. No, I don't feel better after looking at all that evil shit. Makes me wonder sometimes if those end-of-the-world wack-os are on to something, because damn, all this bad stuff. And I already feel bad, so it's like an endless spiral of badness that I can't seem to break out of.
   But I feel better now. Why? Not a damn thing has changed. But I just spent two hours killing darkspawn and red templars, so somehow, I just feel better. And now I can deal with shit just a little bit better, because I took the time to do something fun, that I enjoy. So that's my sage advice for the day. Maybe it's not worth a crap, but maybe it is. If you are just feeling like everything is overwhelming you, go kill darkspawn. And take Blackwall with you, because he approves of that shit.
   Sometimes we just need to take a step back and take a time out. And yeah, I know that the real world is still there, and yeah, I'll deal with it, but sometimes we all need a break. That's what today's post is about. Just take a friggin' break - before you snap. Maybe it's common sense, but just earlier today, I was fretting myself in circles over issues that I've already done all I can to fix, and all that's needed is a little time and patience. It's had to have common sense when you've got yourself that worked up, and who doesn't ever get worked up over financial issues every now and again? Fix what you can, and go find something fun to do. Break time - and right now, that means I have an Inquisition to build. Bye folks. 

It Is What It Is

   It's been a few months, right? My computer finally just crapped out on me. And there was all that holiday stuff going on. Sometimes when I'm juggling all the tasks and crap that I have to do, I can manage to keep all the balls up in the air... Other times a few of the balls get dropped. When it became a massive struggle to just keep my computer from crashing for just 5 measly minutes, this blog became one of the balls that fell to the floor. THUD.
   That's life sometimes. Being a single mom is not easy. Not that being any kind of a parent is ever easy. But it is what it is. And after a while, you pick the shit you dropped on the floor up and you keep on keeping on. And that's what this post is. Have you ever written a blog post on the little mini IPad that your daughter got from Grandma on Christmas? An IPad that you snuck out from under her as she slept? (Yeah, not kidding there, this kid was cuddling with it like it was a damn teddy bear.) Well, I have. And this little hunt and peck that I'm having to do with the onscreen keyboard is going to insure that my first post after a three month break is a short one. But never fear. She has some kind of wireless keyboard that goes with the biatch (and I just had a major fight with autocorrect to keep biatch as biatch and not batch) and I'm gonna get that sucker charging ASAP.
   At any rate, hopefully everybody had great holidays. Next up - (giggling manically) tax season. Have fun with that BS. Mine are done, and just waiting to be accepted. May the tax gods -  otherwise known as the IRS - be kind to this little tax payer and not audit me this year. It's happened once, and once was enough, even though it turned out I was in the clear. Oh well. My catch phrase lately seems to be a long drawn out sigh and the phrase 'it is what it is.' Just one of those things. We all have to deal sometimes. And right now, I'm dealing with the atrocity that is this IPad's autocorrect. Good grief.