Merry Christmas!!

Yes, my dear followers, it's time for my quarterly post!  Every week I tell myself, "I'm going to write about this and that this weekend."  But alas!  It never fails...I don't.  But, Mac has been telling me (yes, Mac) to write.  Every time I bring it up to him, he says, "I'll be looking for that blog post this weekend!!" 

So, here I am.  Free writing my blog.  I guess with Christmas upon us, there are tons of things to write about.  Let me start by saying I can add "Ferret" to the list of reasons for perpetual motion in my house.  Yes, a fucking ferret.  Birthday present to Prodigal from his high school sweetheart...Nice.  Drives the already neurotic Shepherd fucking nuts...Chico the Wonder Dog is terrified of her, and Tiny?  He just chases her all over the place.  The world's most unfriendly cat, however?  Garth is obviously a chew toy for the weasel.  *head desk*  Help.me.

So. Christmas is upon us once again and far too quickly this year.  Middle, Little and I are headed to the Low Country and Savannah on Monday.  I can't wait!!  My dream country...

ANYway, as I sat at the computer tonight, exhausting myself with shopping, I came across the *best* website!  Hammacher Schlemmer!  Have you ever seen it??  Well, let me tell you, if you have thousands of dollars to spend on What The Fuck, Why? gifts this is the place for you!!  They make Brookstone look like target!

So, onto my Top Ten What The Fuck, Why? Gifts from H.S.

10)  The 20-Foot Animatronics Triceratops!  Now, this is filed under "The Unexpected."  Thanks for stating the fucking obvious...I would probably shit a brick if I woke up to this thing in my front yard.  Billed as, "Seen in museums all over the world, this 20' long animatronic triceratops responds to onlookers with lifelike reactions and fortissimo bellowing. It sways its tri-horned head right, left, up, and down, stomps and scuffs its right forelimb, and opens its jaws while growling." Ummm, well....that would keep those fucking meat-in-the-back-of-my-truck salesmen away, not to mention Christmas carolers and trick or treaters... Price?  Only $350,000

09) Your own, personal submarine!!  This is the two-person submersible that can descend to a depth of 1,000'. Providing access to underwater features such as coral reefs, shipwrecks, and the sea floor, a completely transparent, climate-controlled 3 1/4"-thick acrylic pressure sphere keeps explorers safe while dipping even into the mesopelagic zone, offering a chance to see exotic, bioluminescent species such as lanternfish.
Wow...Now *that* is what every household needs!!  I live near the water!  I should really get this!!  Cost?  Only a palsy $2M!!  Again, this was filed under "The Unexpected."  What would be unexpected would be to know someone who actually has $2M.  And if I knew them, I certainly would have better things to spend their money on than a fucking submarine...

08)  If you have gotten tired of hearing, "I really, really want to learn to play the Ukulele..." then *this* is the gift for you...Filed under, "The Only", you can get the Learn To Play The Ukulele set!! It comes complete with rosewood Ukulele (tuned to Tiny Tim soprano, of course) AND added instructional DVD.  It's a steal at only $149.99...What I really want to know is, how did they get the corner market on *this*??

07) And if you don't feel you're paying your dentist enough, try this for the kids!  The Only Gumball Foosball!! This is the only foosball game that is played with chewable gumballs. Gumball machines atop each goal send the bubblegum onto the pitch, allowing players to engage in rapid table soccer with tasty confection. After each goal, the gumball is dispensed from the side of the table as a reward for the goal scorer's superior foosball skills.  So, if you never tire of lost gumballs under your sofa or chewed gum in your carpet from some rude, visiting little brat, or even better--the sounds of your sons winging giant gumballs at each other, I highly recommend splurging the $1500 for this gem of a gift.

06) Why go spend $17,000 on a boat when you can have this??  The Skier Controlled Tow Boat!!  I saw this and thought, "That is one waterskier with absolutely no.friends."  And why *would* he have any??  It's not like he can take them boating on the weekend....

05) Gentlemen, is the wife (or girlfriend) complaining of "office ass"?  Has she reached that age where she can't sit and eat crap at her desk all day and still burn it off?  Fuck that diamond bracelet she wants, or the new furniture, or even the weekend spa getaway for some possible vagina steaming!  THIS is what she really wants!  The Elliptical Machine Office Desk!  Nothing says, "Yes, honey, your ass *does* look big in those jeans" like giving her this bad boy!  Trust me...She'll love it...You may not get any for a while, however it will be $8,000 well spent, no?

04) Not enough toys in the house now that the kids are grown?  Well, ladies, just for him!  The Advanced Acrobatic Robot. Not every man drinking beer in your carport is going to have one of *these*, I guarantee it!!  And what a bargain at $2500.  Just save up your beer and Marlboro money for a couple months, that should easily cover pleasing him with this!

03)  Now, are you tired of taking that three year old on hiking trips?  Having to lug him or her in that gawd awful backpack?  Well, here is the answer to your prayers!  The All Terrain Dually Tricycle !!  Oh.Yeah.  You can take that kid anywhere now.  Just fork out $300 and the Appalachian Trail will be a breeze!!

02) Do the kids need to spend more time with their grandparents?  Do they need to see that grandma and grandpa really know how to have fun and enjoy life?  Well then, the Regulation Size Shuffleboard Court is just what you need to start that bonding process now!  Your kids will thank you for showing them how fun a senior's Caribbean cruise will be when they're fucking 80...All this happiness and joy can be yours for $1700.

01) Well, admittedly, I kinda went a little early with the submarine, but although this doesn't cost as much?  It's about as fucking useful and likely that you'll buy it.  Knowing how much you like inflatable Christmas decorations, I saw this and thought immediately of you...  It's a steal at $350. Can I have it? 

Now, they *do* have some downright awesome things..Like the 50' snowball launcher...Which is going to piss off some older brothers in my house...*evil grin*

Well, my beautiful followers...That's all for tonight.  I hope to make it back here more often.  I've had some really funny fucking things happen lately!  Remind me to tell you next time!

For now, I'll leave you with this: 

Merry Christmas, to you and yours!! 

Janie

Well Then....Life and Groundhog Mondays

Hello, my lovely strangers! 

I told you I'd come back sometime.  I know, March to August.  Just a small vacation.  But I'm here now!  Let me catch you up on my five months of Mondays.

You've seen me mention Mac in my posts from September to March.  Well, Mac is no more. We'll leave it at that, but it was a massive heartbreak for me.  I'll just say August was a rough month for me.  Still stinging actually.

Prodigal has his driver's license!  Yes, he got it in March, I think?  It's been a while anyway.  So, in April I'm upstairs when I hear, "Mom?  Can you come outside?"  I'm sure you all just saw the same red flag I did...

Me:  "What happened?"
Prodigal:  Just come outside, please!
Me:  Just tell me
Him:  Please, Mom?

So, I walk outside.  To see the front end of my Jeep smashed in---by my van.  Oh yes...While backing out of the driveway, he backed my van across the front of my Jeep. . I asked him, no kinda yelled at him, "Have you ever heard of the brake?"  He didn't stop with the initial touch...I could tell this by the scraped paint all down the side of my van.  Even worse, my van has those back up alarms.  You know what I'm talking about?  The radio goes off and this loud solid tone comes on when you're within a foot of something behind the van.  We'll just ignore THAT noise. 

Flash forward to August:  The ex-husban cop calls me. 

Him:  Has Prodigal called you?
Me:  No, why?
Him:  You may want to call him.
Me:  Why?
Him:  Because he just called me.  You need to call him.

(ring ring)

P:  Hi mom.
Me: What happened?
P:  I kinda backed into a car at the Wawa
Me:  WHAT??  YOU DID WHAT????  What kind of car?????

Are you ready for this?  Wait for it.....Wait for it....

A Lexus.  A 2010 Lexus.  Now luckily he was backing out and going slow.  Luckily there was no damage to my Jeep.  But a Lexus??
Hey Prodigal?  Next time just hit a Mercedes 900 series.  Let's just go for the gold now, ok?  One small dent on the front of the Lexus was $1378.  Holy fucksticks.

So, then we had an earthquake.  I think I failed my college finals.  Then we had Hurricane Irene.  Oh boy, oh joy.  I got up Saturday morning two weeks ago, and headed to Home Depot.  I only have two sandbags in my shed.  They were out.  Everyone was.  Yes, yes I know.  Duh.  Hurricane coming that day and I expect to find sandbags.  So I went home and sat down at my desk with Hurricane Irene outer bands whipping around, doing what everyone does in a crisis--I was tweeting.  The ex calls a few times to check on the house.  Then we hear a "boom" and there goes power. 

So, now I'm tweeting from my phone.  That's when I noticed the change in color of the carpeting in the mancave.  Water was coming in through my sliders on my lower walkout.  Awesome.  So around 11 p.m. the ex calls one last time.  I tell him we're taking on water.  Explained that I couldn't find any sandbags.  He says, "Why didn't you call me?  I have access to around 100 or so sandbags."  Yes, because when I think sandbags, I instantly think ex husband..??  So he brings 30 or so bags over and we find ourselves stacking sandbags at 11:30 at night, in the pouring rain.  It stopped the flow of water.  Afterward, we stood on the deck, covered in sand, no power, drinking beer and betting each other on which tree was going to fall next.  We heard three or four fall in the short time we were standing there. 

We went four days without power.  It was great.  I can't complain too much, though...I know someone who just got power back yesterday. 

Then we get hit with another storm this week.  Oh.My.Goodness.  No, I had left the sandbags at the sliders.  This storm was so bad, it didn't mater.  Two days ago, Prodigal is waking me up at 0100.  "Mom, we have water coming in."  Ran downstairs to see my mancave being flooded.   Sorry, I don't have flood insurance...I was having water intrusion from the foundation due to an overwhelmed sump pump.  So Prodigal was up all night, using my steam cleaner to suck up as much water as possible.  What a doll!  Then he calls me at work.  "Mom, I found the problem."  My Prodigal has friends that have "What does *this* do?" syndrome.  One of them didn't know what that white pipe was coming out of the house...Next to the walkout...Leading into the yard.  So, he pulled on it, pulling it apart. Which in turn caused my sump pump to pump water directly onto my walkout.  Yeeeaaaahhhhh....

So now, here we are.  September 10 and I'm writing my blog.  I quit the government in May.  I work as a contractor now.  My company is renting out Six Flags today.  We're supposed to be there at 1000.  Right now, it's 0841 and I'm watching two plumbers try and stop the leaking pipe that the dewatering crew broke on my baseboard heating system last night.  Yeah...it's been a trying month.

I know this wasn't very humorous today.  It was funnier in my head.  Tomorrow is September 11.  Ten years ago, all of our lives, ALL of them changed forever.  Whether we lost someone in the terrorist attacks, deployed to defend our country against the terrorists, or just went quietly on with our lives, our lives will never be the same.  It was almost like an innocence lost.

God bless you all.  And for now, I'll leave you with this:

Wait...One more thing...I just looked up and he really *does* have plumber's crack...smfh

Yeah...I'm not sure if there's an explanation for this.  I can't tell if it's male or female....

See ya!!

I know, I know...

OK, folks...I know..I'm getting the emails and I appreciate them. Sometimes life takes twists and turns..and time just sweeps away.  If Six Flags could make a rollercoaster called "Janie's Life", they'd make millions..But it would probably stop hearts.  I'll be back soon, I promise.  I have college finals this weekend, so hopefully Sunday I can write and tell you how I fucked away yet another semester!  Hey, a D average student is good, right??

Stick It, Tuesday

Wow, another month has come and gone!  How the days are just jumbling together!  We had quite the mild winter here, proving that hell hasn't frozen over yet...

So, I thought I'd begin my stickies with this little gem:

I tweet, I facebook, I myspace, I togetherweserved, I chat, I IM, I text.  I need an online support group for my online addiction.  However, twitter sometimes just gets overwhelming!  Watching people "go after" other people is amazing to me. Someone will say something that offends someone and it's off to the races!  All of a sudden one is a dirtbag and "lucky I don't know where you live" then the other is retweeting the fuck outta the tweets...Gesu!  Someone actually tweeted, "I hope all my 'friends' here enjoyed watching me be torn down! Did you like the show?"  Ummm, ever hear of the 'block' feature?  Get over it...It's twitter, for Pete's sake.  But I will admit, one of my favorite tweets ever was this:  Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers and Facebook is where you lie to friends.  How true!

So, if you follow me on twitter, you know how much I enjoy my job.  Two of my employees are old enough to be my mother.  Their  job is the same, day in and day out.  Requests come in, we process and track the request.  The requests go to the same people each.and.every.time.  Unless it's an unusual request, they're the same every fucking day.  I  handle the complicated ones like construction and alterations  because they can get messy  quickly.  But those two?  They handle requests for two rooms. And fuck it up every.single.day.

I walk in to questions like this:

Janie, if you eat a lot of asparagus, will your urine smell like asparagus?

OR this:

Janie, I'm confused.  The Oscar's last night, was it a speech that won or a movie?  All they keep talking about is a speech...

Then we have this:

Janie, can you tell me why the font on my email changed?

And days like this:

(Why is there a retirement scheduled at 0100??)  The answer:  I couldn't find 1 p.m. on the calendar.  (Understand, electronic web-based calendar, with drop down 24 hour time...What, she couldn't see the 13 after 12?)

So, I enjoy coming in every day and working in close proximity to idiocy.  It keeps me entertained.  I have a male counterpart, my age, we sit across from each other, behind the other two in half-cubes.  We actually message each other.  If you could see the daily eye rolls, fake gun in mouth moments and silent laughing, you'd crack up.

Now, I'll just say one thing about my boss:

He loves to call me up, go through his entire mailbox with me over the phone, asking me  questions about emails he hasn't responded to...and they're not emails from me...*sigh*  At least I get paid...

So, enough of my whiny ass today.  Hope you got a chuckle.  Drop me an email if you want to follow me on twitter!

Thank you for being the lovely people you are.  Thanks for the emails I've received of late.  And, thank you Mac for being my sanity throughout the day and night.

Eh, could be worse...But I would LOVE to install a couple of these seats in my office...