When I ran away to Johnson City, Tennessee (I make a habit of running away every so often-- it spices life up a bit for everyone involved) for the summer of 2009 Justin assured me that there were no tornadoes... there were also no tsunamis (that I kind of figured out on my own), no hurricanes, no scary bullshit-- just rain. And so, being raised in a coastal dessert which gets two inches per year in a good year and is consistently suffering from droughts, I was like "Oh! I love rain!" so I went there, sight unseen.... and when we pulled up to his house for the first time (our journey there was insane and is another story for another day) I realised that it was a trailer.
Let me preface this by saying that I have seen and been in some very nice trailer homes. My second cousin lives in a trailer here in California that rivals many very nice homes in the more prominent parts of town. I mean, her kitchen is so cute! And the whole thing is quite spacious. So I have no prejudice against trailers but it was... not what I was expecting. I mean, it was a nice trailer and it was big enough to live comfortably... I just wasn't, you know, expecting that by 'house' he meant 'trailer with steps'. Maybe, because it wasn't exactly in a trailer park and since there were some run down little town houses at the beginning of the lane, he thought that all of the houses were not-trailers. I dunno. But this was where I was going to be spending the next few months and I was pretty sure that this was just the beginning of a very interesting summer. But yeah... back to me and Justin:
"You, uh, live in a trailer?"
"It's not a trailer."
"Justin, it is clearly a trailer."
"If it's a trailer then where are its wheels?"
"No, not THAT kind of trailer. See that slab of cement?"
"Yup. Always been there."
"See, what they do is they prefabricate homes-- homes that are loaded up onto the back of a truck on a TRAILER-- and then they plop the home on top of this concrete slab. It is, clearly, a trailer home."
"No, they didn't do that. It isn't one of those. It has central air and heating and-- look, Amy, it's not a trailer."
"It's a fucking trailer! You brought me to live in a trailer!"
*Weeks pass and rain happens-- every damn day*
*I call Justin, who is working in the factory and can rarely answer his phone but this time he is on break and can*
"Hey Amy, is everything okay? You called me--", he looks at his phone, "Twenty-four times and I was--"
"NO! Oh my GAWD! I am SO not 'okay'!The trees are going to fly out of the ground and the rain is going SIDEWAYS and the radio--"
"I don't have a radio. Calm down, honey. It's fine."
"You DO have a radio. I found it in a pile of crap in your closet."
"Huh. Find anything else good?"
"There's a tornado in [somethingsomething] County! WHERE THE FUCK IS THAT?! HOW CLOSE IS THAT? You said no tornadoes!! What is this? OH GOD THERE'S LIGHTNING!!!"
*Justin is stifling his laughter*
"It's okay, Amy. Just sit in the house and it'll pass."
"You mean sit in the TRAILER and wait?!"
".... it's not a trailer."
"Concrete slab. Thin walls. What the hell is this siding made out of? Plastic? Yes. Yes it is. Trailer!"
"Not a trailer. Listen, just lay down and enjoy the sound. I love the sound of rain. It's really relaxing."
"It sounds like someone LET HELL OUT OF A CAN!!! AND I'M IN. A. MOTHER. FUCKING. PREFAB! A TRAILER!"
"Okay so, maybe you should take some of those pills the doctor gave you..?"
*sigh* "Fine... but I'm going to go hide in Kroeger... THEIR place is made of bricks and whatever."
"If that makes you feel better."
"It does not. Come home and banish the rain!"
"I like the rain."
"You are obviously NOWHERE near a window right now."
"Nope. Inside the plant."
"Seriously, it looks like Hurricane Jesuschristwearesofucked out front."
"Uh huh... Okay, so did you take the pills?"
"Yes."
"Wait ten minutes. You'll feel better. If not then call me back."
"Okaaaaaaaaaaaaay. Uuuuuuuuuuuugh."
"Good girl."
"It's still a trailer."
".... I'm not even going to touch that."
"You best not."
"Gotta go, Amy. Love you."
"Love you too. I'll attempt to stay alive while you're at work."
"Good. That's a great idea. See ya."
"Bye bye..."
I ended up grabbing a book and driving over to the factory where he worked and waited outside. I figured that, if someone decided to open the second layer of Hell then at least I could crash the car through the fence and spend my last few breaths with the man I loved. In my distorted mind, that was a terrific idea glad I thought of it!
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Friday, March 7, 2014
How To Get Rid Of A Skunk Using Only Three Simple Household Items
You will need:
Repeat as necessary!
- A chair
- A hose
- A bottle of courage
- Or just some regular courage. Really, just like, whatever.
- Find a place just far enough away from the skunk that it cannot spray you
- You might stand on top of the chair to get out of the way
- Or you could use the chair to stand up high enough to look over your fence at the skunk on the other side
- Don't get too close to the skunk or it will totally spray you and your life will suck for a few weeks
- Make sure to remove all obstacles that might impede you from a hasty escape such as dogs, children, boxes, doors (open them, don't take them off their hinges and put them in your closet-- you will need the door on there so that you can slam it quickly), didgeridoos, piles of books, a slippery bar of soap, etc..
- Remember those obstacles you removed? Do not underestimate the power of distraction. Children make terrible distractions as they tend to be just as afraid as you are but dogs, especially little ones, are fearless and can be tossed in the way of the skunk.
- Rocks. I probably should have mentioned that in the "Things You Need" section but it's here now and that's that.
- Neighborhood cooperation. You ALL will benefit from the extraction and banishment of the skunk so don't hesitate to call on your neighbors for help. You might ask one of them to bang pots and pans while another throws their dogs at it and another throws rocks. The skunk will be outnumbered!
- Now that everything is in place, go for the hose!
- Make sure that the hose is set on "jet" or that you know how to do that thing where you put your thumb in the way of the stream of water and it makes it spray out like a an angry fan.
- Stand on the chair or in the safe place that you have decided upon.
- Spray the skunk IN THE FACE!
- Keep spraying.
- Seriously, spray more.
- Why isn't it leaving?
- Oh god... is it trying to spray ME?
- Aw Hell naw!
- The skunk's spray hole is aimed right at you. Take this as an advantage and spray right into it's spray hole, effectively making the skunk spray itself.
- Go away, skunk! GAWD!
- Okay, it's running away now. It's completely drenched.
- Tell all of your neighbors to keep a look out for any skunk who is NOT drenched so that you can perform your act of heroism once again.
- Hahahahahahaha! Ooooh man. Youre killin' me here! Hahahaha!
- Hah!
- No really... oh wow... hahaha... Oh man... you really had me going there... banishing a skunk... Who even KNOWS how to do that?
- Seriously, if you know a guy, I would love his number.
- DO you know a guy?!
- Aw come on... don't leave a girl hangin' like that!
- Well, if you are NOT Batman and, therefore, do NOT know how to actually keep a skunk from living under your house without actually killing it then you will have to tell the neighbor whose house it is currently living under that it has made a swift and soggy retreat back underneath their stairs.
- You can also set traps for skunks but good luck with THAT haha
- Please document all trapping attempts involving skunks on video. Please send them to me as quickly as possible for, uh, science... scientific study! Yes. That. It is very important. Do it. The human race depends on you.
Repeat as necessary!
Monday, March 3, 2014
Fairy Tale Weddings Suck Balls
This is completely true. Weddings are about the COUPLE and not the people who are invited to share in the couple's special day. I was so stressed thinking about Justin and I getting married someday and so was he. So we have decided just... NO. Seriously. No. You know why? Because of people EXPECT you to do certain things.... That right there is EXACTLY why we don't want to get married.
I had so many shit problems the first time that I got married that I nearly passed out on the day of from exhaustion over stupid shit like this: people got bitchy about not being invited to OUR ceremony (we had to choose between NOBODY and EVERYBODY and guess which one was cheaper and less stressful?); We, of course, also had to choose where to have the post nuptials party and, even though I was friends with the son of the man who owned a very fancy restaurant, it was still a huge pain in the ass to get a head count, get the menu picked out, set up the seating arrangements, and blah blah blah; Then there was the dress-- I looked everywhere for a dress and when I found the one that everyone except me liked I cried because I didn't want to wear it but everyone else thought that I should so I did and was miserable thinking about the dress I REALLY wanted. That sucked really hard. Then there were those goddamn high heels-- everyone expects you in high heels at your wedding-- fuck "high heels". I got such an awful headache wearing those things because the preacher took almost two hours to do our wedding (he was a whack-job fundy and was all like "I have to channel God while I talk so shhhhhh") and then everyone expected me to be in them at the reception. I have Scoliosis and high heels are the Devil so I took those bitches off and nearly threw them in the bay (our reception was held beside the beautiful San Diego Bay: home of a lot of boats owned by celebrities and grey whales who swim too close to the shipping lanes and get trapped and have to be rescued by Sea World (you know they love that shit)). Ugh. And the reception was the worst because do you know what I did in my newly wedded bliss? I stood in newly wedded misery as I greeted everyone, sat down for about six minutes to eat something, got some photos taken, and then had to tell everyone goodbye. Oh and the WORST was in the middle of all of that. The speeches. Yuck. The mother of the groom stood up and told everyone how we were meant for each other because, when my now ex-husband was four and a half years old (he was, to the day, four and a half years older than me) she was "moved" to pray to God for her son's future wife. Everyone was all "Awwww" and I, totally jaded by my nearly 911-worthy headache was all "Bleeech. Sappy! GET OFF THE STAGE!". But I said that in my head because I really liked my mum-in-law and didn't want to ruin her insane diatribe. Then the Best Man, who I found out later was the one everyone thought I was marrying which was odd because he was in love with me at the time as well and I did not know it. I mean, I would never have married him-- he was a creep-- but he was FAR less of a creep than my ex and he would have made a great ex-husband for the Alimony alone! MY ex didn't make shit for money so I couldn't push him for anything. But this kid was on the path to being nicely well-off and he could have paid my way through life. Plus he was a fair bit more handsome than my husband. Looking back at him I realised that I only called him "handsome" because it was some kind of requirement. Otherwise I would have called him "Quasimodo". Oh man, and when I saw his baby pictures.. he was the UGLIEST baby! Whoever pulled him out of his mum really went to town with those forceps because the shape of his skull was rivalled only by Tutankhamen's weird looking stretched out head. Go look at pictures of King Tut. Do it. That is my ex-husband. Better yet, look at pictures of Tut's father Akhanatten... that guy was a freak of nature. He is even more of a good match for my ex because he had this wild chin that jutted out like an unnecessary ledge that I yearned to jump off of for the entirety of my marriage and a realistic pot belly.
I totally went off track.
The POINT IS that the wedding is for the COUPLE and not for YOU, the OBSERVER. You aren't paying for SHIT. You aren't the one getting sacked with someone else for the rest of your life. YOU DON'T DICTATE HOW WE GET MARRIED BECAUSE **YOU** ARE NOT THE ONE GETTING MARRIED. If you want us to have a fairy tale wedding then go ahead and pay for it, plan it, and find someone to marry YOURSELF and leave us out of it. It is expectations like these that keep people like Justin and I from ever wanting to tie the knot... "So and so has to be there and then if we leave out so and so then they are going to be mad and if we don't move the whole wedding up to this place then so and so can't come because they have too many kids and can't travel and we have to invite this person who lives in Australia and help them with airfare and lodging and we have to do this and that and so and so is allergic to wheat so we have to have a gluten free menu..." NO! Just NO! Stop! STOP! We are running away to Vegas and I'm going to wear my tank top that says "I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there. -- Oscar Wilde" and Justin will wear jeans with holes in them and his cowboy hat and probably a nice looking shirt but it won't matter at the Elvis Chapel Drive Thru because we will each just be leaning over each other to say our vows into a box like we're ordering chicken strips from Jack In The Box. And, just to be extra classy, I will wear ALL of my ear piercings and I will wear that train conductors hat that I bought at Hobby Town (props! I love you guys! I am SO buying slot cars next time I'm there! TRY and stop me! Haha!). Maybe I will even wear jeans that do NOT have rips in them... as much as I love that style... Nah... I'm gonna go ahead with the rips. And do you fuckers who have expectations know who I'm going to listen to when I pick out my wedding wardrobe? Me. I'm going to listen to ME! Secondarily, I am going to listen to my man. He has a say in how cute and/or beautiful his bride is going to be. More than likely, knowing him, he will just be all like "I like a T-shirt and jeans" and I will be all like "As you wish!" and that is as fairy-fucking-tale as our wedding will get. Then we will drive off into the sunrise (because Elvis Chapels are open 24 hours and we will probably have been up all night fornicating just in case the world was about to end or something... shit sabotages weddings, y'know? You can't be too paranoid. I just watched this movie where Vegas got sucked into a sink hole. Yeah. YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE, MUTHA FUCKA! Maybe I will have a "Keep Calm and Marry On" shirt made to savour the occasion. Man... I am just FULL of awesome wedding ideas! Maybe I should start a blog about wedding planning! Dude... I could totally do it. I could pick out the clothes and the venues and have advice on how to both politely AND impolitely tell people to sod off and go get their own wedding, thank you very much. This is OUR special day and we are gonna rock it like a hurricane.
So if anyone wants Justin and I to get married, you need to play the reverse psychology game with us:
You: "You know who should get married?"
Us: "Who?"
You: "Psh... not you guys. You're way better than weddings. Weddings are for geeks and dweebs."
Us: "What's wrong with geeks and dweebs?!"
You: "Well you aren't either of those. You guys are way too un-geeky to get married"
Us: "Wait... what? We met on World of Warcraft! We partied together online to get shit DONE! We even had dates online in different pretty places in WoW! You canNOT call us "un-geeky"!"
You: "That's in the past. You're not geeky now. Nope. Everyone should shut up about you guys getting married because you're way too cool for that kind of geekdom."
Us: "Uncool, man. Uncool."
You: "What? I said that you were COOL! I said that you were NOT geeks! What's the deal?"
Us: "We are so geeky that we are going to fucking go off right now and get married. And you get to come because you have to see just how fucking GEEKY we are! Put on some damn shoes and lets DO THIS THANG!"
Us: /gets married
You: "Ha! Tools"
Us: "Shaddup. We are happily married and everything has changed for us. We share a bank account and a retirement fund and we get to decide when the plug gets pulled if one of us is ever in a coma. Top THAT!"
You: "Yep. You win. I was wrong-- you are the geekiest of the geeks of geekdom."
Us: "And we deserve that title like nobody's business. Heeeelllllll Yea-yuh!"
You: "I win."
Us: "Huh?"
You: "I got you to get married! Hahhaha! That was my master plan all along!"
Us: "...." "I saw that coming." "No you didn't!" "Did so!" "nuh uh." "Way." "No way." "Yes way." "This is the worst honeymoon ever" "We aren't on our honeymoon yet." "Let's go buy a PS4 and go home. That will be our honeymoon."
You: "GEEKS!"
Us: "FUCK YEAH WE ARE! We are an impenetrable fortress of Geek. You cannot stop a legally united force of nature like us!"
You: "Yeaaaaahhhh.... you're probably right... Welp, it was good to see you two finally tie the knot without any actual stress about who cared except yourselves. Good work, Geeks."
Us: "/sigh"
And the lived like normal geeky human beings ever after. And some people mailed them gift cards to Target so that they could buy entirely too many throw pillows and a bean bag chair.
Well THAT was a long post. Hah!
--Soulvei
I had so many shit problems the first time that I got married that I nearly passed out on the day of from exhaustion over stupid shit like this: people got bitchy about not being invited to OUR ceremony (we had to choose between NOBODY and EVERYBODY and guess which one was cheaper and less stressful?); We, of course, also had to choose where to have the post nuptials party and, even though I was friends with the son of the man who owned a very fancy restaurant, it was still a huge pain in the ass to get a head count, get the menu picked out, set up the seating arrangements, and blah blah blah; Then there was the dress-- I looked everywhere for a dress and when I found the one that everyone except me liked I cried because I didn't want to wear it but everyone else thought that I should so I did and was miserable thinking about the dress I REALLY wanted. That sucked really hard. Then there were those goddamn high heels-- everyone expects you in high heels at your wedding-- fuck "high heels". I got such an awful headache wearing those things because the preacher took almost two hours to do our wedding (he was a whack-job fundy and was all like "I have to channel God while I talk so shhhhhh") and then everyone expected me to be in them at the reception. I have Scoliosis and high heels are the Devil so I took those bitches off and nearly threw them in the bay (our reception was held beside the beautiful San Diego Bay: home of a lot of boats owned by celebrities and grey whales who swim too close to the shipping lanes and get trapped and have to be rescued by Sea World (you know they love that shit)). Ugh. And the reception was the worst because do you know what I did in my newly wedded bliss? I stood in newly wedded misery as I greeted everyone, sat down for about six minutes to eat something, got some photos taken, and then had to tell everyone goodbye. Oh and the WORST was in the middle of all of that. The speeches. Yuck. The mother of the groom stood up and told everyone how we were meant for each other because, when my now ex-husband was four and a half years old (he was, to the day, four and a half years older than me) she was "moved" to pray to God for her son's future wife. Everyone was all "Awwww" and I, totally jaded by my nearly 911-worthy headache was all "Bleeech. Sappy! GET OFF THE STAGE!". But I said that in my head because I really liked my mum-in-law and didn't want to ruin her insane diatribe. Then the Best Man, who I found out later was the one everyone thought I was marrying which was odd because he was in love with me at the time as well and I did not know it. I mean, I would never have married him-- he was a creep-- but he was FAR less of a creep than my ex and he would have made a great ex-husband for the Alimony alone! MY ex didn't make shit for money so I couldn't push him for anything. But this kid was on the path to being nicely well-off and he could have paid my way through life. Plus he was a fair bit more handsome than my husband. Looking back at him I realised that I only called him "handsome" because it was some kind of requirement. Otherwise I would have called him "Quasimodo". Oh man, and when I saw his baby pictures.. he was the UGLIEST baby! Whoever pulled him out of his mum really went to town with those forceps because the shape of his skull was rivalled only by Tutankhamen's weird looking stretched out head. Go look at pictures of King Tut. Do it. That is my ex-husband. Better yet, look at pictures of Tut's father Akhanatten... that guy was a freak of nature. He is even more of a good match for my ex because he had this wild chin that jutted out like an unnecessary ledge that I yearned to jump off of for the entirety of my marriage and a realistic pot belly.
I totally went off track.
The POINT IS that the wedding is for the COUPLE and not for YOU, the OBSERVER. You aren't paying for SHIT. You aren't the one getting sacked with someone else for the rest of your life. YOU DON'T DICTATE HOW WE GET MARRIED BECAUSE **YOU** ARE NOT THE ONE GETTING MARRIED. If you want us to have a fairy tale wedding then go ahead and pay for it, plan it, and find someone to marry YOURSELF and leave us out of it. It is expectations like these that keep people like Justin and I from ever wanting to tie the knot... "So and so has to be there and then if we leave out so and so then they are going to be mad and if we don't move the whole wedding up to this place then so and so can't come because they have too many kids and can't travel and we have to invite this person who lives in Australia and help them with airfare and lodging and we have to do this and that and so and so is allergic to wheat so we have to have a gluten free menu..." NO! Just NO! Stop! STOP! We are running away to Vegas and I'm going to wear my tank top that says "I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there. -- Oscar Wilde" and Justin will wear jeans with holes in them and his cowboy hat and probably a nice looking shirt but it won't matter at the Elvis Chapel Drive Thru because we will each just be leaning over each other to say our vows into a box like we're ordering chicken strips from Jack In The Box. And, just to be extra classy, I will wear ALL of my ear piercings and I will wear that train conductors hat that I bought at Hobby Town (props! I love you guys! I am SO buying slot cars next time I'm there! TRY and stop me! Haha!). Maybe I will even wear jeans that do NOT have rips in them... as much as I love that style... Nah... I'm gonna go ahead with the rips. And do you fuckers who have expectations know who I'm going to listen to when I pick out my wedding wardrobe? Me. I'm going to listen to ME! Secondarily, I am going to listen to my man. He has a say in how cute and/or beautiful his bride is going to be. More than likely, knowing him, he will just be all like "I like a T-shirt and jeans" and I will be all like "As you wish!" and that is as fairy-fucking-tale as our wedding will get. Then we will drive off into the sunrise (because Elvis Chapels are open 24 hours and we will probably have been up all night fornicating just in case the world was about to end or something... shit sabotages weddings, y'know? You can't be too paranoid. I just watched this movie where Vegas got sucked into a sink hole. Yeah. YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE, MUTHA FUCKA! Maybe I will have a "Keep Calm and Marry On" shirt made to savour the occasion. Man... I am just FULL of awesome wedding ideas! Maybe I should start a blog about wedding planning! Dude... I could totally do it. I could pick out the clothes and the venues and have advice on how to both politely AND impolitely tell people to sod off and go get their own wedding, thank you very much. This is OUR special day and we are gonna rock it like a hurricane.
So if anyone wants Justin and I to get married, you need to play the reverse psychology game with us:
You: "You know who should get married?"
Us: "Who?"
You: "Psh... not you guys. You're way better than weddings. Weddings are for geeks and dweebs."
Us: "What's wrong with geeks and dweebs?!"
You: "Well you aren't either of those. You guys are way too un-geeky to get married"
Us: "Wait... what? We met on World of Warcraft! We partied together online to get shit DONE! We even had dates online in different pretty places in WoW! You canNOT call us "un-geeky"!"
You: "That's in the past. You're not geeky now. Nope. Everyone should shut up about you guys getting married because you're way too cool for that kind of geekdom."
Us: "Uncool, man. Uncool."
You: "What? I said that you were COOL! I said that you were NOT geeks! What's the deal?"
Us: "We are so geeky that we are going to fucking go off right now and get married. And you get to come because you have to see just how fucking GEEKY we are! Put on some damn shoes and lets DO THIS THANG!"
Us: /gets married
You: "Ha! Tools"
Us: "Shaddup. We are happily married and everything has changed for us. We share a bank account and a retirement fund and we get to decide when the plug gets pulled if one of us is ever in a coma. Top THAT!"
You: "Yep. You win. I was wrong-- you are the geekiest of the geeks of geekdom."
Us: "And we deserve that title like nobody's business. Heeeelllllll Yea-yuh!"
You: "I win."
Us: "Huh?"
You: "I got you to get married! Hahhaha! That was my master plan all along!"
Us: "...." "I saw that coming." "No you didn't!" "Did so!" "nuh uh." "Way." "No way." "Yes way." "This is the worst honeymoon ever" "We aren't on our honeymoon yet." "Let's go buy a PS4 and go home. That will be our honeymoon."
You: "GEEKS!"
Us: "FUCK YEAH WE ARE! We are an impenetrable fortress of Geek. You cannot stop a legally united force of nature like us!"
You: "Yeaaaaahhhh.... you're probably right... Welp, it was good to see you two finally tie the knot without any actual stress about who cared except yourselves. Good work, Geeks."
Us: "/sigh"
And the lived like normal geeky human beings ever after. And some people mailed them gift cards to Target so that they could buy entirely too many throw pillows and a bean bag chair.
Well THAT was a long post. Hah!
--Soulvei
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