Posted in complaint department, humor

Smelling Nice for Jesus

I touched a product at Bed, Bath and Beyond and now my hand smells like the lining of the coat of the old lady sitting in front of you at church. You know, she wants to smell nice for Jesus. I don’t know that he can smell her, or anything else for that matter. If my interpretation of the Bible is correct, Jesus is no longer in human form, and I’m pretty sure spirits don’t have the ability to smell a darned thing, so the drug store eau de toilette was wasted on the church crowd trying to desperately block their noses. Of course, Mom always said you should offer your suffering up to Jesus. I like to think that if Jesus was born and raised a human, even in spirit form, he’s got a lot of human in him. And as a human, he’s probably had it up to here with people offering their suffering up to him.

“Sweet Me, would you just cut it out? I mean seriously, ENOUGH. I don’t want it. I don’t need it. You people are crazy, and I am going to give you all shingles if you don’t cut the crap.”

In my world, shingles is a punishment from Jesus. That would explain why I’ve never had shingles and a lot of other people have. I have never made crazy demands of him for my team to win a major sporting event. Or for some chick at a public pool to show a little bit of boob. Or death to an in-law. I’m good people when it comes to bothering Jesus, and so I remain shingles free.

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Posted in complaint department, writing

Coming Clean

I need to get something off my chest. It’s been bothering me for decades now, and that’s not good. But I have decided coming clean will free me up to be guilty about other aspects of my life.

I have a degree in English. It’s actually an English Lit degree with a minor in writing, based on what I studied. Sounds impressive, huh? I wanted a degree in creative writing, but couldn’t afford any of the colleges that offered that degree. Specifically Emerson. Oh how I wanted to go to Emerson.

So I spent four years at a private Catholic college deep in the heart of Connecticut, studying prose and poetry. I have the paperwork that proves I did.

However, I know nothing about literature. I know what I like to read, but I don’t know why I like it. I don’t know anything. I can’t believe I faked my way through college like that. I couldn’t tell you why the Great Novels are great. I don’t even like most of Shakespeare. I suck at English Lit.

Because I have this degree and I feel like certain things are expected of me, especially when I write. That’s the part that throws me into a panic. I keep thinking that having this degree should make me a better writer, but I don’t think it does. I fear it doesn’t. I don’t even like to talk with people who are actually good at this stuff because it’s so intimidating to me. How did I get through four years of college learning to analyze literature and not like good literature? I don’t even have drugs to blame this on, as I am clean as a whistle. I mean, I’m betting the Pope has smoked more pot than I have (which is none).

So the funny thing about this is that I used to write a lot of poetry. I edited my college’s literary magazine my junior and senior years. And get this! I have actually had a poetry reading (with a professor of mine and a friend of his) in a real live bookstore in Hartford. My parents even drove down for that one, which was fun because it was an “alternative lifestyle” bookstore run by some ex-nuns. This was 1987 or so, and I think my parents were shell-shocked, but maybe not.

So even as I’m being asked to participate in a public reading of my poetry, I’m convinced it’s absolute shit, because I cannot tell if it is or not. I like what I’ve written, but I like a lot of things that aren’t good. I enjoy crappy romance novels like there is no tomorrow. I find slogging through most of Dickens a chore (I enjoy the movie versions, though). I have no idea if my poetry is any good, and I’m afraid to find out. One of the other poets had written stuff that sounded completely alien to me. Where his poems good? I have no freaking idea. I didn’t think so, but I think he’d had books published, and I was selling computers, so who was I to judge with my unjustly-earned lit degree?

15 years ago, I actually had my own e-zine called “Block Lines”. Remember those? I was so cool. I published poetry I liked (and some of my own, but other people’s poetry as well.) I don’t know if I was a good editor (I didn’t really edit, I just selected what to publish) but it seemed like a hip, happening way to get some of my work out there. I had a lot of fun with it until I got pregnant and exhausted and put it on hiatus. For 15 years.

Every year as my birthday gets closer, I get a burst of inspiration to write, and this year, for the first time in a decade, I’ve been writing poetry again. I’m not going to share it here because I’m still too terrified that it’s crap. Well, I’m not terrified that it’s crap, I’m terrified that YOU will find out it’s crap.

So that’s what I wanted to come clean about. I’m a possibly crappy writer who can’t use the skills her degree should have given her to validate one way or the other the quality of her writing. There. I’ll start to feel better any minute now.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go write a crappy poem about how this makes me feel.

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Posted in complaint department

Ho Ho Ho Hum

Dear Jody,

What the hell? You love Christmas. You love everything about it. You have a blood-lust for Christmas music. Your iPod currently has 800+ holiday songs on it. You love twinkly stuff, anything snowman-shaped, and literally ANYTHING that lights up. Christmas is all about that stuff. So what’s going on? Why are there no Department 56 Houses set up? Where is the Lego train that it took two people a million hours to assemble? Where are the damned decorations and the angel on the tree?

I’m going to give you 20 minutes to write another post that oozes holiday spirit. This funk you’re in? Cut it the hell out. You’re better than that. WAY better than that. The things you think are missing from your Christmas? You’re imagining all that. So get your head out of your ass and Christmas the hell out of your life!

Love,

Me

 

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Posted in complaint department

If I Start Having GMail Issues On My iPhone

I’m writing this as a note to myself. If I ever have that issue where my iphone says my password is bad on my gmail account, I should try going to this link where I can do a captcha thingy or something something.  Stupid.

https://www.google.com/accounts/UnlockCaptcha?

It doesn’t appear to have fixed the issue where the app I use to access Google Docs will let me view existing files. Stupid attempts to prevent me from ever finding true happiness.

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Posted in complaint department, parenting

The Never-Ending Battle Against Evil

There are many battles that are fought on an hourly or daily basis in my life. The battle to get out of bed in the morning. The battle to get my kid to do his homework. Or acknowledge that he even has homework, which is actually step zero to battling him to do his homework. Or the battle to stop leaving socks in the living room. Or to stop using the laundry basket to store clean clothes.

But the most stupid ongoing battle in my house? Put the jar of pasta sauce in the fridge after you are done with it. Look, that’s a $2.50 jar of sauce and we only used half of it, and if you don’t put the leftovers in the fridge our $4 dinner turns into a $5.50 dinner and I CAN’T HAVE THIS HAPPEN OVER AND OVER AGAIN LIKE SOME FREAKISH RAGU-BRANDED NIGHTMARE!

So, I’m not saying this post was triggered by anything in particular, but there is an open jar of sauce on the counter and I think you know what that means. War.

Quick, someone send me a disguise kit, some C-5 (C-4 isn’t enough for this task) and a bag of that margarita mix that you just put in the freezer and then a couple of hours later you totally have a bag full of frozen happiness. I have to go battle some evil.

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