Harnessing the healing power of snark
Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
The other day I walked into our bathroom to find what I thought was my towel carelessly flung on the floor, while my husband’s towel was hanging neatly on its hook.
Me: “Why is my towel on the floor?”
My husband: “That’s not your towel, it’s my towel.”
Me: “Oh. Then why did you throw your towel on the floor and take my towel?”
My husband: “I didn’t take your towel-I upgraded it.”
Yesterday I came to the blinding realization that the ENTIRE WORLD was engaged in an evil conspiracy against me. I’d been feeling badly for a week. I couldn’t eat or sleep. I couldn’t get on the Internet, and the phone didn’t work. Clearly the fact that I had to wake up every morning, open my eyes, breathe in and out, feel air on my skin and be conscious was an exceptionally cruel and unusual punishment, and was not to be borne any longer.
So I decided to do what any normal person would do when faced with the fact that their daily existence has become excruciatingly unbearable: I decided to throw a temper tantrum.
Sadly though, I soon discovered that my temper tantrum skills had seriously declined over the years, due to my having bought into the whole “story” of needing to become a rational, logical, self-controlled adult. What was I thinking? Because when the time came and I really needed to be able to throw a really satisfying fit, it was not pretty. [Read more…] about The Wussiest Temper Tantrum Ever
After officially having a migraine for one week and one day, I finally stepped out of my denial today and admitted that it wasn’t going to go away on its own. So I called the doctor and was able to see both my chiropractor and my massage therapist today.
As I was lying on the table being worked on, my massage therapist said, “I’ve never felt a [some muscle in my neck] this tight before.”
“Well,” I replied, “I always like to excel.”
This weekend my husband and I decided that we were going to tackle some projects that we have been putting off for a very very long time. First on the list: to finally move the 2 piles of horse manure that have been sitting on our front lawn for the past year.
How did we come to have 2 piles of horse manure sitting on our front lawn for an entire year, you ask? That is an excellent question, especially since I am not entirely sure how this happened myself.
I think what happened is this: Last spring some new neighbors moved into the house across the street from us. Somehow in the course of making their acquaintance they happened to mention that, for reasons not relevant to this story, they would from time to time be receiving deliveries of horse manure fresh from the stables down the road, and would we like some too?
I, whose hospitality extends pretty far but does in fact stop short of poo, was ready to politely decline. But my husband, either caught up in the spirit of welcoming our new neighbors, or perhaps tapping into private knowledge of some future time when we would indeed need our own supply of fresh manure, said yes.
So we received our delivery, and there the piles sat for an entire year. Until today when, perhaps prompted by the same mysterious urge that made him request the poo in the first place, my husband announced that it was time to for us to actually use the manure to fertilize our yard.
He asked me if I would help and I said yes. But because 1) I was working with poo, and 2) I was working on the part of the lawn where the imaginary snakes live I was working very cautiously. This meant that the work proceeded only slightly faster than it would have were it being performed by a lawn crew composed entirely of tortoises who had only recently been dug out of the glacier where they had been frozen for the past 40,000 years.
It also meant that our work was frequently interrupted by conversations like this:
Me: EEEW! NASTY!
My husband: What?
Me: Something dead. For real this time. It’s furry.
Me: (backing away so as to give my husband a WIDE berth for dealing with the furry dead thing in the pine straw.)
My husband: (rustling around.)
My husband: You mean this tree branch? (Holding up something that is clearly The Opposite of ‘furry’.)
So, if we take the two piles of poo, and divide them by two people working with three rakes and one wheelbarrow, and subtract all the times I get distracted by the cats playing in the front window, and also subtract all the times I mistake totally innocuous yard debris for threatening wildlife, it will only take us approximately 50 katrillion more trips around the yard until all of the poo finds a home.
Like a well-oiled machine, no?
Just recently I applied for, and received, my very first business license. And all of a sudden, just like in 5th grade when I got a brand new package of stickers, people are falling all over themselves to be my new best friend.
At first I was a little concerned that my county might have sold my name and contact information to all of these service providers, and that our community’s financial success might possibly depend on the number of accountants, IT consultants, and merchant account providers that I personally could hire.
But my husband said that most likely it’s just that I’ve now become part of the public record (no more lurking, I guess), and that that is why I am suddenly attracting all of this new attention.
Now, I am all for people growing their businesses. So I’m not really minding the deluge of snail mail and phone calls. Especially when I receive an offer that is so aligned, so clearly focused, so crisply in tune with the heartbeat of what I am offering to my clients (Spanish tutoring for high school students) as this one:
“Let us help you with your embroidery or silk screening needs! Shirts, caps, bags, etc today!. Call us first!”
Are we a perfect match or what?
lem·ming n.: Any of various small, thickset rodents, especially of the genus Lemmus, inhabiting northern regions and known for periodic mass migrations that sometimes end in drowning.
If every single person in your office is wearing the exact same blue dress shirt and red power tie (as was the entire table of 6 businessmen seated next to me at lunch the other day), then I’m wondering just who is left to be impressed that you’ve dressed for success?
Knowing that when your husband is nearing the end of the game, “God of War”, and is snarling out phrases like, “What is the point of this?”, and “This is absolutely ridiculous!”, and, “This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen!!” to you, an avowed non-gamer, as he is trying to climb up the Rotating Pole Of Spiked Death, that he is not the only one facing a trap in that moment.
When my brother and I were growing up there was a joke in our family that in our house the “F Word” was not the actual “F Word”, but instead was the word “flexible.” As in, “You need to be flexible.”
This is actually really good advice, and it is the reason that now I am able to get along with just about anyone I meet. But at the time my brother and I reacted to this parental guidance as if we were being asked to swallow broken shards of jagged glass, washed down with a chaser of smoking sulfuric acid. (Incidentally, this is exactly the same reaction my mom would get whenever she said, “I think somebody needs an ‘n-a-p’.” “I do NOT need a nap, and I am NOT CRANKY!” we would roar, as flames erupted from our skulls and incinerated half of the kitchen.)
So I have to admit that a small part of me was secretly pleased when she called me the other day and said, “Well, they’re telling me that I’m going to have to be really flexible at work these days.” This is not a new thing for her, as this is the same company that sent out a profile of its ideal employee as one who was “not fearful of acting with a minimum of planning,” and who, “makes tough decisions in a timely manner, sometimes with incomplete information,” among other things. (This is also the same company who causes her to frequently remark on how she now finds herself living inside of a Dilbert cartoon.) [Read more…] about The “F” Word, or The Karma’s Gonna Getcha
The other day my mom called to tell me that she met a guy at her office who graduated from Wake Forest the same year I did. She said she asked him some questions about himself to see if he and I had ever “crossed paths” while we were in school together, and when she told me that he was a math major I just laughed hysterically because I knew that the answer to that question was a resounding “no”.
Ever since I was 12 years old math has been the bane of my existence. And I’m not exactly sure why that is. All I know is that up until that point I did just fine in math, with no kind of math inferiority complex whatsoever. Then my family moved to another state, and somehow in that move I lost my ability to do math.
It’s just so weird. I mean, it’s not like the time I had to take 4 migraine pills in one 24-hour period and subsequently lost the ability to put on my own pajama pants without my husband’s assistance. In that situation I could clearly pinpoint the exact cause of that loss of ability. [Read more…] about I Can Think Of No Funny Titles For This Post About Math
