Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

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Not So Much Funny As Cool

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

As I believe I’ve mentioned before, my husband and I live outside of Atlanta, in one of the many suburbs here in Northern Georgia. We do see a lot of wildlife here, but it is all pretty much what I consider to be Regular Wildlife. Things like dogs, cats, birds, squirrels (the bane of my cat, Tigger’s, existence), lizards, rats, and snakes. Anything else I classify as Exotic (what can I say? I’m a city girl.)

Once when he was mowing the lawn my husband found a turtle and called me outside to come and see it. I was fascinated with the turtle, and stared at it for a very long time, much like an infant who has just discovered that, “Wow! Not only do I have a foot, but I can put the entire thing in my mouth whenever I want to!” I insisted on taking pictures of it before we released it into the wild (AKA-the other side of our backyard fence), and I often wonder what happened to it and where it went after it left us.

However we do live next door to a great couple with a fabulous backyard garden. I refer to it as “The Corn”, because to me it is exactly like the magical cornfield in the movie, “Field of Dreams”: you never know just what might come walking out of there.

When we first moved into our house 7 years ago, before they built the neighborhood behind us, it was not uncommon to see the occasional deer amble by my window. And (and this is my favorite), there are rabbits that live back there. One of my favorite moments each year is the first time I see the bunnies again in spring. Unfortunately for my husband, this year’s moment occurred while we were talking on the phone. “BUNNIES!” I announced, causing him to temporarily lose all hearing so that the rest of our conversation had to be conducted via smoke signals.

I love the rabbits, especially when they come over to our backyard for a visit. So much so that all last summer I did nothing but watch as they devoured Every. Single. Hosta in our backyard. My attitude was not so much irritation as fascination: “Can they really fit an entire hosta leaf in their mouth all at once?” (Important Side Note: Yes, they can!)

So yesterday I was once again sitting in my office talking on the phone, when I saw something out the window that caused me to utter a very loud expletive. One that would have been appropriate if, say, masked intruders had suddenly entered my home and forced me, at gunpoint, to work on a math problem. Because all of a sudden, from out of The Corn there appeared…A Fox. A FOX! Right here in my suburban neighborhood!

It was so cool, and when I told my friend on the phone she thought it was cool too. But she lives in Colorado, and in my mind I imagine that (being part of The West) as a place where you can routinely find foxes ambling down the street, along with tumbleweed, coyotes, and men in chaps with big gold “Sheriff” stars pinned to their leather vests.

And the best part? She said that, to her knowledge, they are not carnivores. But they might eat rodents. And possibly even the occasional snake.

So there you have it. Our own little circle of life.

It’s Taken 10 Years Of Marriage To Work Out A System This Effective

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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?

I Don’t Drink, But If I Started, This Would Be Why: Part 2

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The bug guy was here again today, to do our quarterly pest control as well as rodent maintenance.

As he was leaving he said, “Yeah, it’s a good thing we got the rat situation under control when we did because, you know what rats attract in the summer?”

He was laughing as he said this. My mind had totally stopped functioning, unable to imagine a new, potential creature-related horror.

Did I mention that he was laughing as he said, “I just love scaring you. In the summer, rats attract SNAKES.” [Read more…] about I Don’t Drink, But If I Started, This Would Be Why: Part 2

If I Wanted To Feel This Bad About Myself, I Would Have Tried On A Bathing Suit

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Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

So, I have been having some issues with my fax machine lately. Issues that yesterday caused me to walk through my house all day long yelling about just how much I hate it, and how desperately I yearn for it to undergo a painful, explosive death.

I am the first to admit that I have absolutely NO patience when it comes to things like this. I go from ZERO to ENRAGED in less than a nanosecond. That is why my husband is in charge of All Inanimate Objects Containing Moving Or Electrical Parts.

But today I decided I would TRY and act like a responsible, mature adult, and so I called the “alleged” help line for my fax machine’s manufacturer.

Now, I will admit that I do have pretty high standards when it comes to customer service. And that is due to the fact that I, personally, have experienced outstanding customer service many times. So I know that it does actually exist.

For example, take the people who sold us our car.

My husband and I own an Audi, and a couple of years ago it was in the shop for service. Happily, our dealer provided us with a rental car to use in the meantime. We went to see a movie, and when we got back to the parking lot after the movie was over we discovered that we were unable to unlock the rental car. We called our dealer, and within a very short time someone drove out to the movie theater, popped open the trunk, GOT IN THE TRUNK, CLIMBED THROUGH THE ENTIRE CAR, and unlocked it for us from the inside. And they were GENUINELY HAPPY to do that for us. This is just one of the many reasons why we love Audi.

Or take our pest control company, Breda. It doesn’t matter how many times I call them, or what I ask them to do; they too are always happy to help me. I could call them up and say, “Um, there is a black cloud of death located directly over our house, and it’s raining down fiery, flaming scorpions on top of us, and they’re falling into a black pit of writhing, poisonous snakes, which is being whipped around by the hurricane-force winds of killer bees that is blowing in from the west,” and they would say, “OK, we can have your guy there tomorrow morning at 8 am.” And that is why we also love Breda.

I have also experienced extremely poor customer service, which unfortunately was what was constantly displayed by Our Former Internet Service Provider. Our high-speed Internet connection was giving us A Lot of problems, and eventually was “off” more than it was ever “on”. It got to the point where it would start cutting off in anticipation of any kind of inclement weather. So we’d wake up in the morning, see that, “Oh, the Internet connection’s out again,” and know that it was probably going to rain that day somewhere in the state of Georgia. So as a weather forecasting system it worked great, but as an Internet connection it totally sucked.

I called their so-called “help” line quite a bit back in those days, but all they ever told me to do was this: “Go get a paper clip, straighten it out, and poke it in the tiny hole on the back of your modem.”

So here’s what a hypothetical conversation with them would’ve looked like:

Hypothetical Me: “Um, there are flames shooting out of the top of my computer, and the screen has opened up and disgorged all of the fiery demons of hell, and there is a deep, cackling maniacal voice coming out of my speakers, and the demons are snatching up my cats and tossing them into the air to use as props in their satanical juggling routine. HELP!”

Hypothetical ISP: (in a heavy Indian accent) “OK. Do you have a paper clip?”

But, back to today.  So I called the fax machine’s “help” line and did get connected to an actual human being, but I knew I was in trouble the minute I heard her speak. Because she was talking to me in the tone of voice that said, “Whatever is wrong is your fault, because you are a total %$$@&*(^% idiot, and now I have to deal with you.” Now, there have been PLENTY of times in my life when I have, in fact, been a total &^%$#&*( &^% idiot, but to just ASSUME that I am one because I needed to call your help line is kind of a big jump in my mind. Whatever happened to “innocent until proven guilty”?

But I really need to send some faxes today so I continued the conversation, willing for her to dislike me if she could just tell me how to get my machine to work. But, no, that was not in the cards for me today. Because no matter what I said to her, all she ever said back to me was, “Hm, that could be a problem.” Every answer I gave her was wrong. It was like being hit on the head repeatedly with the hammer of, “This Is How Much You Suck!”

I could’ve had this conversation with her, and the answer would have been just the same.

Hypothetical Me: “Hi, I’m calling about my Sharp fax machine. I’m calling from Sharp headquarters. I invented every single Sharp product known to man. I am the physical embodiment of all Sharp technology that currently exists in physical form on this planet.”

Sharp Help Line Lady : (hypothetically speaking) “Hm, that could be the problem.”

EEEECCCCKKKK! THUNK! (Those are the hypothetical sounds of me traveling through the phone line and bludgeoning her to death with my dysfunctional fax machine).

So anyway, I guess I will have to wait until tonight when my husband gets home so I can ask him to take a look at The Stupid Fax Machine Which I Hate And I Hope It Dies And I Wish I Could Beat It To Death With A Sledgehammer!!!!

Not that I am bitter. Or cranky. And I definitely DO NOT need a nap! Ggrr!

My Name Is Jenny, And I MUST Have Access To The Internet

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It’s a happy, happy day here in our household, because my Internet connection has finally been restored.

For the past couple of weeks our connection has grown increasingly worse, and I have grown increasingly more crazed.

As my husband has flitted from his office, to his various business-related travel destinations, to his various hotels, all with their perfectly functioning Internet connections, I don’t think he was really getting just how frustrated I was. When I told him last night that I was ready to throw my brand-new laptop-which I had just received a month ago for my birthday-out the window, that seemed to spur him into action.

He got online and set up an appointment for a technician to come to our house today (did I mention that his Internet connection was working just fine?) So I was starting to feel much better, until he shared the following observation with me.

“I wonder if we have rodents that are chewing through our lines?”

Then he said, “What are the chances of you going down to the basement to check that out?”

Have you ever been under the influence of an irrational belief so strong that, despite absolutely knowing that you are totally making this fear up, and despite never once seeing any shred of evidence that there is cause for this fear, it still powerfully controls your behavior?

I am that way about snakes. I am terrified of snakes and, despite all evidence to the contrary, I am CONVINCED that huge groups of snakes totally surround our house. There are certain places around our house where I will never go because I just KNOW that the snakes are waiting there to get me.

That information is important to this story, because in order to get to our basement you have to go outside, down the deck stairs, and across the backyard. There is no access from inside our house. So my husband was asking me to go outside, in the dark, past two of the places where the imaginary snakes live, into the basement, where he was pretty sure I would find REAL rats.

On the one hand, I suppose I could have been flattered that he thought I was brave enough to do this by myself. But I decided to respond with, “Are you insane?!”, with a little dash of, “Have you met me?!” thrown in to “kick it up a notch.”

I am happy to say that it was not necessary for me to go down to the basement last night, and even happier to say that when the technician was here he did not say one single word about rodents. And now our Internet connection is working perfectly.

Now, if I could just figure out who to call about those imaginary snakes…

Beauty or the Crone?

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I had an interesting experience the other day, and I can’t decide whether it makes me feel old or young.

Last week I had to go to the dentist for my 6-month cleaning and checkup. There are very few things that cause me greater discomfort than getting my teeth cleaned. (Pretty much all that’s coming to mind right now is anything involving snakes and creatures that sting.) You know that feeling you can get if someone scrapes their fingernails down a chalkboard? That is exactly how I feel when they are scraping my teeth. (Interestingly enough, I also get that feeling whenever I have to touch any kind of fabric with a nap-velvet, silk, suede, velour, etc. But I digress).

So as I was sitting in the chair, enduring, my dental hygienist said, “Today is my anniversary.” Always ready to celebrate longevity in marriage, and always ready to put off more teeth scraping, I was about to ask her how long she’d been married when she said, “Thirty-three years ago today I came to work here.”

Now, leaving aside for the moment the question of why anyone would want to choose a career that involved dealing with people’s insides, much less stay in that same career for thirty-three years, here was my quandary: next month I will be turning thirty-three years old, and so,  as I told her, “You came to work here the same year that I was born.” So, should this fact make me feel really old, or really young?

It certainly made her feel old, and while that wasn’t my intention, it was a nice role reversal from the conversations I usually have with my new tutoring clients.

Me: “So, what year were you born?”
Tutoring Client: “1990.” (and sometimes even later than that).
Me: “Hm. That’s the year I graduated from high school.”
Me: “Wow, I’m old.”
Tutoring Client: (silently, to themselves) Wow! You’re old!

And what I want to know is, just how did this happen?! I became an adult in the 1990’s, and the ’90’s were on the leading edge of everything. We were the ones with advanced technology. We were the ones with advanced degrees. We were the ones who elected the president who would take us into the 21st century. We were on the cusp of everything.

And now the cusp has passed me by, and it is time for my 15-year high school reunion.

So now as I sit in the suburbs, writing the check to pay the mortgage, listening to the music of the 80’s and 90’s being referred to as “oldies” or “classics”, watching shows like “Veronica Mars” satirize every single aspect of my high school experience, and seeing my tutoring students show up in their flip-flops, and their pants with the waistband down at their knees, and their backwards-turned tennis visors, and their attitude of complete self-assured coolness, I hold onto this hope: one day, someone will be laughing at them, too. Possibly even today, if I have anything to say about it.