Books and Stories

Catch up with my reading:

I finished About A Boy on my way to St. Luey and Ava's Man on the way back. Blogged about both on Heartwarming Stories. Now I'm reading An Hour Before Sunrise by Jimmy Carter. I'm all about the presidential biographies these days.

On to more dramatic tales.... Quick! Name 3 ways to die in a gas station parking lot!

1. Fire during a gasoline fight
2. Shot by a Capulet
3. Run over by a getaway car

I didn't die in any of these ways. But I did almost die twice.

1. As I crossed the parking lot to buy a soda an old man pulled out of his parking space and made no attempt to not hit me. I had to leap out of the way in heels. And even after I cleared the initial danger zone he just kept backing up, much further than neccessary to leave the space. So I keep walking further and further back and the whole time he keeps his eyes glued forward, never glances back once to check for cute pedestrians.
2. This one was weirder. As I head for the driveway there is a towtruck hitching up to a brokendown jeep. The towtruck driver has hopped out of the cab to check something, left the engine running, the door open. About the time I pull behind these two to exit the lot, the entire operation starts rolling towards me. Because the driver failed to put her in Park. So now I'm sandwiched between a car waiting for traffic to pull into the road, a car waiting for a pump behind me and a towtruck/jeep monster that is rolling towards me faster and faster. Luckily the driver notices that his stuff is on the move and runs and jumps into the cab as the car in front of me hangs a left onto the road. I gun it and clear the truck's path just before the driver gets it all under control.

So I didn't die. But I totally could have. The Esso station is dangerous.

How Abby Became a Mean, Nasty Witch

Tonight I ran out of tolerance. It's sad, I will have to be racist, sexist, homophobic, bigoted, and prejudiced against people who mispronounce the names of states until my July stock of tolerance comes in. Sad, but true.

How does this happen? you might wonder, Abby usually has a surplus of tolerance, enough to share.

Well, you may have heard that my housemate (and technically my landlord), Robert, is sort of.... difficult to get on with. Anyone who has seen any room I've ever lived in can sympathize with Robert of course, I'm next to impossible to live with. I'm dirty and lazy, I don't wash dishes for weeks, I do my laundry even less often and my closet is on my floor. I lose my keys/shoes/cell phone with amazing frequency because, well, I'm a mess.

Usually.

Lemme layout my impact in Canada. After about 18 hours of living with Robert it became apparent that he was obsessive compulsive. So I have made a special effort to minimize my affect on his world. I do my dishes every night. The longest any dish sits in the sink is from breakfast until I was them after dinner- when I wake up early enough to eat breakfast. This is usually one small plate, a knife and a fork. Not unreasonable. I dry all the dishes and put them away immediately.

The only belongings I leave in the kitchen is one pair of shoes, under the counter near the door where they are not a tripping hazard.

The remaining rooms of the first floor house my dvd collection- two cd cases on an end table in the corner of the living room by the dvd player. I could keep them in my room, but I like to share.

I have a drawer in the bathroom where I keep my soap, toothbrush, toothpaste, etc. and I have shampoo and stuff in the shower.

That's it. Nothing else is out of my room. My room is of course an epic disaster, but my door is always shut and locked.

I know. It sounds completely impossible. It has been really hard for me.

Is this effort appreciated? No, not really. Not at all actually. There's just always something. Like I should always use the fan over the stove, and I can't park in the driveway. But today, I've been pushed over the line.

This morning Robert got up at the crack of dawn (usually he doesn't get up until after I leave) to interrogate me about the locations of a red bucket and a coffee mug. The mug I was guilty of hoarding, it got carried to my room sometime over the weekend and I just keep refilling it in the bathroom because I'm too damn lazy to go all the way downstairs. The bucket I'd never seen before. Though I readily admitted my guilt in the mug case he seemed convinced I'd stolen his bucket. What the hell do I want with a bucket? Also, how did he know I had the mug? We have at least 8 coffee mugs for the two of us. Does he do a weekly inventory?

So tonight I'm in the living room, watching My Name is Earl on my laptop when Robert comes home. There is a wicked electrical storm going on, so I have the blinds in the living room all the way open so I can watch.

Robert enters. 'What happened in here?'
Me: 'What happened to what?'
R: 'The...' He points to the blinds, he struggles sometimes with the english. 'What happened?' He reaches for the cord as lightning flashes outside.
Me: 'Wait! I pulled them up, I was watching the lightning. Have you seen this storm?'
Robert is still poised to draw the curtains. 'Oh yeah. But you can watch with them down.'
Me: 'Its lightning! Its so fun, I wanted to be able to really see it. Don't put down the curtains, I'll pull them when the storm is over.'

Robert reluctantly leaves. For almost 3 whole minutes. Then he shoots back into the room straight to the curtains and yanks them down.

Me: 'Hey! I am still watching the storm!'
Robert: 'No, its dark out, you close the curtains when its dark.'
Me: 'I know, but it isn't even dark out yet and I just told you I was watching out there.'
R: 'No, if they are open it looks like there are no curtains. What if someone came by and thought they would rent here, but oh, there are no curtains.'
Me: dead silence. I'm trying to process that. Do people really choose housing based on outside visibility of window coverings?
Robert now twists the little thing so not only are the blinds down, they are a wall.
Me: 'Well can't you at least leave them turned so I can see?'
R: 'No.'
Me: 'Are you trying to be mean to me? Can't you just leave one turned up?' There are three windowshades after all, one open would be enough!
R: 'No, its dark. I close them when its dark out. See I closed the ones in the other rooms. You can go outside if you want to see.'
Again I'm trying to work out how this makes sense. First of all, I'm not looking out any of the other windows. Second, I'm pretty sure the purpose of shades is to keep light out, so closing them when its dark is retarded. Third, its pouring effing rain outside and there's lightning. It seems dangerous to venture out.
So I spend the next 5 minutes debating with Robert the purpose of shades, the likelihood a potential renter is going to wander by in this storm, whether or not this renter would be more swayed by the presence of curtains than the presence of a cute girl, the chances of me being struck by lightning should I go outside, and whether or not he is actually doing this for the sole purpose of torturing me. Finally, he goes here: 'They are my curtains and I say they are close.'

Yep. They are your curtains, and you own the house. You're a big man now. And then he freaking goes into the basement for the next 3 hours.

So that's it. Don't cross me. After that whole exchange I didn't open the blinds or kick him or anything. But it used up every last bit of my kindness. Beware.

Check Out What's new on the Web

Recent Web Actions:

The new site Quoted Quotables is a joined effort between Miranda and I to preserve the memories of all the ridiculous things anyone has ever said in our presences.

The Dictionabby is featuring some new additions- see googlasm, canoogle, and tocks!

Plus coming soon to this site: a review of the book About a Boy which I finished recently, and a dramatic tale of escaping death in an Esso parking lot.

Thanks for staying with me!

Bad Travel, Good Party

So its been over a week, but I really couldn’t write about my weekend in St. Louis until now.

I was traumatized. And for once it wasn’t even because of my family. My therapist is going to have a heart-attack.

It was O’Hare, American Airlines, and the god of weather that ate my brain, and the adjoining nervous system. But for the moment that’s all I have to say about that.

My cousin Michael’s wedding was a lovely event, complete with flower-girl hi-jinks, romance, bickering, crying (only the good kind) and booze. And that was just my side of the family.

Highlights:
The flower-girl, Haley, had a personal problem during the ceremony, but she’s four and ‘personal’ problems are no problem for her, because she’s four. So when her unmentionables started creeping, she just started digging through her layers of tulle to fix them. No matter that she’s at the front of the church 2 inches from the bride with her back to the assembled family and friends of the happy couple. She just reaches back and spends a good 5 minutes trying to get her Sunday panties out of her crack.

Could my teen-aged cousins contain their laughter from the 3rd row? Barely. And I mean dirty-mom-looks, pinch yourself, don’t make eye contact with your older, more mature, cousins Abby and Emily because they are not in fact mature and are actually trouble-makers and bad influences—barely.

All this is really only mildly amusing though, until you hear Emily’s take on it, which she whispered to me as the pastor elaborated on the seriousness of marriage. “Who let that child wear underpants?” Riiiiiiiiight. Clearly the problem here is the fleeting fad of wearing underwear.

Later, when the groom was dancing with the flower girl by swooping her around Supergirl style (what else do you do when the groom is over six and a half feet tall and the flower girl doesn’t even clear his waist?) Emily admitted that maybe the underwear weren’t such a bad idea after all.

Romance? Those same giggling cousins took quite a fancy to the ushers (cousins on the bride’s side). Unfortunately, once the women in my family started the choreographed-on-the-spot, high-school-musical style dancing, those gentlemen were much too terrified to come near us. They pretty much disappeared, which shows how scary the women in my family are—my cousin Alana is practically a model, guys 10 years older than her shamelessly flirt with her in front of her very intimidating father. The dancing was impressive though. People who think that its unrealistic in movies when people just break into song and dance have never been to a wedding with my family. It’s great.

Really the only other great development happened at the hotel after the reception, where members of the brides family showed up with most of the left over beer from the reception in a Missouri, which is now a part of the dictionabby.

Its just a jump to the left.....

2, count 'em two, time warp phenomena have come to my attention today.

1st Wrinkle in Time

Work starts at 8am. If I leave my house at 7:40, I arrive at the office at 7:58. If I leave my house at 7:52, I arrive at the office at 7:59. I know this, because usually I try to leave around 7:40 and today I overslept and left at 7:52.

How could this be? I did notice that there is a lot less traffic after 7:50, probably because everyone has to be at work by 8 and is already almost there. Other than that, I think it must be pure will-power for time to slow down, because I didn't really speed more than usual. Its just a time warp.

Crazy time lapse 2

Let me lay out the usual office schedule- I arrive at 2 minutes to 8. All office employees are already there with the exceptions of the big boss and the accountant. The nice accounting lady shows at 9 and the boss between 8:30 and 11 depending on his morning schedule. This means 9 people are in the office when I arrive.

At noon about half the people take off for lunch and half eat something they brought or one person picks up food for more. Generally no one is out of the office more than 45 minutes and people eating in the kitchen only take 30.

In the evening, I leave at 5, and (aside from the big boss, a manager guy and the accounting lady who keep their own hours) one or two people leave with me, the rest staying until sometime after 5.

This is normal. Today is not normal. Today is the day that no managers were in the office. The big boss and his second in command were out on business, the bookkeeper and the sales guy (the only non-boss people I perceive as having more seniority than the rest of my cubicle-mates) were not in the office either.

This is how today's schedule went. I walk in at 8:01 (I was shocked by how fast I made it to work. It took me a minute to recover and gloss) and only one person is there. One. Not 9. One.

Nearing lunchtime, every single person left for lunch at 5 to noon. Everyone. We had to lock up.

Sensing that the ship was not being run as tightly as usual, I didn't bother coming back until 12:55 (usually I'd rush to be back before 12:40). Again, only one person beat me back. (Both times it was the only remaining male in the office- who barely counts as a man, its an awkward 20something tech guy who is like the office pet.) The girls showed up at 1:15. Hour and a half for lunch on a Monday. A record.

And! they didn't go back to work. They took themselves some dessert in the kitchen which lasted at least another 20 minutes. Nobody even answered the phones.

So do you think they all stayed late to make up the hours? Nope. At 4:42 they were gathered near my desk, all, "Abby are you leaving yet?" Um, yeah. They are all waiting for me, a solid 15 minutes earlier than I've ever left the office before. The place was cleared, locked, and parking lot emptied at 4:46.

Clearly the clock hands travel at a different pace without some supervision. One day without the bosses, it was like anarchy. The music was even turned up. Normally there is some satellite Top 20 station playing in the office at a volume I'd describe as "barely audible" (which is good if they play Justin Timberlake and the Pussycat Dolls 15 times a day). Today the music was more like "just quiet enough that phone calls won't be disturbed. And it was a different station, one with commercials. Who knows what was going on. All I've learned is the next time we're on the honor system, my lunch is going to include a beer and an ice cream.

Which reminds me....

Time Warp 3

How long does it take for Canada to go from early spring to mid-summer? 12 hours. I go to sleep on Thursday and its been cold and dreary and rainy for 3 weeks and I wake up Friday and its sunny, highs in the 80s and cloudless, for going on 4 straight days now. Ridiculous.