house of pain

well, the countdown has begun-- i am entering what should be the final stages of packing today. that and cleaning out the horrible, horrible messes that await me at every turn.

moving day is tomorrow night after work... and my attitude has already moved from the optimistic "of course i'll get all the cleaning done, the walls washed, the windows scrubbed, the oven cleaned" to the more realistic "where can i hide this dirt?"

ah, well. back to the grind, i suppose. soon, it will all be over.

soooooooooon.

u/v

buried treasure and the decorating drag queen

i wish i knew what the hell was up with my formatting. oh, well.

the only good thing about digging through the ruins of this apartment, was that i found my cake decorating book, Frosting Fantasia, a delightful collection of disturbing cakes from the SunValley 1972 Cake Show. the reason i wanted to find it was that there's a woman who seems to be running the show, pictured in several candid shots... a very--handsome-- woman. then a few pages later, her husband is pictured-- and he looks remarkably like his wife.

as in, i wonder if cake decorating mavens of the early seventies used to whisper amongst themselves: "Is she, or isn't she?" or "why don't we ever see them together? they're like spiderman and Peter Parker!"

Polkaroo, indeed.

i have no idea if this is true or not. but now i can stare at the photos with my magnifying glass, inviting all who pass by to give their impressions. what a bizarre double life to lead. and if it is true, all because even in the sexy seventies, society couldn't accept a man who liked to decorate cakes. oh, and wear pantyhose.

i've been inspired by some other sites on the web, such as triplux and negroplease.com, who are running self-challenges of 101 things in 1001 days. essentially, the rule is that you list 101 things you want to accomplish in that timeline, and the wording must be specific, with no ambiguities. i'm going to start working on my own list, which i'm sure anyone who may be reading here will be thrilled about.

in the meantime, i must get back to packing.

remember: loose lips sink... cakes!



u/v

madder than a wet hen

exactly how mad would that be?

my guess is that for every one box of mine that i have packed, i have packed up 1 box of madam x's stuff to go to goodwill and 2 extremely full garbage bags of shit to be pitched. at the moment it's a horribly rainy day and i have had no sleep and it's my day off and i am sitting in the middle of a seemingly endless pile of crap that i have to finish packing by the end of the day or i am seriously screwed.

because tomorrow, the cleaning begins.

i ask you: who doesn't clean out the fridge when they leave? WHO?

oh sweet zombie jesus, this is turning into that whiny bitchy blog that i hate.

don't pity me, i pray you. just clean out your fridges. for the love of god, clean out your fridges.

u/v

moving on up...

this is me:

ok, actually, you need to picture me not so much caught on a string, but rather, packing boxes. also, i am slightly less squirrel-like, and somewhat more exhausted and annoyed.

something more like this:



or perhaps not.

in any case, did anyone miss me?

hello?

anyhoo, i am in the middle of moving to a lovely new abode. the only drawback is that my old roommate has already departed for her lovely new abode, leaving behind a ton of books, furniture, garbage, and other assorted worries. at the moment my time is split between working, packing, and desperately trying to clean up to avoid the wrath and ire of my crazy landlords.

in financial news, the person or persons who are apparently trying to scam the government out of tax money by convincing them that there is a textile import/export business under my name are back... i received a refund cheque yesterday for about $1800.00 . oddly, when i called, the fellow i spoke to seemed unconcerned. am i wrong to worry that someone is stealing my identity and setting up false textile import and export businesses? should i just cash the cheque anyway? is this one of those bizarre joe schmo reality shows where i'm being tested without knowing it?

of course, now that i suspect, i expect producers to come scurrying out of the woodwork any minute now.

any minute now...

the new apartment is close to the chinese superstore. we can celebrate our move-in with the manly snack of men's pocky:



men's pocky. so delicious. so strong. so... manly.

u/v

There's a man coming round taking names...

There's a fella in my neighborhood who's got a little homemade Charlie Brown-Lucy-style-advice-stand going on. He's trying to get people to sign his petition to allow both parents to have custody of their children. On the surface, a noble cause. I'd look him in the eye and tell him so myself, except I can't. Why, you may ask? Because beneath his sunglasses, his eyes are obscured behind a plastic, purple Lone Ranger mask. Why, you may ask?

I don't know.

The other day I passed him, and as he tried to solicit my signature, his dog, a lovely black Lab stood up from under the table and walked over to me, as if to say "Hi! My owner wears a plastic mask at all times! How are you? Help me!" The man immediately said to the dog: "That's it-- you're going into the truck."

Now, this was at about 10am, and I happen to know that when I walked by several hours later, the Purple Ranger was still there with his petition, masked and dogless. Which led me to believe that the mystery as to why he might not have custody of his kids might not be so much of a mystery. Think about it: pets are kind of like the starter kit for kids. Yes, they may not be quite so vocal about their desire for ice cream, and they may out of loyalty endure more torture before actually dying, but if you can't treat your dog decently on a 30-degree day... well, hopefully he took a lunch break and drove the poor pupster home, but I'm thinking that wasn't the case.