What is it about True Blood? Why is it so freaking awesome? Because I’ll tell you, even if vampires weren’t THE THING in America right now, I would still be all over this show.

Maybe because, minus the spine-ripping, blood-draining, and forehead-shooting, it’s the kind of fantasy land all of us secretly want to live in. You can be a vampire, shapeshifter, werewolf, goddess, witch, fairy, werepanther, or whatever the hell other awesome mythical creature you can think of. Or maybe everyone loves the show because Eric Northman is a totally hot, tortured-soul badass vampire that pretends he doesn’t care about you when HE TOTALLY LOVES YOU.

As for me? I’d probably pick vampire. And then I would drain Sookie Stackhouse so that I could walk in the sun.

When they first introduced supernaturals to the show other than vampires, it wasn’t terribly jarring. I mean, nothing about this show is supposed to be realistic. But I admit, I had to roll my eyes a little both when Sookie was revealed as a fairy and the new waitress said she was a Wiccan. Now I’m just thinking, where’s the creature from the lake, and when will Renesmee Cullen be guest starring?

I have not been able to find any concrete spoilers for the final episode of this season (WHICH I AM SO TOTALLY PISSED ISN’T UNTIL THE 12th). All I know is, Eric better not die. In fact, I kind of like Russell, too. He’s so fucking crazy now he’s the coolest character on the show. But Eric is just so hot… I mean, Bill has a nice face and all, but we haven’t even gotten to see Eric and Sookie fully get it on! WHAT KIND OF CONSUMER SATISFACTION IS THAT?

Although, the Rolling Stone cover brings up all kinds of filthy possibilities…

No Comments

Yesterday. Oh, yesterday. You sucked. Hard.

At work, it was the same old routine – calling customers that hadn’t paid yet for the month, just to ask them when they’d be in with their payments. And all was going well, mostly a bunch of answering machine messages, until I called Gary. Gary the Douche.

Gary is a long-time customer. He’s on his second loan with us, and looking over his previous account’s notes, we’ve never had much trouble with him. Most importantly, he’s one of our few customers with a good paying job. He also added his wife on with his second loan, since she generally dealt with late payments on the previous account.

I don’t know if Gary was sprayed with bird shit during the middle of our conversation, or if someone offered him a dollar to make a total stranger cry, but he went batshit during our conversation. I told him I was calling about his August payment, and as usual, he said we should call his wife. I politely told him I’d called his wife and left messages twice in the last week with no response. He just said she wasn’t ignoring us, and they’d get the payment in. Then he was silent.

Per my job, I have to have a specific date to write down in my notes for when a customer will be coming in to pay. So I asked him if it would be in by this morning, the last day of the month, to avoid any negative credit reporting. (We are trained to encourage customers to pay within the month they are due by mentioning this.) This is when he started to get mean. Not BATSHIT, just regular old mean. He said he knew it wouldn’t be reported until it was a full 30 days past due. I didn’t even get to respond to this before the BATSHIT kicked in. He started yelling, saying I lied to him about how past due it was, etc etc. When I told him I never said it was 30 days past due, just past its grace period, he reached a level of PSYCHOTIC. I have never heard such profanity from a stranger in my life. “When I tell you you need to call my fucking wife, then you need to just call my FUCKING WIFE, because she handles all of the FUCKING PAYMENTS!” He went on and on, and when there was finally a pause, I told him there was no need to speak to me like that. Then he hung up.

It took every ounce of my being not to cry in front of my coworkers. I was shaking, red, teary-eyed. I’m sure Sondra saw my face, at least, but she was kind enough not to say anything. I couldn’t even talk to anyone about exactly what he said to me until the end of the day.

Later on, his wife finally called the store and said she’d make a payment between the 7th and 9th of next month. I didn’t bother asking if she could get it in any sooner.

On my way home, I was still really upset by this guy. I was having a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that people like him exist, and treat people like me that way – and also that anyone would ever want to marry him. So I kind of spaced out while driving, thinking about all the horrible things he said to me. The next thing I know, a cop’s flashing lights are in my rearview mirror.

I swear, it didn’t immediately come to me why he might be pulling me over. To be honest, I was mostly hoping he hadn’t been following me for a really long time, because I didn’t want to look like I was evading him or something. I didn’t even look at my speedometer after I saw him behind me; I just found a parking lot and pulled in.

It would appear I was going 70 in a 55 zone. When he asked why, I simply told the truth: “I didn’t know I was.” And that was pretty much all I said as I handed him my license and insurance and, once again, fought back tears.

Despite the fact that I was courteous, cooperative, clearly in distress, and have a perfect driving record, the douchebag gave me a ticket anyway. But in the end, even though I really am not sure how fast I was driving, I’m sure I deserved it.

So I finally cried on my way home.

1 Comment

Okay, game time. One of these sayings is true (guess which one!):

Old people know everything.

You get what you pay for.

Well, it would appear that just because your financially well-off grandfather encourages you to go with the cheapest wood laminate floor you can possibly find does not mean he has any experience in the quality of said flooring.

Not that I’m blaming him – he had no idea, really, what we were buying, he just wanted to help out. And apparently him and his friends have all used cheap wood laminate without any traumatic experiences. The real blame lies within the fact that I dropped a bottle of Spray Power like a hand grenade in the hallway.

The top popped off, and cleaner was pouring out everywhere. As I’m picking up the bottle, I’m yelling at Josh “I NEED A TOWEL! I NEED A TOWEL!” He got a beach towel, and the spill was mopped up within sixty seconds. Then the floor was kind of sticky and weird feeling, so I used the Swiffer WetJet.

That’s when I noticed it. As I pushed and pulled the WetJet across the floor, I felt a bump. It sounded like a cardboard edge being rubbed against paper. I got down on the floor, and saw the most heartbreaking shadow of a curl.

In this sixty-second spill episode, the moisture got into ALL of the joints of EVERY piece the cleaner touched, and was causing it to curl. First, Josh and I argued about this fact. He could not believe a small dose of cleaner would do that to our floor. But the evidence was undeniable by the time the floor completely dried – it was continuing to curl in all the areas of the spill. So I cried. And he consoled.

I mean, this is freshly laid flooring. Laid with the blood, sweat and tears of my darling grandfather who provides free labor from his 74-year-old limbs. AND I ALREADY FUCKED IT UP.

I googled, of course, and found what I feared the most: The only way to fix it is to replace it, and to replace it, you have to start from a wall and work your way toward the damaged boards, then back out again. Given the area of the spill, this would be a significant amount of re-doing, and definitely another box of flooring.

By morning, the curling didn’t look or feel as horrifying as it had at the incident, but it is still noticeable. I decided that I could not ask my grandfather to redo all of that work – and more importantly, I did not want to feel his wrath, for as sweet as he is, he also doesn’t like stupidity or clumsiness. So I went to Wal-mart after work yesterday to look for a rug that would fit our tiny hallway. And I found one, a neutral-colored little Canopy brand thing with some modern square pattern on it. It fits the spot perfectly and looks pretty nice. To be honest, once we’re able to finish arranging the house I probably would’ve gotten a rug for that area anyway.

But it would be SO AWESOME to NOT HAVE FUCKED UP MY NEW FLOOR.

No Comments

Curling wood laminate

Uncovered cat poop

Overcharged cell phone bill

Tiny food budget

No time to cook

Third shift

Wal-mart on Sunday mornings

Time vs. Savings in coupon clipping

The wrong checkbook

Unmade beds

Desk job

Adulthood

1 Comment

One of the first tasks Josh and I had upon moving into the house was to rescue two kittens we’d picked out from my sister’s house before their brothers started trying to impregnate them. They are half sisters, born at the beginning and end of April. “Mine” is named Sally (from my favorite movie, The Nightmare Before Christmas, of course), and “Josh’s” is named Rita.

I don’t know why he picked the name Rita. I just know it was a welcome change from Shitnose, referring to the only coloring on her face that distinguished her from two of her brothers.

The funny thing is, when we met, Josh was a self-proclaimed cat hater. He apparently used to shoot them with paint balls and thought it was funny to throw them in swimming pools. I guess that was until he witnessed the miracle of kittens being born. I told him from the get-go I wanted to have one of them whenever we finally got our house, and I told him I only wanted a girl, because I didn’t want to deal with spraying. The first litter born at Jennifer’s house only had one surviving girl, so that narrowed it down. Fortunately, she was a total sweetheart and a very beautiful full tiger-striped kitten. I could tell Josh was getting fond of a certain all-black male, but fortunately Susan’s husband Jon also showed an affinity, so Josh gave it up.

When the second litter was born, the mother hid them very well, so none of us saw any of them for weeks. By the time they all came out they were big enough to eat cat food and pretty much take care of themselves. That’s when Josh found her.

The runt. The tiniest walking-on-all-fours kitten you’ve ever seen in your life. And she loooooved to be loooooved.

This girl purrs and flops on her back if you just glance at her while eating a corn dog. And Josh just couldn’t help himself. So it started out with me having to talk him into letting me have one cat, and then it turned into him talking me into having two cats, because “Sally needs someone to play with!”

The girls have been very good in the house so far, considering they grew up completely outside. They both pooped in the litter box within ten seconds of being introduced to it, and neither has gone to the bathroom outside of it since. The scratching has been a little more difficult, but not yet a lost cause.

At first, I was just going to declaw both of their front paws and be done with it. Then we I started googling how old they should be before it was done, all I found were blogs and articles about how you SHOULDN’T declaw a cat because of how painful it is for them, and I just couldn’t do that to my babies. So we decided to not be lazy Americans anymore, and actually try to train our animals.

We started with covering Josh’s couch in blankets and spraying that ScratchNot stuff everywhere, which is basically just orange-scented water. I’m having a hard time telling if our girls actually have an aversion to citrus. They don’t wretch at the smell, but they do seem to avoid it as long as it’s prominent. We got them a SuperScratcher scratchbox and keep it covered with catnip, and it is their favoritest spot ever. They scratch it. Play on it. Sleep on it. It’s right next to their bed, but not once have I actually seen either of them ever sleeping in the bed. The bed is a chew toy. The SUPERSCRATCHER is the bed.

The main problem right now is them tearing up my great grandmother’s couch. We don’t use it much, so they think it’s theirs. They’ve really jacked it up underneath, so I’m trying to figure out what to do. A girl at work said to attach some of that thick black gardening blanket underneath so that it wouldn’t feel good to scratch – we may try that.

We have also trimmed their nails, but we haven’t really been able to evaluate the effect yet. Rita is so sweet, I was actually able to clip three of her nails by myself before she wouldn’t hold still anymore. Sally is a bit more feisty, and Josh had to use a bit of a death grip, but she didn’t bite! I hope if we keep giving them treats after every trimming session they’ll learn to look forward to it.

The scratching is a problem, but I think we can solve it. I hate the litter tracked through the laundry room, but eventually I’ll get a big fancy litterbox that prevents it. So in the end, these girls are two of the best cats anybody could have hoped for.

1 Comment

My least favorite day of every year may very well be the day of my cervical exam. For men, or for women raised in North Carolina, a cervical exam is not a written test. In fact, it is an examination by a highly trained doctor nurse practitioner nice woman at your local health center during which she tells you to remove all of your clothes, even your socks, so that she can feel inside your body in ways you thought were never possible until you googled the word “fisting.”

That day happened to fall upon last Friday, just three days after my 23rd birthday. I will readily admit that if I did not wish to continue taking birth control pills, and the health center did not require the exam every year in order to GIVE you the pills, I would happily avoid this appointment until I was pretty sure I could either touch my cervix when I wipe after peeing or I wonder if my uterus should be hanging out that far. But alas, birth control pills are actually cheaper than condoms. So I subject myself to this every year. Around my birthday. Which is just IRONIC.

The past two years at the health center, I have gotten used to a couple of things. First, everything was free because of my income vs. household members ratio. Secondly, I had the same woman both times do the exam (including my first one ever). As a woman with horrendous body image issues that refused to let her soul mate actually see her completely naked until about the fourteenth “time,” I was extremely nervous at letting a SECOND person in the universe see my naked adult vagina and boobs. Because things sag here and dimple there and just jiggle funny in that spot. But I’m telling you, a grown tiger would readily let this woman feel around in her coochie coo. She showed me this big plastic vagina model before the exam, pulled the pieces apart and showed me exactly what she was going to do to me. (In terms of touching, not pulling apart my organs.) And she talked all through the exam, saying everything she was doing right before she did it. All I could say back was, “No one ever told me a speculum makes you feel like you need to poop.” She took notes for the next first-timer.

But THIS year, when I asked if the same woman would be doing the exam, the nurse said, “Oh, no, Tina’s off on Fridays.”

CUE FEELING OF IMPENDING PAIN AND HUMILIATION.

So I begrudgingly disrobed in the exam room and wrapped the paper blanket around me, although my butt is WAY too big not to stick out from behind it. I might as well just lie on the table, propped on an elbow with knee bent, giving the “I’m ready” look for all that thing covers my body.

The New Lady came in, and she was sociable and talkative, which reminded me of Tina. Then she told me to lie down, and unlike Tina, she decided to play with my boobs before my vajayjay. This is where the hilariosity begins. She continues to talk to me, while I’m laid back and relaxed with one arm behind my head, and she presses all over my boobs. And I’m looking up at her, because I was taught that’s polite when you’re talking to someone. And she’s facing the ceiling with her eyelids fluttering.

Except when she looks down to change positions on my boob. And then her head SWOOPS back up to the ceiling like a falcon diving for fish.

And she kept doing it. Peek, SWOOP. Peek, SWOOP. I nearly patted her hands, which were on my boobs, and told her it was okay, I wasn’t shy about that.

Then she sat down and prepared for takeoff into the land of Babymaker. And like Tina, she told me to scoot, scoot some more, just a little more, TILL IT FEELS LIKE YOUR BUTT IS TOTALLY HANGING OFF. Then she was all “Good news! I don’t have to smear your pap because they changed the rules and you only have to do it every two years!” And I was all “YEAH!” and started pulling my feet off the stirrups until she was like “But I still have to play with your uterus! And at least look at your cervix. And maybe rub it a little.”

But she was in and out before I had time to remember if I’d shaved my big toes. And I had to hold myself awkwardly after she left because the tissue box wasn’t open yet and I didn’t feel like being the one to make a SPLAT sound on the floor.

So my doctor person thing was different this year, and I’m okay with that. The difference I’m not okay with now? Having to pay $75 for the exam and pills because I actually MAKE MONEY and HAVE INSURANCE instead of leeching off of government funding anymore.

No Comments

It has been the most hectic six months of my life so far. I have a husband. I have a house. I have kittens. I have to do my own grocery shopping!

I have wanted all of this for so long, and even though we’ve been living in our own house for over a month, the reality of it still hasn’t smacked me in the face. The redoing of the floors isn’t finished yet, so maybe once that’s done, the furniture is all in place, and I unpack the last box, maybe then it will feel real.

Josh and I are much happier. We really needed to be on our own. Of course, there’s a whole new set of stresses that comes with having your own place. We have to do ALL the chores ourselves, plan ALL the meals, and actually budget our money! – something neither of us has really had to do before. But we’re making it through with only a few casualties so far. (Such as the poor baby bird stuck in the vines that were growing in the gutters.)

I have never appreciated anything more in my life than having my own house. We lucked up and were able to get a pretty nice place for our budget, but I think I would love it even if it were a total shithole. Because it is ours. And because Josh does all the repairs, meaning I can lie on the couch with a glass of wine and yell at him to reconnect the gutters! Except then he cracks a piece of quarter round across my skull and the next thing you know I’m scrubbing Our First Stains out of the couch. (Kidding.)

We’ve ripped up all the carpet except what’s in the master bedroom and have been replacing it all with wood laminate. I LOVE it in the living room. We may go back to carpet in the spare bedrooms in the future, but not until our children are old enough to not squeeze poop out of their diapers or think it’s awesome to paint Mommy and Daddy a six-color mural across the floor. But we have one room of laminate left, and we need to paint the two bathrooms and the kitchen, and then it will officially be the complete and pretty Meredith House. And I’ll have to take lots of pictures before it’s demolished by Bobby’s drunken rampages at our parties! (I have sincere fears for the sliding door.)

And it is SUCH a party house. The living room is gigantic, with a fireplace and cathedral ceiling, and it’s completely open to the nicely sized kitchen/dining area. There’s a covered front porch, a back deck, AND a screened side porch. It’s got nearly everything, so we just have to decide between paving the driveway first or building a swimming pool.

It took us five months to close on this house. So I don’t intend to move for at least ten years.

No Comments

As of right now, married life feels no different from engaged life. Primarily because although we’ve been married more than a month, we still have not closed on our house, and we are still living with my sister’s family.

I think that is the major change factor in any relationship – having your own place together, just the two of you. I had planned to have our house, all fixed up, prior to the wedding so we could come home to it after our honeymoon. But apparently we picked the most complicated house to purchase, and we are sitting on month four of our contract.

Praise ala Obama extended the tax credit!

The problems mostly lied around it being a manufactured home. That, and BB&T employs people with no experience or intelligence. A good chunk of the waiting was having to get the existing title on the house converted to real estate, despite the fact that the previous sell to the current owners did not require this to be done. This took a month. We are finally back in underwriting – for the fifth time of this contract.

We hope to hear good news early this week. I’ve been packed for three and a half months, and our adjoining game room is literally FULL of brand new kitchenware. Kitchenware I cannot WAIT to make used.

Seriously, now that the wedding is over and there is no longer any point or excuse for spending eight hours a day planning it, I am losing my mind. Everything fun is packed. I have nothing to do. I NEED THIS HOUSE SO I CAN GARDEN. I have so many plans for what we are going to do to this house to make it our own, and I am finally getting excited about it again now that I actually believe we are nearing a closing date. I am not good at waiting.

I will, at some point, post wedding pictures and discuss the day’s events. But right now, my brain can hardly function when I am unable to make a to-do list.

Comments Off

I’m just going to put this out there: I have a propensity to pee my pants on occasion. At a rate I feel is more frequent than the female average.

I have never been pregnant, so I can’t use that excuse. I’m not old, so I can’t use that one either. I may have a weak bladder, but that really just means I go to the bathroom a lot – it doesn’t really excuse the pants-peeing part.

I’ve been like this since I was a kid. Whenever I played a game like hide-and-seek with someone, I would get so nervous and excited while hiding that I just couldn’t hold it anymore. It was never like a yellow flood or anything, but I always leaked. Just a little. Just enough to make me aware of it.

One time, my uncle Doug threw me over his shoulder and tickled me so hard, I peed all over myself. I was wearing dark jeans, so no one could see it. I’m still not sure he’s aware he had a crotch full of urine so close to his face.

Now, as an adult, it still happens sometimes. If I sneeze really hard, I pee. If I laugh really hard, I pee. I haven’t played hide-and-seek for a long time, but I’m pretty sure it would still make me have to pee.

So what’s the deal with this? After I have children, am I going to need adult diapers the rest of my life? Is there a cure for this kind of problem? I mean, maybe it’s a nervous thing. It would be TOTALLY embarrassing if I peed myself during our wedding ceremony. My dress probably has enough layers to hide it, but I’m not sure if I could keep it from running down my leg. Maybe clear shoes is a bad idea.

Josh is already aware of my little “problem.” In fact, he thinks it’s FUNNY. He will tickle me until I pee, just so he can LAUGH at me.

And then I laugh on the inside while I secretly pee on his feet in the shower.

Comments Off

I have told Josh in the past that I enjoy kissing him. And I think he enjoys kissing me (Since, you know, he decided he was willing to only kiss me the rest of his life. At least, I’m the only one he’ll slip the tongue). But I don’t think he really understands just how special he should feel when I say that – because I used to hate kissing. To the point I thought I might be a lesbian.

My first real kiss was with a boy that, now in my life, is the only person I would actually fear of murdering me in my sleep. I only kissed that guy a couple of times, and at the time I thought they were good, but that’s just because I didn’t know better. They were really wet and slimy. And I was mostly just happy because I got him to kiss me instead of those other girls.

But after he was put in the mental institution, I started dating what was to be my first “serious” boyfriend. And he wanted to kiss a lot once we got started. I kind of blame myself for this, because the first kiss took him so long to work up to, I kind of complained about the lack of kissing.

But he was a bad kisser. Possibly the worst in the world. And he wanted to do it ALL THE TIME. It got to the point that I would pretend to fall asleep when we were around each other, or I would make plans with my family rather than hang out with him, so I could avoid the kissing. It brought me to a point that I literally hated kissing.

Then came Josh. Josh was a very shy boy when we first met. I don’t remember how long it took him to kiss me the first time after our first real date, but it was at least a week. I was going to Bowling Green to see my dad for a couple of days, and Josh ran out to the car, and literally pecked me on the lips. As if he were kissing his grandmother on the cheek. (Come on, it was cute!)

With my guidance, however, his lips started to loosen a little. And, lo and behold – Josh was a great kisser. I mean, I’ve heard people say you can tell if someone’s right for you by the way they kiss. If this is true, then I really have found my soulmate.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE KISSING JOSH. Whether it’s deep and passionate or just a succession of quick kisses, I enjoy it every time. He doesn’t taste bad, he’s not slobbery, his lips aren’t chapped, and he can be very sensual. Instead of ducking and running when he comes near me, I am frequently the one to initiate the kissing. Josh has restored my faith in kissing, and reassured me that I do like boys – I just hadn’t found the right one yet.

He probably hates that I just wrote all of this, but honey, be proud of your make-out prowess.

1 Comment