The Exterminator (A Traumatizing Sally Story)

One warm, lazy morning, Sally was happily dozing in her comfy bed, only barely thinking about getting up for the day. Suddenly, the doorbell rang (quite loudly, I might add).

Sally scrambled to put some decent clothes on and get to the door. The bell continued to ring - no time for a bra!

Sally rushed out into the foyer to be met by her neighbor from upstairs, who was rushing down the steps. Sally turned to see a man with a tank of sorts outside the main door. The neighbor rushed to the door, greeted the exterminator-looking man, and quickly tried to usher him upstairs. "My apartment is upstairs!" she said.

"No worries, I'll get to you. I have to spray everyone, so I may as well start on the ground floor." Reluctantly, Sally ushered him inside.

The exterminator-man got out his tank and hose and began to spray what looked like nothing more than water along the kitchen cabinets and bathroom floor. "Had any issues?" he asked.

"Maybe a cockroach here or there, and some ants, but that's about it," Sally replied, while awkwardly crossing her arms over her chest.

"Oh, I see... Any mice?"

"Um... No."

"Ok. Well, have a nice day." And with that, he was gone.

Now Sally was paranoid. Were there mice in the house? What had he sprayed on the floor? Why did it look like water? Would it hurt her roommates cats?

Sally reminded herself that she'd never had mice problems before, and that maybe this would start to kill off the other pests. She shrugged it off and went about her day (starting by putting on a bra).

That night, Sally lay in bed, just beginning to doze off, when something came careening through the open bedroom window. Soon, an agitating howl was heard from the kitchen. Sally dragged her ass back out of bed to see what the hell was going on.

Sure enough, one of the cats had caught a mouse and brought it in. Had they been the issue this whole time?

Sally ran for a pair of gloves and chased relentlessly after the cat. The last thing she needed was a dead mouse stuck in the nooks of the house. Finally, Sally caught up to the cat and managed to pry the rodent from its not-so-tight grasp. Out the door the poor thing went, and the now empty-handed cat made a point of hating Sally for all of 5 minutes.

The end.

Moral of the story: Exterminators don't make much difference when the cats are involved.

Ho-mance

So, I wrote this some time ago and found it today on a scrap of paper. Thought my Sammi might get a kick out of it. It's terrible, I know, but I kinda like it that way.

Ho-mance

In high-school we just had to get away
The pressure of being good all day
Honor roll, Queens of Stage
Passing notes on blue-lined page

Before and after you'd drive from A to B
And I was happy from A to Z
If it meant you were there next to me.
In your car or anywhere you are
That's where I want to be,
In your car or anywhere you are.

The scenery is always the same
Fishtank house, a stalking game
We only met because of a guy
Wasting gas, fueling a rant

Boys are silly things at best
And we've stayed longer than the rest
R.I.P. your jeans, and oh my breasts!
Smoking til our lips turn blue
Listening to nineties tunes,
'Cause that's just how we do.

Oh, what a glad ho-mance!

Gender Stereotruths

So, I ran across this vid last night, If Guys Were Like Girls:

And the 2nd one:

At first, I found it mildly entertaining in a guys know nothing about girls sort of way. Who does yoga in their socks? Is this the way they see us? Of course, I was basing that on myself and my Sammi. I do love the "haircut!" bit, because I do this as a default compliment thing. And honestly, these guys are great at the characters they've chosen, and their group chemistry is amazing. But overall, I thought it was a bit of a stretch. I mean, who freaks out about a "relationship" after two weeks?

Then I thought about that for a minute and was horrified to realize that I do actually know girls who act like this. I want to punch them in the face every single time I have to hear about their relationship problems. Because they aren't in a relationship. They are in a stalkership. And they freak out over every little thing a guy says/does and over-analyze it to death and tell me they wish they could "just not care" the way I do.

So that freaked me out for a minute. Like PTSD from dealing with that all the time. Then I clicked on this:

and this:

And life was somehow better again. Also, I might be a dude. Like, in my heart-soul.

Laundry Day (A Traumatizing Sally Story)

Today was one of Sally's first days off in the big city. Sally thought to herself, I can think of no better way to spend my day off than doing laundry in this apartment I am renting. Doing the laundry is such a refreshing and energizing task. I can't wait!

Sally may have had too much to drink this morning.

Nevertheless, Sally went right to work. After buying some cheap detergent down the street, she came back and fiddled with the buttons and dials on the old washing machine, just like her roommate had done the other day. However, when she opened the lid, she was surprised to find a large army of ants. Ants upon ants upon ants. They seemed to be using the inside of the machine as a modern day anthill!

Well, I'm smarter than any old little ant, Sally thought. I'll just run an empty cycle to drown them all out, and wipe up the outside of the machine. So she let some water run its course through the machine, and found some rubbing alcohol to get those ants so mighty drunk they would die. And then she could do a clean load of laundry.

NOPE.

To Sally's dismay, while many of the ants drowned, many more simply found someplace to hide. And while sanitizing their tracks should have deterred them, it seems as though the ants were quite fond of the alcohol.

Sally was left with a choice: Try to do a load of laundry at the apartment in the old machine, or haul her undies down the street to the laundromat. I'll try it here this time, and see how it goes. Maybe it won't be so bad, she thought.

While a few ants may have slipped into the water while washing, everything seemed to be going well enough. Maybe this was something she could get used to for the short time she lived here, and it wouldn't even be an issue. Until the spin cycle started.

BANG BAM WOCK WOCK WOCK BANG BANG. The washer shook and tumbled all around the room, banging the kitchen counters next to it. The dishes drying on the rack soon began to dance across the counter, precariously headed for the floor.

Sally rushed to the washer and pulled the dial, stopping the hazardous machine in its track. Too scared to turn the machine back on, Sally pulled her soggy clothes out of the machine, rushing to beat the ants. Now it was time to hang her clothes on the drying rack.

Sally quickly ran out of space on the drying rack, and realized she would have to hang some non-unmentionables on the line outside. Though it took some time and critical thinking, Sally was able to hang just about everything on the rack.

Now it was time to POWER DRY. She turned to the fan and flipped it on high. Too much. She flipped to the medium setting. The fan died. With a heavy sigh, she turned it back on high and stepped away. All of her underwear flew up and splatted on the floor.

The end.

Moral of the story: A walk down the street and a hefty amount of quarters are less valuable than Sally's sanity.

Motivation

This is kind of terrible and immature of me, but I don't care. When have I ever cared.

Sometimes, I like to get on Facebook and stalk people that I haven't seen in a long time because that is the true purpose of Facebook. As I was sitting at my computer tonight, I realized we are now living in the year 2013, which just so happens to be the fifth year since my high school graduation, which generally denotes a 5-year reunion, right?

So I thought to myself, "Let's go check out what all the cool kids are up to. They might be saying something about a reunion that I likely wouldn't be able to go to anyway." And here's what I found out:

99% OF THE COOL KIDS HAVE DELETED ME FROM FACEBOOK

Presumably because I took up too much of their valuable newsfeed space whilst not talking about the party I didn't go to last night or how much I'm not going tanning ever.

These are the times I feel motivated to really do something with my life. As whiny and childish as it is, I think to myself: Fuck them. I don't need them, they don't need me, but I'll show them someday. I'll be big and famous and they'll come crying to me for money and popularity and I'll say, who's the cool kid now, biotch? 

Or, I'll just ignore them. Which is the more likely scenario of the two (even though a confrontation like this will most likely never actually happen).

But then I have to remember that I'm no longer in high school, I have moved on, and I've made friends who may or may not have been the cool kids in their own high schools. And they will never have to know I wasn't, even though it probably wouldn't matter to them anyway.

Belated disclaimer: There is that small 1% of the cool kids who were (and are) actually cool, and who will talk to anyone, regardless of caste. These folks are a-okay in my book, and for the record, are still my FB pals.

Conversate

Okay, so, while writing a poem earlier, I used the word "conversate" because sometimes I don't really care about proper English. I mean, obviously I mostly don't give a damn because I am constantly raping it. But my spell checker put that glaring red line underneath it that means "that is not a word, you dumb fuck" and so I had to stop (collaborate and listen), look it up, and sort of decide to myself whether bastardizing my native tongue was worth a rhyme.

In the end, I decided yes. Because fuck you. And with poetry I mostly don't care, I straight-up make up words sometimes. Also, I read this article with which I mostly couldn't disagree. Basically it's saying that language is primarily a means of communication, and so long as we all understand each other...what's the big deal? Just because it isn't "correct" doesn't make it not a word. The fact that people use it in the first place makes it a word. Because words are made by people to communicate a...thing. Yes, this is a winning post from me, I know. Me no good with words.

But then of course, there's that other side of me that's all, "Learn English, Muthafucka!" when I hear my peers say something like, "Can you borrow me that pen?" or type, "I here you were part of they're group." I want to peel their faces off. Because apparently I can ruin proper grammar, but no one else is allowed.

So, I guess what I'm saying here is...um...I'm grammatically bi-polar?

The Smoke Detector That Could

I just read an article about a smoke detector that woke up a couple when their house had started a fire, urging them to safety... OMG A SMOKE DETECTOR JUST DOING ITS JOB.

We really are in the land of Cornfields...

NEWSFLASH

So, I posted a status on Facebook today stating that not every Muslim is a terrorist.

Because it's true.

I had just seen several politically-based posts in a row, implying that all Muslims are in fact screaming banshee terrorists out to destroy the world. Here's one that pissed me off:

No it's not.

And this one, an excerpt from a "letter to Obama from a 95-year-old veteran" who probably doesn't exist, or write such well-written letters:

And just who do you think you are telling the American people not to jump to conclusions and condemn that Muslim major who killed 13 of his fellow soldiers and wounded dozens more. You mean you don’t want us to do what you did when that white cop used force to subdue that black college professor in Massachusetts , who was putting up a fight? You don’t mind offending the police calling them stupid but you don’t want us to offend Muslim fanatics by calling them what they are, terrorists.

Most people responded positively to what I said, understanding that what I said is indeed a fact, and that was that. But all it takes is one person to be a jackass.

This person responded by privately messaging me, calling me a hippie, and telling me that "not all Muslims are terrorists, but almost all terrorists are Muslims." There are two things that bother me about this happening:

1. Although this may be partially true (to Americans), it still doesn't in any way legitimately refute what I said. 
2. If you are going to oppose something that someone said publicly, you should be expected to do the same. Messaging me privately just implies you are a pussy and don't want to take the criticism you know you will receive from the public.

I'm not saying everyone should outwardly post their opinions (or facts) on the Internet all the time. I'm just saying don't be such a jackass all the time.

Shower Songs

Singing the chorus of "You're Gonna Go Far Kid" by The Offspring in the shower:

Nice work ya DICK
Yer gonna go fuck him!
With a thousand lies
And her big fat thighs
Hit her right between the thighs!
Hit her right between the thighs!
When you walk away
Nothing more to say
Say the right thing in her thighs!
See 'em running
FUCK our lives!

Obnoxiously loud. That is the only way to let your neighbors know who's boss. Good thing my neighbor is half deaf. She is also my landlady.

WHAT IS IN MY EYE

Why don't my eyelashes want to part each other? And why is it moderately cloudy / blurry in my right eye? And why is it soooo dry???

Waahhhhhh...

I think the eyelashes are the most annoying thing.

Antsy Pants

Dear I don't know your name (let's call you Antsy) Customer,

Why do you always look like you are in a huge hurry to get somewhere? You just got off work. You are a grown-ass man, do you have a curfew? It is 1 a.m., I am confused. I am also irritable because instead of waiting like a normal person, you literally bounce from foot to foot. Is the minute it takes me to ring up your shit and process the transaction really a minute too much?

Yes, I know you want a bag. You always want a bag for the 3 items you purchase every night. You've been coming here for all 4 years I've been working here. You don't need to tell me you need a bag while I'm still putting your money in my drawer and handing you the receipt. I got it. In fact, one time I started bagging your shit before you gave me your money. I left 2 things out to deal with your cash, and then because putting those 2 things into the bag while I finished cashing you out was (apparently) too much for you to handle yourself, I put them in the bag after I was done. So don't act like I'm slowing you down.

Also, if I am being slow putting your money away, it's because it's always a wrinkled pile of shit. Maybe invest in a wallet, or fold it when you get it? I don't want to tell you how to live your life. I'm just saying, it wouldn't take me 15 seconds (of your valuable time) to straighten it all out if it wasn't a crinkled pile of deuces.

Trust me, I also want you out of the store just as quickly as possible.

Sincerely Yours,
Bitchy & I Know It

ps. This is why I glare at you every night.

How to Not Be a Jack-Off in a Place of Retail

I work customer service at a rather large grocery store, and it is unbelievable how many people I encounter who have no respect for the people servicing them. It's like, "Well, this person is getting paid to help me, so why should I be nice about it?"

There are plenty of reasons to be nice to me when I'm behind the counter, but most importantly: what goes around comes around.

Here's a list of things you should keep in mind next time you need to return a package of moldy strawberries at the grocery store or a pair of pants with a ripped hem at JCPenney.

Please don't yell at us.
This should not require an explanation.

Keep it simple.
Most reasons for returns are similar in nature, and do not require a life-long story to accompany them. "It didn't fit," or "this milk tasted sour," will suffice. Also, the longer the story, the more I think you're trying to con me. Just ask the guy who tried to return two $40 bottles of Co-Q 10 without a receipt, as he explained his sister bought them, but his friend didn't need them, so he needed to return them, but the receipt had blown out of the bag. Mmmkay.

Don't start out with "I have a complaint."
Now I'm just bracing myself for spitting words of hatred, even if you have every intention of being polite.

Don't micromanage.
I'm the one getting paid to work here. Please don't tell me how to do my job, which is not run just like every other place you've taken a return to.

It is never the clerk's fault.

Don't yell at me because the dumb rewards program the store's corporate office has crapped out isn't working like it should. As clerks, we don't get paid enough to make the rules or be informed of new decisions promptly, so don't point the finger at us. Half the time, the customer isn't using the program correctly, anyway. Just calmly state what the problem is and your message might make it to the proper destination.

Get a life.
If your goal in life is to make everyone's day miserable just because you are, you need to invest in a new one.

Sorry for the crude ranty-ness, but I'm not allowed to say these things when I really want to.

When I'm feeling down about my job, this site always gives me a happy: http://notalwaysright.com/ What stories about unruly customers do you have?

Old Friends, Bookends

My attention to car detail is not great. But you get the picture, right? 

(hehe, picture...yes, I'm done now)

Speaking of Paranoia

Ever imagine all the pictures in your house watch and judge you? I mean, not all of them, just the ones with eyes. Obviously. Like that picture of your best friend is watching you spend 6 hours doing nothing but picking your nose and zoning out to Netflix? Or Grandma and Grandpa are watching you get day drunk? Because I totally never imagine that. How irrational would that be? Shah!

But you will now.

Paranoia, Paranoia...

Do you ever wonder if the sensors in automatic toilets are actually cameras? And that the cameras are watched by little sewer gnomes who see when you finish, and push a button that makes the toilet flush behind you? And that the little sewer gnomes are taking statistics about obesity in America?

No? Okay. Me neither...