…So Hard for it Honey

(First off sorry I haven’t posted in ages, I’ve had trouble coming up with ideas for posts. If you have any please share them with me here.)

I did some depressing math recently in my head… OK, I lied because I can’t do math in my head. But it’s alright because that’s why God created Texas Instruments who in turn blessed us with advanced calculators. Anyways, getting back on track. I figure the average person works from about again 20 at the latest to say age 60 give or take a few years on either end and  that’s roughly 40 years.  A year as 52 weeks so if you figure about 2-3 weeks vacation/sick time that leaves you working at least 49 weeks every year.  Are you keeping up with me here? And at 40 hours a week that’s (40hrs) x (49weeks) x (40years) = 78,400 hours of an average life spent working.

You read all the time about the amount of time people spend watching TV or sleeping etc. Correct me if I’m wrong but while it might not be productive to watch TV at least it’s entertaining and enjoyable… unless someone else is holding the remote in which case these feelings may be slightly deminished. And sleeping… well a.) it’s not like it’s a stressful activity, b.) you usually feel better after doing it and c.) you have to sleep to live. Work on the other hand for most people, myself included, is often stressful, is not fun or entertaining and I usually don’t feel better after doing it.  So the question is… must you also work to live?

All of these facts plus my astounding deductive reasoning skills have led me to the conclusion that I will most likely spend somewhere in the neighborhood of 78,000 hours of my life working at an assortment of jobs I don’t like. And countless others complaining about people there that I like even less, and dreaming of ways to somehow become independently wealthy. And all for a paycheck. Unfortunately, in the real world in order to have the things we want: houses, vacations, cars, clothes, food, etc. we have to have the money to by them. And unless your last name is Hilton, Trump or Bloomberg,  there is only one way I know of to get that money; working. So that answers our previous question.  I suppose the key at the end of the day is finding a job you really like doing, with people you like doing it with, so the remainder of your days can be spent toiling away in happiness. Who am I kidding… the key is alcohol and drinking it when you get home from work so that you can build up the courage to go back for just one more day, or… get drunk enough to rob a bank.

I Love the Fresh Scent of Gain

I am a terrible insomniac, the only person who never took naps even as a child (much to my mother’s chagrin) and to this day it takes me nearly an hour to fall asleep after I lay down, no matter how tired I may be.  And during that hour and sometimes for many more after when I can’t sleep my brain is running a million miles a minute. And it’s usually now about anything important. It goes something like this: “I wonder what shirt would look cute with those boots tomorrow?… Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there… I wonder if anyone I follow in Twitter is still awake too… you know what I miss, Skip it… yeeeeah those were awesome… I think I left something in the dryer, that’s gonna wrinkle…why is dryer lint always the same color?” And that’s where about I got stuck the other night. And I spent far too much time mulling over the topic in my head.

I mean if every time you wash the load is different why is the lint always nearly the same? If I wash a load of blacks and then a load of whites why instead of dark almost black line and crisp white lint do I end up with two slightly varied wads of the same old greyish, bluish, purplish lint? Dryer lint is composed of what I can only assume is fibers off of the clothing in question.  So I would understand a load of jeans producing this bluish glob… but why blacks and whites. For white first I pondered if perhaps it was bluish because of the fact that yet another mystery of the universe is the fact that every detergent I have ever used is blue. Why is that? I suppose for the same reason tampon and sanitary napkin commercials always use blue in their informative video demonstrations. Blue is the color of clean. But then wait of the blue is from the detergent why is the lint from my blacks not… black? The blue wouldn’t cover black.

And then I resolved the debate with myself swiftly and harshly. “Why is dryer lint always the same color? Who really freaking cares you weirdo! Shut the hell up and go to sleep. Oh and by the way… BY MENNEN!”

Public Service

Almost every time I go to a restaurant or a store I am reminded of how some people in this country flat out don’t know how to act in public.  They are the people we lift up and unfold 10 shirts off a clothing display to look at them and make no attempt to limit the destructiveness of their actions or to repair the damage they have done because they have the attitude that “they pat someone to do that.” They are the people who go to a restaurant and ignore the waitress and point to what they want on the menu because they’re too busy talking on the phone and then later want 4 things on the side and something extra hot, or god knows what. And then they round their $40.13 bill up to $42.00 because they don’t get that you make $2.13 an hour so after her $2.00 tip you probably just made about $4.00 an hour… not a wage to live on.

That is why I believe that at some point in every American’s young life, each person should have to work in retail for 6 months and wait tables for 6 months. You having been in that position will learn how to tip, how to behave, that they do not have to be demeaning forms of work if asshole customers would stop making them that way.  I am always reminded of the scene in the movie Waiting where the customer thinks her steak isn’t cooked correctly and says “How hard is it to do your job?” Well mam… thanks to people like you, pretty damn hard most days.  I myself have worked in both fields, they were my first jobs in high school, and the part-time jobs that got me through college, and they drove me nuts because some people genuinely just don’t get what goes into it.  When I shop I try to avoid messing up displays and refold the things I’ve touched, and when I try on clothes that I decided I don’t want I put them back, instead of dumping them on the girl in the dressing room. Every time I am at a restaurant my husband and I prebus our own table when we are done with our food, and unless you were a complete idiot you’re getting at least a 20% tip.  Why… because I’ve been there and done that an I know how to act in public. I sure wish the rest of the world did.

Follow the Leader

I consider myself to be an intelligent person, now that being said there are several modern day phenomenon which I must admit I do not understand. One of them is traffic. I understand stop and go “traffic” where there are stop lights because well… that makes sense. You have to all stop, and then as the light turns green there is an inevitable lag between the first car, second car, third… you get the idea, all getting moving again. But why is there traffic on interstates. They have no true beginning or end for the most part and no stop lights. And I understand accidents occur and lanes are blocked etc. which is an obvious exception. But even in high volume situations, isn’t driving on the highway a very large high speed game of follow the leader? I mean in theory (and perhaps this is where I go wrong… theorizing) there is one guy leading the pack on the highway, one guy with no one in front of him, on a long lonely road (cue country music). And if that one guy keeps moving, then everyone behind him, no matter how many of them there are should keep moving.

This is the point of my ponderings in which I realize that this theory is based upon the subsequent theory that the people following the leader are familiar with the concept of merging. And you’d think by now I would have realized this couldn’t possible be the case. But even the average hick up from a merge, a brake light here, a slow down there… does that need to bring everything to a halt? Does a brake light on the New Jersey Turnpike overturn a tractor trailer on interstate 85 in Georgia is some sort of bizarre mutated Traffic Butterfly Effect?

I don’t get it and the more I think about it, the less it makes sense and the more I want that flying car that science fiction movies have been promising me since the early 1980’s. Those movies were all set in the crazy futuristic word of 2015 and had flying everything. Either GM was really set back off the timeline by their recent bankruptcy or… they’re a bunch of lying bastards and I intend to find out which.

I mean if there is something I’m missing please explain I’d love to understand how something so simple seems to so regularly go so wrong.

Hairy Situation

Today upon entering the bathroom at work (yup… we’re back in the bathroom people) I discovered something gross on my seat which I see all too often. A lone curly hair approximately 3/4 of an inch long.  Which got me to pondering, because (and I don’t think I’m alone in this) when I see a hair on a toilet seat the only place my brain is able to go is “EEEWWW!!! A PUBE!”  Is this me having me head in the gutter? Or is this the typical response? I’m sorry but if it’s short, dark and curly and in an area you would have taken off your pants… it’s all I can think of.  If that means my head is in the gutter then so be it.

Which got me to thinking about the fact that it’s 2009… and even if you’re not waxed down to a Brazilian… I would hope in this day and age that women are at least landscaping to a certain extent, perhaps shaving, at least a trim. I thought they were.  Like the hair I saw this morning… why was it almost an inch long? Are they going to braid it this weekend?  I really don’t need or want to know what’s going on with you and your vagooter! For heaven’s sake, if your free loving au-natural ass takes the beaver out of its cage, please have the courtesy to check that it hasn’t shed on the seating… PLEASE.  You can do it while you’re wiping off the piss you sprinkled on there while hovering.

I don’t need anymore flash backs to the terrible videos they showed us in Human Sexuality class that were all made in the 70’s when everyone was apparently much hairier and they had not yet seen the technological advances of the razor or wax.

Whimping Out with Age

It has occurred to me recently that a lot of things tend to bother me as an adult and it’s not very hard to compromise my comfort level. This is something I appear to have developed with age and I’m not quite sure how I feel about it.

Back in the day when I was little I played outside a lot, I rode my bike all over the place, we played sports and ran around and got sweaty, we were always dirty, we drank hot water out of the hose… you get the idea. How a days it’s a different story. My husband and I recently got new bikes as part of our “get off our fat butts and do something” initiative.  I rode the bike once and was like alright this isn’t THAT bad… butt hurts a little.  I Rode is a second time and did half my ride side saddle because my ass was apparently bruised from the first outing. After 2 easy bike rides I resolved that there would be no more riding of the bike until I bought an ass cushion. I don’t recall ever being bothered by a bicycle seat in my childhood, and I know I didn’t have a seat cover, and I am even more sure that my butt itself was less padded back then. So when did my butt become a total candy ass? (pardon the shameful pun)

And aside from the bike, I as an adult hate the feeling of being dirty. If I get sweaty… I want a shower.  When we were little our mother had to throw our dirty butts in the shower or a bath because we were content to just wallow in our disgustingness a bit longer.  When we were little we used to play outside all day during the summer only to venture in for occasional food and blue cool-aid.  But mostly we got thirsty and went to the hose of the nearest kid’s house and drank water that had been heated all day in the sun inside a rubber hose… delicious. Now as an adult, I don’t even like cool tap water. I get cold filtered water out of the refrigerator and there is usually ice involved at some point.  And speaking of playing outside, the only rule in the summer time was that you’d better be back home when it got dark.  Well this usually meant we were outside until 9-10 o’clock thanks to the longer days.  Now as an adult I dread being outside in the summer after 7 because as the sun starts to dip behind the horizon I know that the bugs will come out, and darn it if they don’t find me delicious.  Well… I’m pretty sure I taste the same to bugs now as I did then, and if I’ve always been delicious why didn’t I care about bug bites back then but HATE getting them now. Have I lost my itch tolerance with age?

I suppose what I wonder is, have I always been bothered by these things, but to a lesser degree? Or was I truly unfazed by them as a child and have developed new comfort settings as an adult?  And if so why did this change occur? Is is a natural part of getting older? Is it that now I have experienced a clean world full of soft seats, cold water, and insect repellent, and I just don’t want to go back to “roughing it”.  And don’t get me wrong I still go camping, I get sweaty, I hike, I work in the yard, I go on adventures… it’s just that now, I notice it.