Rant ahead. I try not to post anything that isn’t funny or at least interesting, but sometimes, circumstances get the better of me.
Tonight, we hosted a vacuum cleaner sales rep. We did this as a favor, even though we already own said vacuum; but it is an older model, so we thought we’d see what new features have been added. For the most part, the demonstration went fine. Until the end.
See, as a Thank You for sitting through the demonstration, you get a free hotel stay in one of several selected cities. Randy was reading them off to me, when the rep piped up:
Rep: Have you been to Palm Springs?
Me: No.
Rep: Oh, good. You don’t want to go.
Me: I don’t? Why not?
Rep: I was there once for work. We had a week long seminar. That place is FULL of gay guys. You don’t want to be there.
Me: [flabbergasted] Well, since I don’t have a problem with gays, I don’t see the issue. I also don’t have a problem with men who don’t hit on me.
Rep: Oh, well, then you probably won’t have a problem. I hated it. They’re EVERYWHERE. I mean, every bar I went into, they were all over the place. I was freaking out!
I just sat there with my mouth open in shock. Then I got up and left Randy to see the man out while I stormed down to the basement for a cigarette. I’m a little ashamed of myself for not saying anything, but honestly, I couldn’t imagine what to say. I still can’t.
You know, have your feelings. Have your opinions; the fact that we’re all different keeps the world interesting. But what in the WORLD would make that man think that he could just spray homophobia all over our living room? The fact that we’re obviously straight? Because I know we never said anything that would even hint that we’re homophobic; so what brought that on? Does he think that most people feel the way he does, so it’s okay to just blurt it out at everyone? Gods, DO they?
Maybe I’m just used to seeing other perspectives from my time in Moms Online. Maybe I’m blinded to the way the world really is, who knows? But I don’t want to even touch the free house-bong he left. And I’m grateful that when he asked us for other names for referrals, we didn’t give him any. I don’t want any of my friends - gay or otherwise - to be exposed to that kind of thing.
How is it, in this day and age, that people can still think everyone thinks the way they do? I know, I’m just as guilty of that as the next guy -even THAT guy, since I’m so surprised. But, still. Why hate someone because their life is different from yours?
Ξ September 13th, 2008 | → 5 Comments | ∇ Rants |
By now I’m probably just talking to myself, since I haven’t had anything good or funny to report in a long time. I’m sorry. 
But today was creepy.
Randy and I went garage-saleing (sp?) for the first time in a long time. We were just happy that we were able to go again before Garage Sale Season ended. I just wanted some new books; Randy was pretty much looking for anything electronic.
So after he made a trip to the ATM, we bravely set out in search of garage sales in spite of the rain. The first garage sale we went to had baby stuff. Lots and lots of baby stuff. Like, ALL of it. Not outgrown things that had teethmarks and scuffs in them from much loving, but gently used baby stuff. A crib, clothes, toys, diaper bags….the whole thing. Really depressing. We didn’t exchange any conversation with the people running the sale, other than commiserating about the rain, and as soon as I realized just how much baby stuff they had and what it probably meant, we quickly left.
On to the second sale; this one was a moving sale in the more expensive area of our neighborhood. While Randy went in the house with the owner to see a widescreen tv she had for sale, I stayed out with her neighbor who agreed to watch the sale for her. I had already looked over everything and the neighbor didn’t seem to have anything else to do, so we were just standing there uncomfortably silent. Just to make conversation while we were waiting, I asked the neighbor if the owners were moving into the house, or moving out. She said they were moving out. I replied by saying I hoped they were moving into a place they liked better, since moving sucks mightily, but it’s less odious if you’re happy about it. It was just a noncommital response and I wasn’t expecting anything more than a polite agreement or, at most, a Moving Horror Story. But after a long, uncomfortable pause, the neighbor told me that the people are getting a divorce. Good lord.
Not only was I not expecting (or angling) for that, I didn’t know what to say. So I mumbled something appropriate, like, “Oh, that’s a shame!” and called it good. At this point, the neighbor proceeded to tell me more; that the lady is going to be thrilled to get away from her husband, that the husband is a horrible man, etc, etc. I just kept shaking my head and kind of clucking my tongue, wishing that Randy would hurry it UP, already; how long does it take to look at a stupid television? Finally, he came outside beaming; he bought the thing, which is TOTALLY my fault, because I was the one who spotted the photo and pointed it out to him. @@ Now we’re getting a big old honkin’ tv that is silver, goes with our decor not in any way, and is too thin to be able to put my little dustcatchers on top of so now I have to find a new place for them. Not to mention what we’re going to do with the old one.
So, this is creepy, right? Two garage sales; two life-destructive sets of reasons to hold garage sales. I told Randy why he got the television for such an amazing price and asked if we could go home now. Well, on the way home, we spotted two more sales across the street from each other and stopped. They were just two houses up the street from where we used to live and one of them belonged to a woman whose dog we know well; he is a big, black lab with three legs who can escape any and all restraints. He’s also friendly and gregarious, he used to come into our garage and make himself at home with us.
So when we walked up the driveway, I thought it’d be funny to greet the dog by name to show the woman how well known the dog is. So I said, “Hi, Jake!” and petted the dog. The lady looked over her shoulder at me, and said, “Oh, hi! How do you like your new house?”
Okay, well, we did take about a week and a half to move, and we did most of it in the car, so anyone watching would have not only seen the entire move, but also since we just moved to the bottom of the street, would have seen where we went. And anyone who has been keeping up with these blogs knows how very well informed my neighbors are. So that wasn’t too surprising, and I answered with only a miniscule pause. The other lady with her was a neighbor of hers whom we had never really met, so it was a little surprising when she asked if we were still renting or if we’d bought this house. Another pause. We’re renting, not ready to buy yet.
Okay…they knew the owner of the house we moved out of; they also knew we didn’t stay longer than a year, so it’s reasonable to assume that we were renting. Randy moved to the back of the garage, where there were lots of books for sale.
(Aside: all of the sales had been a complete bust up to this point in terms of books. Religious books, self-improvement books, even a few home repair books, but nothing I want. Figures.)
Anyway, I was still chatting with the two ladies, when the one we’d never met mentioned that they see us sitting in the garage a lot. Which…yeah, we do. We don’t smoke in the house, so…yeah. We also discussed school sports and in spite of how rarely DaBoy is seen outside (his existence was a running joke for a long time because nobody ever saw him) yet when I mentioned his school, they both looked surprised and said that they hadn’t realized he was that old. I’d have bet that neither of them have ever seen him at all; their kids aren’t the right age. And, creepy, right? Oh, it gets better:
Then, THEN, one of them looks straight at me and says, “So, have you gotten your house in Omaha sold yet?”
Okay, now, seriously. Only about two of our neighbors know about that, and I know for a FACT that they’re not going around talking to other people about it. For one thing, who cares? And for another, nobody cares. Plus, neither of them are the type to stand around chatting with neighbors, particularly about US, and also? They don’t CARE.
I was completely shocked, but I hid it well, telling her that we close on Halloween and accepting their congratulations. Randy was still in the back of the garage, pretending to look at the books, but standing totally frozen. I changed the subject to the ever-popular sports and we got out of there as quickly as possible. After DaBoy got home from school, we told him about it and even HE was squicked.
Now….really. How? I couldn’t bring myself to ask; I was too surprised. It was one thing when people were identifying our house by the Nebraska plates on the car and knowing we were renting. But this?? And it’s not even like these are women we know beyond recognizing the DOG. Because he only has three legs, so he’s kind of easy to identify. I can honestly say that I have had one single conversation with one of those women during the daylight hours when Jake was running around the neighborhood and I stopped her to ask if he was hers. The other one, I have spoken to maybe twice, once on Halloween last year (after dark) and another from about three houses away while I was pointing the direction Jake had headed. I’m fairly sure that during none of those conversations did our house in Omaha come up.
Another aside: I told Randy I was writing this and he warned me that they might have my blog address, since they seem to know everything else. I could only giggle nervously; he might be right.
Okay, seriously? I am so unbelievably sick of the word “ban”. And it amazes me how people throw it around so casually. It’s like they have no idea what they’re actually saying and that it could someday have a negative effect on them.
Ban smoking in restaurants, parks and anywhere that has a roof, even if there are no sides! Ban smoking in cars! Ban pit bulls! Ban fireworks! Ban firearms! Ban cellphones for cars! Don’t like it? Ban it!
I heard a jogger yesterday complaining about being “forced” to jog through somebody’s lawnmower exhaust because the homeowner was *gasp* MOWING his LAWN when this jogger, who was jogging for his HEALTH happened by! As they passed my house, I heard him tell his jogging partner that they should ban - something. I did’t catch what he thought they should “ban”, but I’m sure it was self-serving and probably involved forcing people to go back to the old-style push mowers that only had blades and wheels, no motor. And no exhaust for him to run through. Maybe they should ban jogging on public sidewalks. It’s a hazard to the joggers (obviously), they’re hard to see at night, and do they have any idea what jogging does to their knees? Not to mention the traffic problems they cause. Ban jogging!
This, to me, is how we abuse our freedoms.
If we don’t like something someone else is doing, why, we just get enough people together and ban it! Ban auto emissions! Ban saturated fat! Ban religion in schools! Oh, wait…….that one never happened. It was only teacher-led prayer and proselytizing that got banned.
And now, the newest bans, for your reading pleasure: Ban plastic bags! Ban bottled water! I mean, seriously. What happened to the days when you just told people, “Hey, those bottles take 700 years to break down in a landfill, and also, the plastic leeches something into your water, so you shouldn’t use them” and then let them make up their own minds? Now they want to ban plastic bags - as far as I can tell, there’s no real reason for that, especially since almost everyone reuses them as trashcan liners or cleaning out litterboxes or something - except that on a windy day, you can see them flying around everywhere and they get caught in trees. I think the reason given here is that one of the geese that hang out in the city ate one and died. Which is sad, and yes, people need to be more careful of their garbage, but for heaven’s sake!
As I recall, when animals were turning up strangled to death on the plastic rings that hold six-packs together, we were simply told that the best way to avoid that is to cut the rings up before we throw them away. Nothing (that I heard, anyway) was said about banning them; just be responsible.
But now we have to BAN everything because there is no personal responsibility anymore. People can’t think for themselves; we’re too used to having the government doing it for us. And human nature being what it is, people can’t resist the power to control someone else’s life, regardless of the effect that person’s choices make on them. “Do it the way *I* want it done, or I’ll arrange a ban!”
I think we should ban bans and go back to letting people screw up and taking the consequences. But that would involve too much thought.
I don’t even know what that means, but it describes my life right now as it does every Spring.
Yup, I’ve done it; I’m mostly nocturnal. I hate doing this, but nights like tonight are why I have to do it. I go to bed at around 3:30 AM - which, if you’ve read my previous blogs, you know is the Storm Hour - maybe fall asleep around 4:00, wake up briefly and barely when Randy comes in to kiss me goodbye in the morning, then get up at about 11:00 AM. On a good day.
I hate sleeping that late; by the time you get up, half the day is gone, you’re logy and zombified and most of your actual awake time comes after your loved ones are tucked comfortably in bed, snoring happily.
But every time I think I need to work back into a diurnal sleep pattern, we get a 7-day forecast like the one we’re looking at now, which predicts thunderstorms EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. And, of course, the chipper pronouncement of this is always followed up with the heartening statement, “after Midnight”. So, I could technically go to bed when Randy does; after all, I do like the guy enough to share a bed with him. But then I’d wake up “after Midnight” to the first flash of lightning even if the storm itself is too far away to hear and that would piss me off. Every time.
So I’m down in the batcave right now, at 3:00, where I’ve been since about……well……”after Midnight”, waiting for the storms to begin. Now they’re showing up on the radar and starting to fill in the gaps between thunderheads and it’s going to be getting loud here in an hour or so. Randy just headed back to bed.
He was up, you see, because I found a great big, very fast, flying bug in the living room. The cat somehow managed to not notice this two-inch-long monstrosity and I decided after chasing it all over the house, that it was too big for me to handle alone. So I got Randy up to help. We’re like a well-trained-team. The Bug Team. He catches them in my handy bug trap (two of those red plastic cups; one traps the bug, the other goes inside the first cup, holding said bug down into the bottom of the cup. Sheer genius and no worries about where the creepy crawly is when you finally get it outside), while I squeal, lift my feet up one at a time as though I have to go to the bathroom, point out where the bug is, and once it’s trapped, I open the door for Randy. Go, team!
What’s really annoying is that he’ll be back soundly asleep in a matter of minutes, while I arrange my sleeping bag-bed (which is still down here because I wasn’t kidding about that), lie down and wonder when I became too old to be able to sleep on the floor without all my bones poking through. And it’s not as though I don’t have enough padding, either!
So, yeah. Nocturnal. Now if I could just convince people to stop assuming my day starts at the same time the rest of the world’s day starts so they won’t call me at 8 AM when I’ve had approximately 3 1/2 hours’ sleep.
Ξ February 15th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Rants |
I apparently expect too much from people.
1.) I expect employers to pay their staffs on time. And I expect them to pay the full amount. I expect to be able to count on payday actually BEING payday.
2.) I expect people to return phone calls.
3.) I expect people to do their jobs without me having to call them to ask them to do their jobs.
Explanations:
1 - Randy’s employer hasn’t paid them on time for a couple of months now. Payday comes and they all get an email from the CEO telling them that they’re not getting paid until the following week, but this will be the last time this happens. Then the guys will get called into the COO’s office one at a time, given partial payment or even full payment, then told not to tell any of the others about it. Then, instead of doing Direct Deposit like they’re supposed to, they pay by physical check which takes 24 business hours to clear. Even if he were to get his check today, it still wouldn’t clear until Monday at the earliest.
The reason for this is due to clients supposedly not paying their invoices, potential investors taking longer to decide than expected, the planets being out of alignment or something. Regardless, this is the second job in a row where they can’t seem to get their payroll out on time. Is it too much to expect? They sure have no problem demanding the guys be there M-F 8-5, but paying them for this - that seems to be a privilege.
Now I get to spend the rest of the day calling people we owe to explain that we’re going to be late. OUR credit gets hit because of this bullshit.
2 - Whatever happened to common courtesy? When you call a person, get dumped into voicemail and leave a message, is it too much to expect a return call? If you want me to rent your house, you have to pay me the courtesy of returning my call to set up an appointment. And then when I’m no longer interested, don’t act like *I* wasted YOUR time. And I’m not even necessarily talking about personal calls. Business calls are treated with the same lack of response. Which leads me to explanation of….
3 - Why is it that I had to call my doctor’s office to get test results two weeks after I was supposed to hear from them? And then had to get the results from a nurse instead of the doctor himself - and of course, the nurse couldn’t answer any questions so all she could do was write them down for the Great Man. After which, the NURSE calls me back with those answers. Needless to say, I found another doctor to their great surprise.
Or why I had to call the agency to discover that my “sure-thing-just-a-formality-you’re-a-perfect-match” job interview wasn’t going to happen because apparently I wasn’t a perfect match? And this was three weeks after I was supposed to have heard from them. But during the conversation where I was chirpily told I didn’t rate an interview (and of course, she wasn’t the one I’d been dealing with, so she didn’t know why I didn’t rate), I was also reminded that it’s my responsibility to call with my availability on a regular basis. Well, shit. That’s the only way I find out anything, so OF COURSE I’m going to call - and haven’t I always?
Heaven knows I’m not perfect, but is it too much to ask people to just do their fucking JOBS? And if they don’t want their job, I’ll take it - as long as I get paid on time.
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