Rescued

Ayla and Jondolar. Or, "Apple and Pizza" depending on who you ask.

We scrubbed out their cage after dumping a patty of birdseed and birdpoop, and because of all the direct sunlight the cage has been in the bottom tray is all cracked and broken, and the toys are all sunbleached. I scrubbed their water dish and gave them clean food, and then went to Wal Mart to buy them some new toys.

Wal Mart only because I was also out of laundry soap.

I saw the Arm and Hammer with Oxyclean and I bought it because it made me sad.

:(

David and I were on the aisle with air fresheners, and he wanted us to buy a new Febreeze Air Effects since we were almost out of our Crisp Autum scented one. I love this stuff. It works good and it's so good smelly. So we were minding our own business spraying the different scents into the air and taking big whiffs, and just as we sprayed some Meadow flavored one and gleefully stuck our faces in the cloud of scent, a woman came around the corner and started busting up laughing at us.

"Oh my god," she snorts, "you guys could be in a commercial."

Why, because we smiled and opened our hands like wings and sniffed into the same Febreeze cloud from opposite directions? And made a loud and collective sniffing noise?

Okay so we were caught. And I will do it again.

When we got back home and presented the birds with new shiny things and bells and millet, they only seemed mildly annoyed that we were putting our arms in their cages, but I don't think they're tame. They might not be holdy birds but they might be okay with through the cage interaction. They are in fact a boy-girl couple, so nobody has to ruffle their feathers over gay birds or anything, and they constantly make out. They seem to like living inside, but they haven't touched their peach I gave them. And they're enjoying their slantways perch that we installed for them. "Challenge" they say. I think they'll be fine here, and even if those people come back from Mexico I don't intend to hand the birds back over. Their cage was filthy and their old spot had no shade at all. I'm surprised they lived.

There was once a parakeet accident at my first apartment involving direct sunlight. I'll have you know that they were in the shade when I left, but when I came back the shade had gone and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were dead. It was ironic.

Chimay, by the way, the baby parakeet I had a little while ago, climbed out of his cage to freedom some time in the night a few weeks ago. I don't clip their wings at all. I keep my birds inside now.

I'm going to try to feed the birdies a grapefruit because a man at the library gave me a bag of grapefruit. For free. I don't know why.

You know who else I saw at the library is Don Quixote. He was walking around flapping his arms and turning abruptly to face imaginary enemies. He was over in the Sci-Fi section. Good man.

The birds seem uninterested in anything but their cheap seeds, but it seems that no parakeet I've owned has eaten the "premium blend" which includes sunflower seeds and big brown seeds and corns and dried fruit. I'm thinking that these guys were just kind of stuck in a cage and fed sometimes, and they weren't even at eye level or anything. I don't know why this guy was so against me taking them, I mean it's obvious that these weren't really pets. They're not even touching their millet and I've never seen a bird not clear a spray of millet in anything more than 12 hours. I'm thinking they'll figure it out soon enough.

Offering just seed is like offering bread and water to a person, and they actually like to eat fresh fruits and veggies. I saw some African Greys clear a couple of fish tacos at the pet store a while back. They eat like people do.

My next mission is the dogs.

This is one of the dogs, the fatter and less growly of them. The one that was whimpering for help like he's realized that his humans left him. He lives in a hole that he dug in the shade. I am helping the neighbor with a yard sale on Sunday hopefully, and we'll try to get rid of them then.

The only reason why I haven't Freecycled them is I don't have them here with me, and they're all locked up behind a gate. Plus? A stranger trying to take a scared dog from its yard?

Right. Yardsale first.

I don't exactly have direct access to the house either, and the dogs don't know me and also the one is rather growly. Another option is the Yucaipa Animal Placement Society or YAPS, but I'm not sure if they take animals or if they only rescue them from pounds. People tie their dogs to their fence at night and they arrive to find empty leashes because the coyotes usually get to the poor things before they do. I'm not entirely sure how their shelter works. But I will keep you updated because people have seemed interested and sad about the doggies. Hopefully they'll end up with homes, and not taken by the city or anything. Sally feeds them leftovers like potatoes and rice with their Kibbles and Bits.

I'm happy to have rescued the birds though, and also these fine leather couches which my butt sticks to not out of sweat, but out of love.

Coming Off A Summer Cold...

...produces even crappier singing, but the mediocre ukulele stays relatively mediocre.

For Alexandra Bitchford who requested "Sister Christian" plus a very special tribute to start us off. And I do mean special as in "special."

Tonight we are grilling with wolves of the beta persuesian. Of course our upgrade to comfy leather couches will only mean that Steppy stays later. Also after a lot of hard work I've finally gotten correct payment information for the bitches that is Verizon and I got Crapital One to settle for what I wanted them to...just not for the date that I wanted to pay. I'll bitch them around until they comply, but it's a small victory nonetheless.

The birds are well. The dogs will hopefully find homes at the yard sale.

Wade has arm floaties for the pool.

David is teaching Ty how to play chess. David doesn't even know how to play chess. This is fascinating.

Atypical For A Sunday

Back at the abandoned house, the friendly dogs aren't as friendly anymore. David tells me they've realized that they've been abandoned and they're getting mean, the poor dears. One growled, the other just seemed like he was crying for help and like maybe he was lost. He misses his people. I took pictures of them to post on Freecycle. I might have taken them if I could keep dogs here.

I did rescue the birds, however. They are mine now, a blue parakeet and a green parakeet. I have named them Ayla and Jondolar.

A billion points if you know what that is referencing.

Really we were at the house to pick up our new couches. Ah yes, our new leather sofa, loveseat, and chair. Plushy and kinda maroonish colored and better than our old ones by far. The old ones had structural problems and because of them so did my back. Not good times.

Of course I lifted and carried nothing. David and Sally did all the work, and I played with my birds.

"Oh you get to be Princess who never does nothing. I'm lifting your new couches for you Princess, you think that's how world works?"

"Obviously."

"I'm your Mexican for the day," she goes. And then she shouts loud enough to echo off the buildings "She pick me up at the Home Depot!"

"Sally!"

"What? Is cheap labor, you're not even paying me."

Yes well I am not completely useless, I will have you know. I helped David carry our old couch to the dumpster at like 1:00 in the morning last night. It makes me feel like a champ.

With our new furniture in place we visited my sister's house to find the garden almost dying. Turns out some cappy thing on the sprinkler thing popped off and there was no water pressure for the corn and the pumpkins and the cucumbers. And we think there are skunks eating our tomatoes. Does anyone know of any skunk deterrents? Because it's not like you can just tell them to scat, they'll fuck your shit up man. Hardcore.

We went to Sam's Club and I eated an ice cream cone even though milk makes me shit and vomit. None of that went down, but later when we were on our way up to Big Bear I had heartburn so bad. I couldn't stop it. We listened to The Cure because the radio doesn't come in up there.

Why we climbed the mountain, that mountain in the picture up there, I'm not going to say right now. You'll find out in a few weeks, but there's a project underway that's all hush-hush like. We drove all the way up to the lake, and as we didn't actually go into it or stop for pictures of it, there will be plenty of time for that tomfoolery later.

Are the Terwilligers moving to Big Bear? Stay tuned.

At any rate, we were all pretty hungry and even though there's a whole city up there with a Stater's and a K-Mart and a bunch of awesome places to eat, we ended up at Denny's. Why? Because I saw a sign in the window saying that kids eat free. I'm all about shaving $7 off of my ticket when I can. Anyway it was outrageous because we're in this mountain town where the main export is snow, and the waitress, swear to god, had hair that was at least 15 inches off of her head. She had it clipped against her head, and then teased so that there was a big wavy...poof...thing capping her off like a geyser. And she called us honey and sugar and puddin.

And the dude behind us? With the old dude with him?

Waiter goes, "can I interest you in an ice tea?"

"Sure but...wait, how much are we talking here?"

"$2.50."

"I don't need no god damned $3 tea, fucking outrageous."

"Okay, how about lemonade?"

"Lemonade sure or um...how much?"

"$1.19."

"I don't need no dollar lemonade, I'll just take the free god damned water."

And the younger dude's all talking about how he was pulled over by a "female sheriff's deputy" and how he knew when he saw that she was one of them lady cops that she was just out to exact some kind of wrong some man done to her.

Best part was the old couple that brought a dog in, like a little whiskery guy that probably cost $4,000 and he was wearing baby clothes. He even had a hat and a pacifier around his neck. He was also wearing a bib. He got carried in like an infant and was seated in a booster.

When the waitress came by I asked her if they're regulars, and like what's with the dog.

"Oh, that's their child."

"Their child is a health code violation."

A ha ha ha ha ha, you folks have a good night.

No, the Terwilligers are not moving to Big Bear, it's something else, I promise you.

On the way back down the mountain, we must have killed about 200 moths that all splatted on our windshield and various parts of the front end of our humble Mazda. It's their damn fault though, as they shouldn't have been on the damn thoroughfare.

Thoroughfare. That's an awesome word. Go use it in a sentence today to someone and tell me how you did.

Partly Rational Fear

One of the weirdest things about me is I have this phobia, and it's so rare that the phobia isn't even a named phobia, but it's just as irrational. A google search for this phobia turns up about 5,000 results, which--come on--isn't a whole lot. BUT the phobia is out there.

Actually, I have another phobia that I refuse to discuss (this is the other thing that I wont talk about besides 9/11 which I sometimes talk about) that turns up about 51,000 results.

I'd tell you, but I cant even write the word for what I am scared of. I get all creeped out.

The phobia I will tell you about is what I call drainaphobia: the fear of drains at the bottom of pools.

This isn't exactly stupid because in reality those things are in fact dangerous, but I take it to this whole irrational level. The way they ripple under the water's surface as you're standing on the edge and looking down into the pool, the way they're just so...open and gappy and venty down there, all sucking and being fucking creepy as hell.

I remember being about 10, and living in the mountain community known as Poppet Flats. During the summer my "sister" who was my foster parent's real granddaughter and I would walk to the Silent Valley Campground and hijack their pool for a few hours. The so called kid's pool was 12 feet deep. It had a diving board and black lines on the bottom. But I remember it was huge, and I loved it. Except? It had a big huge like three foot by three foot metal grate in the deep end that I swear to god, was right below the diving board.

I'm looking down at this hell hole and it's undulating with the current. I suddenly feel actual fear wash over me. It wasn't the depth of the pool, or even going off the diving board, because I could swim all right and I was pretty much a dare devil. Lacey tells me to hurry up and jump in, and I remember thinking that there's no way that I'll dive all the way through 12 feet of water.

Ja, I was wrong.

I zoomed right to the bottom, and I was all up in its grill. What happened next is the little kid equivalent of "aw HELL naw." I freaked the fuck out and flailed my limbs as fast as I could to get me away from that fucking thing. I surfaced and said to Lacey the little kid equivalent of "that god damned thing scares the ever living shit out of me," and she dismissed me as being a retard. I did the little kid equivalent of flipping her off, which I think at the time was some kind of gesture between "poof be gone" and "talk to the hand."

My phobia may have started that day, or it may have existed prior to this, all I know is that this is the first memory I can recall of being scared of pool drains.

I continued to swim at the pool, and even went in the deep end, but I would only cling to the sides. Never would I even dare swim over the monster at the bottom that threatened my very existence. When I did go off the diving board, I more or less got a running start and jumped over the thing, and once in the water I would swim as fast as I could to safety. One time we left some of those rings that you throw into the pool and they sink to the bottom so that you can retrieve them, and the next day when we came they were all fucking stuck to the grill. I wouldn't even touch the toys after that, I was so god damned scared of anything that had to do with the drain.

Worse yet, I discovered when I started going to the so called "adult pool" on the other side of the park that if a pool is not north-south facing, I'm freaking the fuck out as well. I've somewhat overgrown this, I mean I would not buy a house with a pool that is east-west, nor do I prefer to swim in pools that face this way, but I can tolerate it.

The pool drain however? To this day freaks my ass out.

When I used to swim at the gym, the pool had two of them, one in each of the outside lanes. I was forced to use the middle lane, and be horrified of their evil whenever I reached the deep end. And it was totally scary because the deep end was only five feet deep. I was like, right next to them.

But this isn't 1995 anymore and pools are designed with safety measures these days. The gaping vents have been replaced with nifty little plastic caps with holes on the sides, which is still freaky but not as visually freaky. And they're safer. I'm not entirely sure what I am afraid of, I'm not exactly scared of being sucked down, even though I assume that's the worst it could do to me. But for example when I look at a snake I automatically assess the danger as "that bitch could bite me." When I look at a pool drain, my mind just goes "AAAAAAAAAAAH!" Not "Watch out or it will suck your foot" or "If your hair got caught in it you'd drown," but just "AAAAAAAAAAH!"

I wont put my feet down in a spa, and you're lucky if I even leave the steps. I am not messing around here, I am genuinely afraid of these things.

And Sally? She mocks me by standing on them. "Is not doing anything," she says.

"Don't stand on that, it freaks me out!"

"It cant do nothing."

"Exactly. Get off of it."

"Why?"

"It's a portal to hell."

"You're just being weird," she says.

"This coming from the woman who thinks that cats are her dead relatives?"

"Is different," she says and points at me. "Cats take souls into them. Pool drain only makes water fresh and clean."

I swim out of the deep end and tell her to suit herself. Get sucked down by the satan hole, I dont give a shit. I'm leaving. I wont watch you act so recklessly.

She says fine. And she says I'm weird, and she follows me out of the pool. Down below those evil little bumpy things of death are hoovering leaves and toenails and whatever food it can inhale. I wonder if it didn't take her because she's not a virgin, and everyone knows that only virgins are good for sacrifice. I think my biggest fear was that she would knock the cap thing off and it would just be open and vortexing water and making me cry.

"You still want the couches from the house?"

"And the birds and the dogs. I'm trying to find homes for the dogs actually, but I'm taking the birds with me when we pick up the couches."

"What time you want to get them on Sunday?"

"You know, whenever you wake up from your death nap and pry open your coffin."

"See that is why pool drain did not take me. It knows hell rejected me three times."

My other phobia sometimes is Sally herself.

Leave your weird or even unweird phobias below.

It's All Been Done

There are a lot of good things about the time that we are in right now. With my generation especially you can plainly see that we've become way more tolerant than the previous generation has of who people are and what they do, and I'm sure that by the time that generation dies off and we become that generation, perhaps Ty's generation will treat gays how black people are treated now.

You know, not calling them filthy names and taking away their rights and such.

Not that things like that don't still happen to black people, but I'm generalizing.

The one thing that makes me sad about my generation is that it has no great music. I believe that all of the great music has already been written, and anything that comes out that is good is just a copy of what someone else has already done.

The 60's had The Beatles and Elvis. The 70's had Bruce Springsteen and Bob Marley and Aretha Franklin. The Police. The 80's, though probably one of the most useless decades we've had in hundreds of years, at least had The Cure. Van Halen. Michael Jackson.

Ah, Michael Jackson. Jacko. The king of pop and all that and people loved him. I remember his music, to an extent, but I was too young to know him when he was great. I only know him as the creepy pedo man who was always the butt end of a joke about K-Mart's special on little boy's underwear half off. In fact, I've never owned a Jackson CD nor have any of his songs ever graced my iTunes, nor does my regular radio station play his songs. The one and only record I ever owned that is even remotely related to him is Weird Al Yankovic's "Fat" album, which I later replaced with a CD because who the hell has a record player anymore?

Ham on, ham on, ham on whole wheat, all right

lol.

Perhaps I never really paid attention to Michael's music even after I was old enough to decide what kind of music I like to listen to on my own because I was probably put off by the whole manchild thing. Granted, I was fascinated that throughout the trial, his fans stood by him, and people still all over the world consider themselves to be his biggest fans. I wish that we, the children of my generation, had something like that. Except without the creepy amusement park. And maybe not dressing like a barrel organ grinder's monkey.

Or maybe that. I mean, it worked for Michael.

Kinda.

I'm not saying that the peeps of my generation don't like the man's music, I'm sure they do. In fact, someone has to because frankly my generation's music sucks. Badly. There are good things to come along, and good stuff is still being produced, but my generation lacks an Elvis, it lacks Beatles. It lacks anything of substance, and don't you dare throw Kurt Cobain in my face because all he did was not shower and go over his voice with sand paper every night. If he hadn't of died, Nirvana would not be nearly as appreciated.

Okay, maybe Kurt Cobain, but if so then I am embarrassed that he is the best we could come up with.

I am excited for the Air Supply concert I'm going to see, along with KC and the Sunshine Band, and Pat Benatar.

Okay so I'm not actually an Air Supply fan, it's just the fact that the concert is free and why would you turn down an opportunity to see Air Supply for free?

It's Air Supply! Hello shut up goodbye. Air Supply!

I remember finding my sister's diary one time from when she was little and she wrote in it how excited she was that Michael Jackson was on tour. And I remember thinking that he was a very pretty woman after seeing the cover of the Bad album.

Remember Mmm Bop by Hanson? The song that gets stuck in everyone's head and makes them want to stab themselves in the eyes with forks. The band that every boy in 8th grade masturbated to until they found out they weren't girls. Then all the girls (sans me) fell in love with the very boys that the 8th grade guys had all jacked off to mistakenly.

And all that N*Sync stuff?

That's what was going on when I was in high school. And look how great all that turned out. N*Sync tried to be the Beatles of our generation, NKOTB, Backstreet Boys, ALL fail. People still buy Beatles albums. You might not even know what NKOTB stands for.

Would the world even remotely shed a tear if Lance Bass or Joey Fatone died?

PS I only know their names because I've seen them scribbled on folders with big pink hearts and I cant seem to unburn the memory from my brain. That shit was everywhere.

My point, if I have one, and I'm not sure that I do, is that I seriously doubt that any music made after 1990 will go down in the history books like Beatlemania did, nor will they make a Graceland type memorial for the lead singer of, say, Flea from the Chili Peppers.

If you disagree, leave examples below in the comments. The rules are that the band/singer can not have produced an album before 1990, and they/he/she has to have created a serious impact on the music industry, big enough that it will actually be recorded in history books that perhaps Ty will read.

David? Said Bush. Um...I don't think he gets it.

Steppy? Said Jewel. Um...lol.

I don't think they get it. However, in our defense, perhaps our music sucks so badly because this generation is better at film. Eh? Eh?

A Hot Mess

"Are you sure they're coming back?"

"She said they were. I don't think he wants to but she wants her daughter to go to school here."

As she's unlocking the chainlink gate that rolls across the driveway, two fat cockerspaniels come running up to the fence and start sniffing my hands.

"I used to call them 'ugly bitches,' but now that I take care of them, I guess they're not so bad looking." We close the gate behind us, and the dogs don't bark or even jump on me, they just circle me excitedly. "Hello bitches," she says to them.

"They left their animals?"

"Oh is okay, I feed them."

"Yeah but they need love too. Who pets them and stuff? They need homes."

"Well she says they're coming back."

"They're five months behind on their mortgage, there's not going to be anything to come back to. Why the hell did they go to Mexico anyway?"

"That's where his parents live. Look, there's birds here too." Above me there is a cage with two little terrified parakeets. "I tell him to let him give the birds to you and he said 'no no, those are my birds!'"

"No they aren't! He abandoned them! They cant live outside all summer, they'll die! Banning gets even hotter than Beaumont does and is twice as windy! Dude, I used to live like three blocks that way. I KNOW how it is."

In the shed we hold Jesus candles to see, and she attempts to move a bed frame. "What's in the house?" I ask. "Is there electricity?"

"Yeah, I pay the bill for her for it to stay on. I need to pay the gas tomorrow now that I think about it."

She unlocks the door to the house, and a wave of stale heat hits us and makes us both cringe. Inside there is trash just strewn about, the kitchen counter covered in food mess, and upon opening the fridge I found it full of food. There are power tools all over the living room furniture, and baby toys all over the place. Nobody bothered to wipe the tray for the high chair.

"It's got to be like 90 degrees in here, and why did they leave the place like this?"

"I don't know, they just didn't care I guess."

"But they're coming back? There are dishes in the sink. How long are they going to be in Mexico?"

"Like a month or two, till August I think."

"But by then..." I look at pictures that the little girl drew on the fridge, "the bank will have seized this place. Those dogs will be put to sleep when Animal Control comes to get them."

We walk down the hallway into a room with silver squares painted all over the walls. She tells me that he's an "artist" which is why the whole house has such neat paint work on the walls. And did I see the front of the house? The tiled floors are elaborate, but nothing I would ever go for.

We're in the Barrios here, proof enough of the bars on the windows and the fact that the radio station left on to make it sound like someone is home is just classic mariachi music on some Mexican radio station.

She tells me that she's going to have a yard sale with their stuff, but that she's not allowed to sell this that or the other. Like the bedroom set, or the drafting table. I don't get it. They're unable to make their payments so they are abandoning their property and hiding out in Mexico. Where in the hell does she think this stuff is going to go? I mean Sally says she'll put some of it in storage, but looking around I mostly only see junk and trash.

"You will help me with a yard sale next week?" she asks me.

"Um...yeah, I'll help you. But you have to tell your friend that she's not going to get a lot of money for this stuff, and there's really no point in storing it. She should really just stay in Mexico where she has a place, I mean, nobody's going to give her one up here."

"But the little girl has to go to school here. She's starting the kindergarten."

We're in East Banning in a hot mess of an abandoned house, caring for abandoned animals, getting ready to yardsale everything we see, and I just go "This is kind of sad."

Something That Disturbed Me

I'm not going to reiterate how anti-social I am because you've heard it and seen it a million times. But part of the reason I'm getting out this summer and doing all these library things and telling David that I want him to take me to the Lincoln Memorial Shrine in Redlands because it's the only civil war and Lincoln museum in the US on this side of the Mississippi, is because I just need to put myself into more public scenarios and just get over my fear of people. Maybe not cure myself of it, but at least avoid becoming so cloistered. I still try to avoid some situations.

Like going somewhere new for the first time with the neighbor. I'm not afraid of new places, but I usually like to go to those with David because he's like a security blanket. The neighbor still thinks I'm weird when I wallflower like I do and tries to thrust me into things. If I clam up when I'm with David, he'll just take over and do the talking for me.

I try to avoid spending too much time with my inlaws because it's become blatantly clear that his mom is back to her old ways. His dad, whatever, nothing against him. He's just an old fart, and that's fine. But things haven't been right since David caught her having Ty put together Jesus puzzles on her computer to keep him entertained, which is weird to begin with, but even weirder that when she called me into the room for something she had changed the picture to a puppy.

*smells a rat*

We aren't indoctrinating our children at all, we aren't telling them that certain religions are bad or giving them a biased opinion, and we are letting them draw their own conclusions; for example when Ty asked how the first people got here I asked him how he thought the first people got here, because I told him that nobody knows for sure. People have ideas, but why not try to come up with your own idea since nobody truly knows for sure. Above all we are teaching them that we are good people who do the right thing because it is right and we know it is right, as opposed to telling them that they'll be punished for all eternity if they don't. They know that police arrest people who are bad, but they know nothing about violent crucifixions and gods who are bullies and tyrants who tell you to believe the fuck in him or be lit on fire. They know that they get grounded for things that they do that are bad, but only because they knew what the right thing to do was and they chose not to do it. And being grounded is nothing like lava pits and brimstone and all that cockamamie bullshit.

Mostly because it's in the oh so tangible here and now, and not this mysterious "great beyond" that happens after you die.

Of course, if they end up choosing that religion when they're old enough to understand the facts about it, we'll be nothing but supportive. But right now Ty still thinks that spaghetti is all one noodle because I told him that. He doesn't question it because it's what I've told him...and that's how religions stay strong through the centuries.

Back to my point, we've been avoiding spending time over there at his parent's house, but then David made beer with his dad on Monday at their house, which takes hours, and his mom ended up slapping the shit out of David, twice, because he half jokingly said in his father's day card that he wanted to take his dad to the titty bar.

Granted she hit him on the back, but it was not playful, it was violent. And for me, disturbing.

We do NOT hit in our family, it's just not fucking done, and for this so called "virtuous woman" to strike her adult son and say "Married men don't go to titty bars," I was fairly shocked. We don't even playfully hit each other. The first thing I said was "And good mothers don't slap the shit out of their adult children."

She went on about titty bars and how she can do whatever she wants because she's his mother, and you know how I am totally inappropriate when I'm upset about something and I'll crack jokes about death or baby rape or whatever because I cant get a grip on myself and show the actual emotions I'm feeling at the time, so when his dad was saying that strip clubs are only there for entertainment and she's shouting her crap from the other room I go "That's okay David, if your dad isn't man enough to stand up to his wife, you and I will go to the damn titty bar."

That was the end of the conversation, pretty much, because she was back on her computer watching her reality shows that she's addicted to.

You know, through everything I've tried to be nice to her, understanding of her, tolerant of her. I've been totally jealous of my sister whose mother in law calls her a few days before her birthday, not to even talk to her son, but to tell her happy birthday and that she would like to take her out to dinner. You know, the whole thing that sparked the situation where we did not speak to his parents for over a year was I had started a blog and I was upset with them at the time and I wrote about how they treated me. Their answer was to have David's two drug addict brothers call David up and threaten to beat the shit out of him and throw my "pregnant ass" down the stairs. FROM THEIR PHONE LINE. His mom was sitting right there. Totally not stopping anything.

These people push violence and I've never fucking liked it, never. My goal in life is to make my children's lives 50% better than mine, and I can really boost that percentage by taking violent drunkards out of it. So that's what we did.

Look, I'm weird. I have more faults than California does, but I recognize them. I try to defeat them by actually getting out of the house on occasion and pushing myself to do better. I realize that I'm not well liked, that's fine. They don't have to like me, or even love me. They just have to be nice to me. His dad gets this I think because he probably hates my guts but he's still nice to me for the most part. But his mom and I just clash, and there's no way to fix that. Which is why I try to stay quiet, mind my own business and speak when I'm spoken to.

But I hit back when hit and attack when attacked.

I'm not over here saying to the kids that grandma's a mean old hag who hits Daddy, I'm leaving them out of this for the time being. And I'm sure that once my father in law reads this, he'll tell her about it and she'll cry her sorries on the phone to David, or maybe even show up to the cans and ask for a hug. Everything's okay now.

Pat pat pat.

I don't think everything is okay.

It was hard for me when Victor's real mom hugged me and said "thank you for being a part of my son's life." And hard when his whole family was actually happy, very happy to see me even though we were all there to be sad and mournful.

I know that if it was David in that box, his mom probably wouldn't say shit to me, or if she did it would be of religious nature.

I've been struggling for a long time with my ugly duckling complex, and I still don't handle rejection very well. When Victor's step mom said "Oh that's right you don't like to touch people...oh well, get over here" and hugs me any time I see her, or when she said "oh that's right, you and Victor both didn't believe in God," as if it was just a casual thing instead of a mean spirited thing about something physically wrong with me, it's totally weird to me because there are adults out there who not only like me, even after I broke their dead son's heart, but they accept me for all of my faults.

Seeing his mom hit him like that disturbed the hell out of me, and I'm still thinking about it. David accepts it as "my mama aint right" and just grows apart from her a little more, but otherwise it doesn't affect him. He doesn't see the point in asking for an apology because for one she wont mean it and two it just wastes minutes on his phone. And then if she were there in person, again she wouldn't mean it. She'd try to make it look sincere though, like she always does.

I'm just kind of done at this point with her. It's been building for a while, David of all people knows this. He's the one who told me that when he went into the room the puzzle picture was of Jesus. I know which team he's on. The team he's supposed to be on as a grown ass man with kids and a wife and a soon-to-be mortgage. Car payment, how's that? Since he doesn't exactly have a 401K or anything like that. AND A GRILL!

I think what also upset me about seeing her do that is that it's almost symbolic in the sense that it's like the start to a bunch of shit that's about to go down. Honestly I hate it when shit goes down, I don't have time for shit to go down right now, I have libraries to raid and creditors to harass. Not to mention a personal problem that has to do with my safety that has been brewing since April which I still refuse to talk about.

And now I've completely lost whatever shred of trust and respect for her that I had left, which is sad since she's the only grandmother my kids have.

I don't want an apology, I don't want to discuss it with her and make things all pat pat pat better, I just want her to go away. And that's not happening, which is why I'm ever so glad that I have a blog. Free therapy. Hooray for journaling.

And hooray for comment feedback. I could use some today ;)

Abusing The Library System

I hear about these soccer moms...and...will I ever become one? Well, I'm not particularly against the idea, it's just that I cant seem to picture Ty doing sports. Wade maybe, but he's still too young for most teams. I said a while ago that I was looking for stuff to do in the summer to keep the boys busy, and didn't find much that either wasn't outrageously priced or for an older age group.

Except that I did find a partial calendar of events for the Beaumont Library online, and I thought while I'm at it I should probably sign Ty up for a library card since he's running out of things to read here.

It's still weird that he's read a Little House on the Prairie book and while watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the movie he pointed out where there were differences between what he was seeing and what he read in the book. Well at any rate, he needs books to consume, because I've found that when Ty is not focused on something like school or some project, he gets destructive, which lead to a week long grounding last week when he took apart his grandfather's sprinkler system.

The library here is a Carnegie library, and though I have been to this library a few times, it was before the remodel which included making the second story that had been previously closed into useful space again. Today I learned just how useful this space is.

The walls are painted with murals and the molding is all painted in primary colors. Here, tons of little kids, I mean from baby on up, go here to do hands on activities and listen to a story.

Was I the only person in the world that had no idea that libraries do this kind of stuff? For FREE no less?

I was wondering why there were so many people with kids standing outside the library doors right when it was opening this morning. I was there to get a card for Ty, and all these other people too?

No, turns out they were all headed to the second floor to paint with string while I'm all "O HAI" to the front desk.

Some pictures of what I learned about libraries today:

Using different mediums to paint...

Story time with Miss Nancy

Multi tasking in the classiest of ways...

And this? Happens every Tuesday and Thursday. Not only that, but they have a Summer Adventures In Literacy program which is a reading program for kids where they use charts to keep track of how much they've read which in turn earns them prizes. We checked out six books today, mostly lighter stuff since Wade is doing this too, and one thicker book that Ty picked for himself.

I was surprised to see about thirty or so people there, some with infants and some with three or four kids, and I was even more surprised when other moms actually talked to me. One lady, Mica's mom, she was talking to me about how much her little guy likes to play with kitchen stuff. This is because my boys were playing kitchen stuff at the time too. (There's tons of shit to do up there.) She didn't know what Easy Bake Ovens were, and I had to tell her about the magic of cooking by lightbulb.

This other mom, we got to talking about Preschool, since the one Ty went to that was in the district closed this year. I said that we put in an application at the other state run preschool in town and she warned me that she had heard "stories" about that place, like the teachers not breaking up fights and not wiping snotty noses, and how one friend of a friend yanked her two kids out of there because of this.

I dont know. Take everything the moms at the library tell you with a grain of salt.

Then again I never would have known that had she not told me.

And dude, there are libraries in every town. We can't get cards at all of them, but we can certainly leech off of their free activities. Tomorrow the Banning library has a puppet show. Thursday is another story time and craft time like today at the Beaumont library, followed by story time at the new Chatigny center on Cherry at 1:00. Storytime again at Beaumont on Friday. Crafts at the Banning library on the 1st, AND dont think I left out Yucaipa because I didn't. We're talking a whole different set of story/craft time at Yucaipa, along with storytime at both Beaumont and Yucaipa's Starbucks's, even crafts at the beautiful Smiley library in Redlands.

Seriously, look up your local library online and see what they're up to. I had no idea that the libraries did this kind of shit and chances are if mine are doing it yours are too. Some days there are three or four activities at different times that we are going to hit, like story time in the morning and then an art program at 3:00. At the Banning library we are looking forward to tye-dying shirts and puppet shows and an ice cream social. On Ty's birthday in August we are going to go see a professional juggler. How fucking cool is that? And a lot of the programs are designed for little kids so I highly recommend that you look into it if you have any of those running around.

Not to mention, Lowes has a free project for kids to build every second and fourth Saturday of the month, and Home Depot does theirs on the first Saturday. They build bird houses and fire trucks and stuff like that for free.

Besides the free entertainment and activities, keeping Ty focused on something, and an excuse to use my camera, I think who is really benefiting from this is Wade.

He really needed something like this.

And I am not so much a soccer mom as I am a library mom.

Verizon Is Bitches

Now remember, we're cleaning up our credit and making good on our debts so that we can prove to the loan underwriter that we are good people after all. And also because, well, we owe people money.

In righting this, we scanned our credit report, and four of the things dinging our credit scores had to do with old telephone services...which is odd because we're only talking about two accounts here.

So with mine, both Verizon was reporting and so was a company called Afni, which is Verizon's collections company. Somehow they were both allowed to report the same bill.

With David, he had Verizon reporting twice, same amount, both reporting in 3-09. This account is several years old, as was the other one, but they're still diligently reporting twice because Verizon is bitches.

To simplify this further, my credit report looks like:

Verizon

Afni

and David's credit report looks like:

Verizon

Verizon

So we need to pay this and get it removed. Now, as of last week I am clear with them as I paid my debt, so that should have been reported to the credit agencies (Experian, TransUnion and Equi-Fux) and if not then I have a letter here from these bitches saying essentially "Boo-Yah!" so I can just give that to my loan lady man and she will take care of it for me. She said she would. So I am no longer an issue here. The only issue here is with David's accounts, and there is an issue with David's accounts.

See, when I called Afni to pay mine off, I inquired about David's, and they tell me that "Well, we did have the account, but Verizon pulled it back, so now they have it."

And calling Verizon? Yeah, just TRY calling Verizon some time. You will be shouting at robots in no time. This was particularly difficult because the robot prompts you as if you are already a customer or you want to buy something from them, not pay off a 5+ year old debt, so you have to keep shouting NO! and pressing zero until finally a tired person says "Hello? Hello?" and then hangs up on you.

That was attempt to reach Verizon #1, made by David, who whined.

He called back, fought the robots, explained that Afni no longer has the account, and the tired person connected him through to Afni.

Going nowhere fast.

So I grabbed the phone, called those bitches up and said "I need to pay this, Afni does not have it and says that you do," and they said "Oh we don't have it. We sold it to CBCS," which I forget what that stands for. I get through to CBCS, and the lady was very friendly unlike the Bitches that is Verizon, and get this--the lady at CBCS said that they had the account in 10-08, and that Verizon requested it back from them on April 15th of this year.

Okay, so you'd think that Verizon would have record of this shit, and we could have just dealt with them in the first place. Bitches, though. Bitches.

Calling those bitches back again and being like, "Guys, we know you're full of shit, because you had the account, you gave the account to Afni, you took the account from Afni, you gave the account to CBCS, and then took the account from them in April, so stop being bitches and help me."

God, it's like "I want to give you money" and they're like "Jump through this flaming poop first."

Finally I was transferred to Verizon's billing department (which is where they should have sent me to begin with,) given an account number, and the website Verizon.com/payfinalbill. You know what, let's just check this now and see if it even exists.

...

Oh it exists all right. But the account number? Bogus. I'm back to square one here. Luckily I was able to find a contact form that dealt with paying debts and not trying to get me to sign up for Vios.

I swear to god, Verizon is bitches, and I am going to have to slap me some bitches.

And if one of you bitches says "You should have paid your bills on time," I'll slap you too. We're making good on this, not trying to weasel out of it or even settle for a lower amount. Which is why this is so puzzling.

You'd honestly think these bitches would want their money. Whatevs. I'll just keep going to great lengths to reach these people to fix this problem, even though they're a bunch of unorganized double reporting bitches.

Man Out

David is not unique in his constant quest to feel like a man. He always wants to feel like a man, like any man does. He wont even shave with my perfectly good unused girly razors because they're girly, and he's a fucking man. Or so he says. Yeah, he is. He is a man.

He's a dad. He made funny glasses and a praying mantis out of pipe cleaner to impress the boys. He wore the shirt they bought him, and even read the card with the guy farting on it at 6:00 in the morning when they stormed in with the Target bag demanding that he open it.

He got a boner when I modeled my new summer dress. Twice. (the other one was later, it wasn't like boing droop boing all quick like.)

He planted the raspberries that I bought for our porch in the garden that he plowed, planted, and irrigated because they got too big to live in a pot. He rode a bike for the first time since he broke his collar bone and then took the bike apart so we could take it home, he washed the car, and then he stood and looked sadly at the grills when we went to go buy charcoal.

"Le sigh."

"David you want a grill, don't you?"

"Yeah."

And then I saw a grill for $15. Not much of a grill, just a basic little metal bowl with a lid. A big sticker on it saying "THIS IS NOT A WEBBER GRILL, NEVER HAS BEEN A WEBBER GRILL, AND IS NOT ASSOCIATED WITH WEBBER GRILLS IN ANY WAY." Four different colors to choose from, and one of them blue.

David's favorite color.

"You want that grill, don't you David?"

"Uh huh, uh huh, cuz then...cuz then we wouldn't have to deal with assholes...who like want to use the grill at the same time as us...and like...it could be mine and I could cook meat and be a man!"

'Tis true that this would be the best $15 we've spent all week now that we've gone and learned the fire cooking. After all, the last time I was at the grill there were, and I'm not making this up or exaggerating, three unsupervised kids ranging from two years old to five years old, and they were, I swear to god, climbing on the side of the flaming BBQ and putting their basketball on the grill to see if it would catch on fire. Oh yes, we shooed them away, and they thought it was a great big flaming fucking joke.

The two year old? Flipped me the double bird with a big smile on his face.

Maybe that's where that dream I had came from.

A grill that we wont have to be concerned about who pissed on it or threw plastic on it, a grill that only me and David get to piss on...if that's the kind of mood we're in or something. It's not like we go pissing on grills but people do, which is why having our own would make things better. We'd be able to verify that it is piss free.

"You want the blue one?"

"Yes!"

And so we bought a grill. The wire racks are a little flimsy, but they do the job. Our swordfish and lobster is going to be fucking great. We even bought a grill brush.

David is such a man.

And the alpha wolf howled at the moon and the passing sirens.

On The Agenda For This Week

Oh boy, let me look at my handy dandy scheduler to see what we're going to be up to this week! God I love anal-izing everything into little boxes with numbers on paper.

• Sunday June 21- Father's Day, let kids give David the hideous shirt they insisted on buying for him and card with guy farting on it, BBQ swordfish steaks and lobster tails and crab legs, also remember to give sister flowers for her birthday
• Monday June 22- Spend day with in-laws while David makes beer aka the lager that he couldn't come up with a name with until I said "duh, fucking Terwil-Lager," try to forget strange dream where I called my mother in law a bitch and a retard to her face even going so far as to write the words down on a chalk board that appeared out of nowhere and flipped double birds at her, call Verizon to verify that they even have David's old account information because the creditor lost it and if Verizon cant provide it the debt is automatically resolved (win for us!), take pictures of the so called "landing strip" house
• Tuesday June 23- whole lot of nothing, file restraining order, make spaghetti, bake cookies
• Wednesday June 24- story time at Starbucks, buy more glitter glue and popsicle sticks to keep the kids busy, drop by post office to mail pay for delete letter and books to people from the sex toy site, harass people who have placed ads in the Penny Saver, harass Bank of America and demand that their robot apologize for destroying my ring
• Thursday June 25- Payday! pay car insurance ($80), tell Capitol One to take the $300 or suck the crap out of my sweet ass, mini golf
• Friday June 26- grocery shopping, laundry, reach page 300 of the real estate text book, visit library, exchange sexual favors for money schedule "intimate time" with David, clean bathroom
• Saturday June 27- build pirate ship at Lowe's with boys

I'm obviously a very busy woman.

Man...maybe I should have waited till next week to do this. How many times can you seriously write "oh next week I have an appointment to meet Air Supply and later in the week I'm meeting Pat Benatar." Like it's nothing. Oh and free museum day on the 5th at the museum in Redlands! Sweet!

Summer is fun-tastic!

David's God Damned Face

My house is 80% clean 80% of the time. I have people over a lot, even if it's just the neighbor poking in to give me a cake.

She always gives me cake.

I cant get her to stop.

This last one was an orange cake with strawberries and some flavor of custard that I can't quite seem to be able to place my finger on. It wasn't that great. But I cant get her to stop.

By 80% clean I mean that I've all but given up on mopping unless the floor is sticky or there is a visible spill, because every time I mop the kids end up fucking it all up the next day. And there is usually laundry to be done, since it's difficult to do it regularly when you're fighting the entire complex for the only dryers that actually dry your clothes the first time. Plus the kids room is usually trashed, but that's another story

By 80% of the time I mean that sometimes I either just stop caring long enough to let the sink get full OR it goes the other way and I've made everything sparkle.

I don't wear big t-shirts and sweats all day, or at all really. I dress myself even if the farthest I plan to go is the mailbox.

I don't strive for any sort of perfection, but I don't look like shit or let my house look like shit either. This way I don't get too overwhelmed and it's all pretty much maintainable, and if someone is coming over I just need to pick up and wipe the bathroom counter.

I'm writing this because I am building up to my complaint about David's facial hair.

Facial hair on him does not grow in evenly. He gets bald spots, and I personally think that the "I couldn't be bothered to shave this morning" look is more dirty than anything. Some people can make facial hair work, like people who can not only grow it but actually keep it looking nice with the maintenance and manscaping.

David however, since he got booted from the CHP application process, he's just been regularly not shaving, growing patches of hair here and there, attempting mutton chops but letting them get all scraggly and frankly, gross. When he was all convinced about going up to Sacramento in June, he was clean shaven, buff, and his hair was never more than a half inch long. This is the look that I like on him. Officer David. The look where cops ask him if he's a cop. "Oh but I look like a kid without facial hair" NO! With facial hair, or whatever you're calling that four days worth of stubble on half of your neck, you look like the dirty guy who works in a parking lot.

I keep the house clean and change out of my pajamas because I like to present our home and myself as not trashy. Being from Yucaipa I am trashy by nature, but you don't really see that when you look at my house and you go "where's your TV" and I go "oh we don't watch TV we read books" and I point to our full bookshelves. I wear clothes from Target but at least they're my size and fairly modern.

David represents us, and for god sakes if he could grow real facial hair I might just say go for it. In fact when he had his broken collar bone and had nothing better to do than manscape every day when he had the mutton chops and the little beard going, that worked fine. But David doesn't give a crap, and he'll just go days on end without shaving because he's lazy. Granted he works a lot so he's not exactly lazy, but you get what I mean. If you're not going to take the time to maintain it, just do away with it completely so that you don't look like the dirty guy who works in a parking lot.

The other thing is that when David doesn't shave, he forgets that he's still going to be a cop, and therefore he stops running and doing his pull ups and push ups and all that.

When is he applying by the way? I cant say for sure, it changes every week. Right now he's still thinking of CHP, even though he swore them off, but now he's going back. First priority is to get the house because they look at homeownership as a plus.

And so I told him, "David, please shave your neck hair, it's gross and scratchy."

"But it makes me look like a man."

"Now now, nobody can see how handsome you are when you look so ugly. You look much better as Officer David, and it makes you behave differently."

"How so?"

"You're more mature without the facial hair. And when's the last time you ran, huh? Stopped doing that about the same time you stopped shaving regularly. Now come on, let's go get you a shave and a haircut, huh? I like you much better when you're all copped out."

*le sigh* "Okay."

And so he did. And he looks much better. But he's still far from perfect.

Case in point:

"David...David did you seriously just flick a booger into the refrigerator?"

"No."

"I just watched you do it."

"That's not what happened. It went under the refrigerator."

He still had facial hair when he did that. I'm hoping the shave will curb his booger flicking.

This Makes The Most Sense

On the subject of the group of 13 year old girls who not only read my blog but my books as well, including the one who wrote an actual book report on Bombshell and have claimed me as their "role model," I've been kind of wanting to address the issue for some time. This is because I started getting texts the other night from Lexie, who was telling me how thankful she is to know me, and how much I've helped her through these hard times, and how much she looks up to me, and it made Steppy raise his eyebrows because he was here at the time, and he thinks it's odd that I of all people have 13 year olds who worship me (14 in Lexie's case, happy birthday) when he believes that I'm not such a great influence on them.

Um what?

There are two things that I always tell kids like them when they come to me for advice, be it my niece or some random girl from the internet, I always tell them two things.

1. Don't do drugs.
2. Don't be a slut.

I've done lots of things, but I never did these things. I've always known exactly what I was doing it when I was doing it, and I made conscious decisions not to do some things.

Oh but Steppy's all "You should not have a brood of teenagers. It's not right. I knew you when you were 13."

Barely. And I'm not 13 anymore.

But rather than refute his ridiculous statements, I've decided to allow someone else to do this for me. He is called Richard "The Dick" Coughlan and I actually think I might love this man. I told him once in an email. He never responded. But I'm posting this video today because it makes so many many valid points that I cannot say better myself. Sort of like when people post song lyrics to their blogs and are like "You guys, this is like SOOOOO how I feel, like you don't even know."

He's a bit crude, but so am I. Get your kids out of the room, and listen to what the man says about being accused of being a role model for young children because I totally agree, and sometimes I need to let someone else speak for me and this man does such a fine job.

The Wreck Journals Progress

I've received three (plus extras as gifts) journals to wreck. This is actually creating plenty of work for me, because not only do I have to copy from the master journal, which is my own paper journal, I have to do it twice more and not all of these are going to match up if you put them together. Obviously when I paint I wont be able to recreate the same picture twice, try as I might, I can only tape David's expired driver's license to a page once, and frankly some books are shorter than others.

One journal I have has blue pages with little yetis sitting in chairs or chasing people with baseball bats on all the corners, so this book wont be painted in, though the little yeti guy is occasionally covered up with scraps and things. Also because that book is not spiral bound, I can't tape thick stuff into its pages.

I have gotten journals from Bookjournals.com from two participants, and I'm finding that even though it's kind of sad that the book was destroyed, they're still neat because they still contain pages throughout the journal that are from the original book. I don't touch the original pages whatsoever, but I have promised to fill the blank pages, and since these Book Journals are spiral bound I am piling the crap high in those pages.

All three journals contain an art page that involves bubble wrap.

One surrenders my internets in the event of my death.

I drew a crest and copied it into all three of them with the caption "My symbol is the castle. Strong, defiant, impenetrable. The closed drawbridge and man eating sharks in the mote symbolize how I relate to others."

A picture is worth a thousand words.

None actually worth hearing.

I've been promised a Harry Potter journal and as I recall there were a few more of you who asked for my address or already had it and wanted to send me a journal. Thing is though guys, you have to get those mailed out very soon because I wont be accepting any more journals to wreck after June is over since I intend to get these back out to you in September and also this may no longer be my address and also I cant spend all day writing the same crap in 50 different journals that arrive at 50 different times. If this ends up being win I might do it every summer, but this is a particularly bad summer to spring things on me late since things around here are changing so much. Or hopefully they will. As of right now they are but if I'm still a loser sitting in an apartment in December I'll buy you a Coke. Hows that sound, champ?

It's not that I keep a whole lot of stuff off the internet in these journals, it's just that some of it is art, or some of it is not appropriate for the internet, which I very seldom find. Some of it is just too short to include and some of it I have been sworn to secrecy on. Some of it is just popsicle sticks and candybar wrappers. I go through a lot of scotch tape.

In return, Kelly is actually wrecking a journal for me. I find this intriguing, to say the least. I wanted to do this project, or some form of it, ever since that big awful thing happened a few months ago and I wasn't able to blog it. I thought maybe taking pictures of the journal pages I wrote and making them private on Flickr, but then I thought not. Somehow I came across an actual journal called Wreck This Journal and I thought hey, I already do all that stuff to my paper journal. Why not wreck ten?

And so it is.

Still deciding if I want to include photographs of people, though I will attempt to collect autographs. Maybe a sucker that everybody licked on. Or everybody's pubes. I don't know. I feel weird asking for pubes. I don't, however, feel weird asking people to lick candy that everybody already licked, because I don't have to tell them that last part until the deed is done. Then I'll tape it to a page and send it to YOU. Maybe you could lick it too? I know I would(nt.)

One thing I have found while looking over the paper pages, and even in the electronic blog pages, is the one thing that brought me out of my weird depression a few months ago is the ukulele. For some reason, being able to make music again made me happy and closed up a hole in me that has been missing for years. I love the thing. I'm not very good at it, and I still cant sing very well while playing it because of the whole pat your head/rub your tummy thing going on, but it's still funner than shit. I have now been told by THE MAN that even though it's technically not allowed, I could take the thing with me somewhere and sit with a cute little hat and try to play for tips and the cops wont bother me.

No, I'm not very good at the ukulele but I do have big boobs which I intend to partially expose via a cleverly low cut shirt which I assume will gather me some attention.

I'm not getting any younger. I have to use them for something.

Ukulele time.

"Delilah" by The Dresden Dolls

Wolves

The beta wolf, a gentle wolf with thick skin is invited to the fire pit of the alpha wolf, while the female circles and complains of needing some god damned fucking meat right now damnit. The alpha wolf isn't a cocky fellow, and so when it is learned that the beta wolf is more competent in the ways of fire, the alpha steps aside and hands over the tongs; briefly giving the beta the illusion of the sweet taste of alphaism.

(Note that I'm not sure if alphaism is a real word but you understand how I'm using it here, I assume. Also the only definition of it I could find was "Alphaism is a beginning tantra ritual which is commonly practiced with dianism, a kundalini and tree of life sexual ritual." That's not what I mean.)

Though the situation is still somewhat primal and sexual in nature, as the beta is often in the alpha's territory in hopes of one day claiming the alpha's female.

Tongs in hand, the beta wavers on whether to put the meat on the grill before the grill has reached the precise temperature for cooking, or if he should play it cool and poke at the coals some more and grunt.

The beta chooses the latter.

Sparks fly into the air as the grunting and poking commences. The alpha stays silent but watches the fire with the same intensity, and then throws more lit matches onto the fire for no other reason than it's awesome.

When finally the grill has reached the temperature desired, the alpha presents the beta with raw meat. The female runs home to pee. She always has to pee.

Slowly the slabs of thick meat are laid onto the grill where they sizzle and send up steam. Chips of cherry tree wood make the smoke smell like a sweet perfume which both the alpha and beta try to inhale, but with burning eyes they cower from the plume and yelp as they rub their eyes. Smarter now, they close their eyes and re enter the plume to smell the delicious cherry wood scent, and the alpha boasts of how it was all his idea.

The beta, though with a female and cubs of his own (because wolves have cubs, didn't you know?) is on heightened alert when the female comes by him to inspect the flaming carcass meat. The alpha is standing by close enough that he would sense any sort of mating rituals that the beta would attempt, and so the beta sticks to his casual show of effort in cooking the night's meal. Casually explaining how to know when the meat must be turned to the alpha, who hopes to learn his own way around fire cooking.

When pools of blood collect atop the slabs of meat, the beta proudly flips them onto their other side, and then points and triumphantly grunts at the marks that the grill has seared into the now browned flesh. The alpha attempts to pinch a piece of the meat to feel its tenderness in cooking, and daringly the beta shoes him away with the tongs; tongs that belong to the alpha himself. Could this insinuate a territorial match of snarling throat tearing violence?

Nah. Alpha's cool like that.

Fire cooking: where pink is often even the manliest man's favorite color. The pinker, the manlier.

The meat is done and the female rejoices.

Now we come upon the time of the feast. The meat, though fire cooked by the beta, rightfully belongs to the alpha and yet the alpha bestows the largest piece of meat to the beta for a job well done. At the end of the day, even though the alpha stood down as the beta displayed his skills and knowledge of primal cooking fires, the alpha still reigns with the female.

As the full moon rises, fluffy white gobs of corn syrup and sugar are cooked over the last of the burning coals using sticks, and are then placed between cookies.

The wolves giggle like wolf cubs.

The Valley Delight

Greetings from cheery Cherry Valley, CA which is just North Beaumont, but kind of better...

I have overly affectionate and attention sucking company coming by (you get one guess as to who it is) so I'll share with you our trip to some people's front yard in Cherry Valley today. We visited the Guldseths, who own a cherry orchard.

Cherry season is late this year because our winter was warm and we had a heat wave in May, and also the cherries are few and therefore expensive. But at least the farms, most of them anyhow, are open.



The Guldseth's are religious folk, with all kinds of bible verses on signs all around their little gazebo that they operate their business from in their front yard. I think it kind of adds to the place's charm.



Mr. Guldseth reminds me of David's grandpa the pastor, and when he asked my name and I said Jessie he said "Oh David and Jessie, that's easy to remember, because Jesse begat David in the bible." He then listed Jesse's ancestors, the whole line up. He asked me about my name and how I got it, and when we paid for our stuff they gave us litterature. You know, on God and stuff. Nice folks. Let's have a look around the farm, where we picked our own cherries.











We made it out of there with about two pounds of all different kinds of cherries, plus a bag of cherry wood chips that we are using when we BBQ our steaks tonight. Not to mention those zucchinis we bought.



Obligatory 365 shot in the cherry orchard...

Summer Agenda

Making plans for the summer, including family fun, being Sally's wing man, and AIR SUPPLY!

Yes, it's that time again, and Beaumont is putting on the Summer Concert series, which last year included Smashmouth and the Doodlebops and Christopher Cross (click to watch awesome Christopher Cross video that I shot from five feet away.) That's who is in the picture to the left today. I was so excited when I read that Air Supply will be playing on 4th of July this year that I called David at work.

"Honey! I have really good news!"

"What?"

"Air Supply is playing in Beaumont in July 4th! Free Air Supply concert honey, isn't this wonderful?"

"...No."

"DAMNIT DAVID! YOU WILL RESPECT AIR SUPPLY DAMNIT! THEY MAKE LOVE OUT OF NOTHING AT ALL!"

"...You do have a point there. *sigh* Okay, I guess."

"You guess. You're a real piece of work, you know that? Will you take me to see Pat Benatar on the 8th?"

"Well I'm already taking the 4th off and the 11th too for that class we have to take for our loan, so no even though I would really like to go see Pat Benatar."

"Yeah? Maybe we could go see KC & The Sunshine Band on the 29th."

"WTF man?"

"David! I wanna put on my my my my my boogie shoes..."

"Yeah."

"And boogie with you."

"Uh huh...Air Supply, fine, but no fucking Sunshine Band."

I don't know what's wrong with him, I mean hello shut up goodbye, FREE Air Supply concert. Are you guys as excited as I am? Because I am Keeping The Love Alive. You motherfuckers, you'll sing someday.

Needless to say I've had to find dates for some of these events. Cousin Debi is taking me to Pat Benatar, and the Miserable Pretty Boy and I are going to Get Down Tonight...or...like later that month at the Sunshine concert, as he has promised to escort me to that event. Still looking for possible date to the Wilson Philips show on August 5th. Any takers? I'll have the Romanian woman make food to bring on our adventure, since it's a lawnchairs in the park kind of situation, and apparently the trash drag their couches there, but again it's Beaumont. It is what it is.

The whole point in plotting out the summer is to keep the kids entertained. So also on the agenda this summer are activities such as the following:

• Story time at Starbucks
• Story time at the library
• Free museum day
• Trailer races at Orange Show Speedway

I have tried to find a summer day camp for at least Ty, and found two things to be true of all daycamps: 1. they are expensive 2. they all involve churning butter for some reason. I kid you not. A nice rustic apple farm in this area that will remain nameless is charging almost $300 to teach your kid how to churn butter and chop wood. There is another one that is put on by the museum in Redlands called Grandma's Attic (which is not nearly as creepy as Grandpa's Basement where you also learn to churn butter but for all the wrong reasons) where the kids play with old whimsical toys that your grandmother played with, watch puppet shows, and churn butter.

It's like that's all they know how to do around here.

I looked into British Soccer Camp, but it's WAY out of our price range, even if there is an adorable soccer coach with an adorable accent.

Grandma's Attic, at $75 a kid for five days is unreasonable, and me being the "special adult friend" they get to take with them for free...in other words, provide your own damn supervision. I can provide supervision at home with a couple of paint by numbers and some pipe cleaner. In fact I think I'll do that, because fuck spending $75 a kid to play with Tinker Toys.

Other than that, there are several lakes that have waterslides around here, such as Yucaipa and Big Bear, and the Orange Show Speedway has trailer races, as in trucks pulling trailers with boats on them and when they crash the boats go flying into the audience. Also they hold rave parties right next door to the speedway so you can see flying boats in one part and then you can turn around and see freak kids wearing tutus and glow sticks.

Sally has invited me to the Celebrity's Lounge to help her pick up men, so I'm a wing man officially. Well she claims it's for billiards but she usually does this thing when she plays billiards with mens where she pretends that she doesn't know how to play thees Amereecan game and then bets them things like "I'll be your slave if you win, and you be my slave if I win," and then she pwns them and ends up taking home man slaves. I'm not sure why she's involving me in this, it seems like maybe it would be easier if I wasn't there since she's doing so well without me. Whatever, blog fodder I figure.

We aren't looking to do anything expensive this summer, so no amusement parks or anything, but I have a feeling that camping might come up some time in that too. As long as I don't miss KC & The Sunshine Band.

Rage Against The Machine

While I was worried about omens and all this other worldly stuff, you guys were all like "Um bitch took your diamond, CALL SOMEONE!"

To the left is a dramatization of how it all went down, in case you didn't fully understand yesterday's explanation of how Bank of America stole my wedding ring. Okay, so it wasnt the bank, it was actually just a grabby robot, and it wasnt the whole ring but this made more visual sense to include the whole thing, along with the proverbial "om nom nom" and angry eyebrows.

So I did what you said and called the bank. At first they gave me this 1-800 number to report problems with ATM machines, which was not what I needed because it was just more robots and account numbers and account balances, and I need to speak to a fucking human. When it finally asked why I was calling and I said "your robot stole my wedding ring" it said, "if you would like to send money to Mexico, press 7."

I called the bank back, and this girl who answered was in shock. "Oh my goodness," she said. "Well..."

"Look, I just need to let someone know that your machine is malfunctioning, I mean, I dont want some senior citizen to pull back a nub, know what I mean?"

"Excuse me?"

"A nub? You know...like the thing just...OM! And then like...their hand...could end up like my ring...okay so could I just speak to the manager or something?"

"Sure thing, I'll uh...patch you through."

The ring its self is not worth much, considering the set of three was something like $400 on sale, and I've seen fucking K-Mart carrying the same exact set for like $299. This is not about money or anything, it's just that the ring is somewhat sentimental to me since it is my wedding ring and all, and there's the whole issue of the potential bloody nub thing.

The bank manager was not available when I called, but I did get to leave a voicemail.

I had not received a call back.

My ring was still in pieces in my car.

My sister told me to stick it to the man and just go in there, and was actually shocked that I didnt just go in there in the first place, but I was too busy worrying about omens and curses and stuff. I blame Sally, who made fondant vaginas this morning, and I'm not sure if they're for a cake. I dont lie, I will try to get a picture of them. Anyway, the Chipper Woman at the window directed me to her manager, who seemed less than pleased that I couldnt just use the 1-800 number she gave me.

"I tried to use it," I tell her, "but it just kept asking if I wanted to send money to Mexico."

I dont think she was happy I was there. She got forms, but kept saying how totally innapropriate the forms were for this situation, and that nobody else has said anything about the robot snapping shut on them. I think she thinks I'm lying, because she very sweetly told me that she was glad that my hand was okay. Right. I'm not stuck on stupid, I know that banks have cameras, so if I was going to scam someone it would not be them. It was a very "there there" pat pat pat situation, and I think I'm a little insulted by that. Okay, so only me can get her ring nomed off by a grabby teller machine, but you dont need to pity me for it. Just please, if anything, fix my ring. And fix your robot. It's a very cool robot and I am thankful for the robot, but this here's a grabby robot we're dealing with. A ring snatching finger chopping robot. It must be stopped.

I dont know that they'll cover the cost of repairing the ring, in fact they may say that I brought this upon myself. Hell, I probably wont even repair the ring myself because come to think of it, it's easier with just this plain one now with nothing sticking out. It was always getting snagged on things, I mean I guess it just makes things easier. And no, I will not follow David and get the wedding ring tattoo because I like my bling and also my finger is all raw and deformed from wearing these rings for five years, so there's no way I could tat tat tat it up.

In better news, one of David's negative accounts on his credit might actually be missing paperwork on the creditor's part, meaning by law it will be deleted. We had every intention to pay it and all, but if they cant even prove where the account is, the law is the law, which is jolly good.

We'll see how this turns out, I guess. And if B of A doesnt side with me, I'll stick fondant vaginas in their robots. See how grabby they get THEN, a heh heh heh...

Good Omen...Or Bad Omen? You Decide

If I don't have jealous Asian women running me down and chastising me for buying a bunch of balloons for a five year old (who I neglected to mention was there to pick up her niece, so it's possible that she has no sex trophies of her own and therefore doesn't understand why we parents would ever lavish our sex trophies with balloons for their achievements) I have some other random off the wall shit happen that can only really happen to me.

I'm going to tell you a story now, and I want your opinion as to what it possibly means in the realm of superstitious bullshittery which I don't necessarily place any true weight in but do at least pay some attention to in some situations.

Like this situation.

I'm at Bank of America, who is not only who we bank with, but who we are getting our loan with as well. I tell you that because it's important to the story.

Now on the loan front, things are looking good. I've got a paid in full letter that Lady Man is submitting to the three big credit reporting agencies, and a few more to come. She's doing an awful lot of work for free right now so she must have faith in us. And remember that 20 of Steamroller's other clients didn't even get pre-qualified for their loans accodring to the Lady Man. Somehow we seem to be in for the win.

Today I was at the drive up ATM depositing a fat stack of cash, and if you've used the new ATM machines, you know how the new cool cash depositing works. This little metal door opens up, you place your fat stack inside, the door closes, it shoom shoom shooms and counts whatever you placed in there, and your money is immediately available. God, do you know what happened to me? The little door starts going bing bing bing at me as it's opening, I place my fat stack inside, and then suddenly the door begins to close on my hand. It's metal and it's moving fast! Luckily I'm still somewhat young and vital and my reflexes are quick so I pulled my hand out fast. I avoided it getting smashed and having the paramedics come and me being on the front page of the News Mirror as the lady who got her hand stuck in the automatic teller machine for three hours.

But, in my haste, and in the machine's haste, somehow the door clipped my wedding ring and my diamond cluster popped right off and went flying into the machine.

The door slammed shut.

I flailed a little bit.

The security guy saw.

I tried to pry the machine back open because um, bitch stole my diamond.

I don't have any good pictures of the ring set, but see how in this picture there are two rings, and the top one, the engagement ring, has a soldered on part? It's covered in diamonds. And now stuck in a machine. So the flailing, yeah, called for. I panicked. I looked at the security guy, who looked at me, and I quickly looked away. There was a minor freak out happening there, and he knew, he knew that something had gone wrong. But just how wrong had it gone? Should he come investigate?

By the gods the machine opened back up because they were unable to process part of the fat stack, like it jammed the machine or whatever, or maybe there was an object in there that didn't belong...like half of my wedding ring, right? But it opened, and I was able to retrieve the snapped off piece.

"Oh no," I said. But it's a clean break so maybe repair wont be hard. Still though. No time for that now, so I readjusted what was left of the stack, looked at the security dude who was looking at me, and waited for the machine to finish shooming. When it's finished, it opens up and yells at me again for something, and there's one last twenty dollar bill lying there, so I just take it. Fuck it.

But security guy is giving me the stink eye.

Bank wont process my money?

Counterfeit, for sure. Or so he thinks.

He kind of moseys on over to my car and asks "is there a problem miss?"

"Dah...problem? No, no there's no problem, it just wont take this last bill is all and um...it broke my wedding ring so...I'm kind of in a bind here, um...if I seem nervous."

He doesn't ask to see the ring or anything, he just looks off to the distance and backs away without another word. I yeah, like, took the money and printed my statement and got the hell out of Dodge. Or...Calimesa, as it were.

But I wondered, is this an omen of some kind? Bank broke my wedding ring, in the week of our Seven Year Itch no less, and just happens to be the bank that's giving us our home loan. BUT, I got the diamond back, see, so it wasn't a total loss. And I do have just the plain band still, so I'm not ringless, and even if I was I have bad bad tan marks and my finger is practically deformed and dented in because of where the rings are. It looks slightly weird but one thing is for sure, I'll never be able to fool anyone into thinking I'm not married. I never take them off so I think maybe the skin was beginning to think it was just more skin. It works with having just one there, it just...feels weird.

Given the circumstances though, how would you take it? Bad omen? Good omen? Completely unrelated?

The Balloon Incident

I don't know if you've ever tried to drive a small sedan that is filled with mylar balloons, but it's not really all that easy.

I love giving balloons as gifts. I gave David balloons for his birthday once, which he immediately sucked the helium out of, and one time when my dead ex boyfriend Victor was having one of his suicidal rages I drove all the way to San Bernardino with my Eclipse all full of rainbow colored balloons.

When you get balloons, it's like suddenly you don't want to kill yourself anymore.

Best place to buy balloons? Dollar Tree. Because they're a dollar. So I went to Dollar Tree and they were pretty much out of balloons because all of Beaumont is graduating today. No congratulations balloons, no graduation balloons, I mean thems was slim pickins at the dollar store. At the registers they had bunches of what they had left blown up, leaving us with the choice between pink hearts, yellow happy faces, and black stars.

He's not a girl or emo so the happy faces would do us just fine.

"I'll take them," I said to the boy in the apron.

"How many?"

"All of them."

"Seriously? Okay!"

And I asked him to get me one of the heavy things to tie to them so they wont fly off, and he gave me a hockey puck wrapped in aluminum foil with curly cue ribbon taped to it and charged me another dollar.

"Um...can I have one of those?" this girl about my age asks.

"Yeah sure, I'm not trying to hoard them or anything, it's just that it was easier to take the cluster than count them out. Here," I said and gave her one. She added it to her cluster of black stars and pink hearts.

"They're for my niece," she tells me. "She's going into 6th grade, and she was three grades behind, but she worked really hard and caught herself up two grades so I'm really proud of her."

How the hell do you fall three grades behind?

I blame Spongebob.

That bastard.

He's making our nation full of stupids.

Oooooooooooh who lives in a cardboard box on Avenue C...

For third grade through sixth grade watch Spongebob did she...

No nothing nonsense of a scholar she be...

Well anyway, my total came to $15, and I walked out with this big cluster of yellow smiles. Everyone on the sidewalk outside smiled at the balloons, then at me. Balloons make people happy. I wanted to make Ty happy, since he's really upset about being a first grader. Then I had to wrangle the bunch into my Mazda.

Then I forgot to buy flowers for the teacher.

Fuck.

So even though I could have gone to Home Depot or Wal Mart right there for a nice potted plant, I was worried that some crackhead would steal my balloons and take all the happy for themselves. People around here are shitty like that. So I would have to drive to Stater's to have David watch my car and shank anyone who tried to take my happy while I was inside buying mums. Only driving with a Mazda full of happy is not easy. Unfortunately, happy causes many blindspots, and when you go to look in the rear view to change lanes, there's this yellow guy with a shit eating grin just looking at your reflection mockingly. I'm punching them so I can see around them and Wade is back there laughing hysterically because one is "looking at him" and I'm just trying not to crash. They're encroaching onto my side of the vehicle and all I'm thinking is how happy this is going to make Ty.

And because of the June Gloom weather and how it's all sprinkling and cold, and I've got these bright sunshiny smiley faces and it's like that song from Bye Bye Birdie. "Grey skies are gonna clear up, put on a happy face..."

I get a little pot of yellow mums from Stater's, then go through the whole driving/punching happy face balloons in their stupid little character mouths, and arrive at the school intact.

Wade and I get out and we're bringing the balloons to where I usually pick Ty up, and this Asian woman catches up to me.

"Hey," she says, "is this for your daughter?"

"For my son," I tell her.

"Why? Why is he so special?"

"Well he's graduating from kindergarten today."

"Kindergarten does not graduate," she tells me, "only twelfth grade graduate!"

"Well, it's the last day of school."

"What's so special about that? Why so many balloons? Couldn't you give some of those to the other kids? How much you spend on all that?"

"I got them at the dollar store, they were a buck each," like it's any of her business. I was amused because she was really upset about my happy balloons and everyone I walked by was smiling and touching them. A baby giggled. Giggled. You could tell that he just wanted to hug one.

"Oh so I guess you spend like fifteen bucks? Well...I guess that's not SO bad then, only fifteen."

Ty by the way couldnt believe that they were for him, and every other kid was jealous. All the girls were getting roses, and here's Ty with a great big bunch of balloons that will allow him to fly into the sky, and all those girls with their roses kept asking was "could I have just one?"

If Dollar Tree had 20 extra balloons, I might have done that, and given each kid in his class their own. And I didn't want to give away any of Ty's hoard. Ty earned his hoard by never being absent and getting all 4's on his report cards.

Asian lady was really pissed about it though.

Jealous.

Why cant people just be happy?

BALLOONS!

I drove the balloons back to the house so I wouldn't have to battle with them on my way to Yucaipa for errands, and my mission to create the perfect happy kindergarten graduation celebration was complete. I am the Balloon Wrangler.

The Garten Has Grown

Ty is very sad today because kindergarten is over.

To Whom It May Concern

I have a few different writing styles that I use, like how in my blog I use more of a conversational tone which gives it imperfections but keeps the content mostly comprehendible. In my books it's still somewhat conversational but the tone is slightly poetic at times. In my paper journal, and the journals I am wrecking for people, it's more or less a "note to self" style.

And then there's my "formal" voice where I have to crack my knuckles, use big (but not too big) words, and write with an English accent. For some reason English accents have always sounded smart to me.

I'm not very good at the last one, which is why it took me an hour to write my mercy letter to the underwriter. It's only a page long. I write my longest blog entries in 20 minutes. I can write a novel in 30 days. But when I have to stiffen up and stay formal suddenly the words wont flow and I stutter when I try to spit the words out. It's not one of my strengths.

When I have to write a formal email to someone asking them a question, I make up for this by being overly friendly.

Hi you,

My name is Jessie Terwilliger and I am writing to inquire about the thing on your site. Is this blah blah blah? Is there any other way to blah blah blah? I would appreciate your reply very much. Thank you and have a nice day.

Writing to the underwriter--writing a so called "mercy letter" to the underwriter--seems a bit more like writing a letter to the president asking for a death row pardon.

Not that it's THAT bad, but you don't want to sound silly and uneducated, which you totally are.

If you are completely in the dark and not understanding this, don't worry because even I had to look up the word "underwriter" a few weeks ago in my big thick real estate book's glossary. The underwriter is like the final boss on all things loan. This is the person who essentially cuts the check. Your loan officer, or "Lady Man" as we esteemed ones refer to her as, just sorts your paperwork, uses a calculator, and holds your hand until the final battle when your paperwork and calculations arrive on the underwriter's desk. The underwriter, though probably a very nice person in other situations, is not your friend. Her job is to deny your loan and make you feel like shit for even asking. You never see this person, and yet she is quietly judging you behind closed doors like some kind of Bank God.

One thing that the Bank God allows that your Christian God does not allow is a mercy letter. I'm not sure how you guys work out that whole "everyone's a sinner but everyone's forgiven and there are still people who are going to hell" stuff, but I know that the great Underwriter will give you crazy kids a chance to save your skin here. But there is a specific format to follow if you want to taste success and be granted your loan.

• Acknowledge the debt
• Explain why you did not pay it
• Admit you were wrong
• Explain why it will never happen again.

And the letter as a whole should follow this format:

• Thank you for taking the time to read my letter
• I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry
• I'm smarter now
• Thank you again

The underwriter does not want to grant a loan to someone who obviously hasn't changed their ways or learned their lesson, but there are circumstances that the underwriter will understand and forgive. Your job is to convince this Merciful God Of Home Loans that you are not a dumbass. Hence, the English accent writing.

Our letter is essentially this, in the simplest (blog style) terms:

We have unpaid medical bills because we haven't had medical insurance in three years and we have occasionally needed medical attention. We are in the process of applying for medical insurance through his work as we speak, and the children are already covered, and one day we will repay these rightfully owed debts. Cingular Wireless is a bunch of cocksuckers who switched up my shit on me and I disputed their bullshit lies, as noted on the account, so there. Now I use a pay as you go phone to avoid any further douchebaggery. That utility bill from the City of Banning isn't ours homie, it's just that when we left all the sudden like because of the hazardous mold that was sprouting from our carpet because our landlord didn't fix a leaky pipe, Banning never turned off the power like we asked and the renovators did all of their work renovating and repairing the apartment under our name, so it's like, we didn't use all that power and water, so like...that's totally not our fault, okay? Also I am an orphan (father died when I was young, mother abandoned me soon after) and I was raised between siblings and foster homes and I was never taught about the consequences of paying bills late or how credit worked so when I fell for the first credit card offer that came into my mailbox after graduation, I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. Furthermore the card only had a $300 limit so their $1,400 bullshit is bullshit and fees, and I am going to shake the crap out of those bitches and jew them down until they agree to let me pay for like just some of it. Again, I'm sorry, and I've learned my lesson. Look! I'm 25 and I have no credit cards, and we pay our rent on time, and look at that shiny new Mazda. Never even a late payment on that baby, eh? Eh? Come on, give us a house oh Mistress of Mortgages. I swear to god if I get a house I'll walk it and feed it every day, and even clean up after it. I know every kid says that but I really mean it. It can be my birthday and Christmas present...actually, since they all happen in the same week, let's make it mine and David's birthday presents, our Christmas presents, and maybe even our anniversary present? Just a thought. I'd kiss you but doctor says I'm sick *hack whease blow.*

I don't know, I think I'm actually pretty good with people as long as it stays in writing. This is actually one of those times where you cant speak to the person face to face, but instead present yourself via clever letter writing, which hey, any kind of writing is my forte over face to face interaction.

Will the underwriter have mercy on my pathetic little loan?

I Heart Beaumont

Talked to our lady man today.

We learned a lot.

Long story short, we should wait for the August program for all of its benefits over the other program, though we will keep the other program in our back pocket just in case. We refuse to live outside of Beautiful Beaumont California's 92223 zipcode, and we could have a house for real by October or November which means that the $8,000 tax credit is ours.

Short story long, Jennifer, our Lady Man who is the best in the west helped us to further understand these programs and their unique qualities. She did this by actually talking to us and not shoving us to the back of the line like that awful realtor lady did.

By the way, Jennifer's explanation for Steamroller Steamrolling us was because over the past few weeks she has been showing houses to about 20 people who ended up not qualifying in the end, so she essentially took that out on us because she was tired of working for free, which is dumb because that's the nature of her game here in the real estate world.

Regardless, we don't intend to call her back and Jennifer has given us a card to a better lady.

Now about this loan...

With the Riverside County First Time Homebuyer program (FTHB) which has money for us in August, we've got more buying power since we have $120,000 to spend, and with the county's 20% down our mortgage with tax and insurance will be just under $800 a month, which is our rent. We want to go under that, so we are hoping to score something a little lower, but not lower than $87,000. The unincorporated program only allowed us $95,000. Either way, disregard the whole San Jacinto/East Hemet idea, for we are staying in Beaumont.

What it comes down to is David drives around this town and says "That's Mr. English. He's a real dick," or "That's Nathan's brother," or "Oh that's John, he recycles so he can buy fruit trees for his yard. He lives over on Vine."

If we moved to San Jacinto, he would continue to work in Beaumont because he knows this town, and the town knows him.

And me, well, I love Beaumont and some of the people who are permanently fixed here. It's a weird little town whose churches ask "how would Jesus drive?" There are trees and for all that it is lacking, it has things here that I've grown accustomed to. Besides, we want to grow fruit and this is the best area to grow fruit in. The wind blows, but hey, at least it's not Yucaipa, which is one town that even in our darkest moments we have not considered, and will not. It's over between us.

No cows from Hemetucky, no flies and chickens from Yucaipatucky.

So back to this loan, we have to take a class. We can't get into the class until July so even if we were to look at houses right now, we wouldn't have any way to back up any offers we made on the houses, so right now we are just looking at houses driveby style, and not dealing with a realtor.

Here's some other crap we learned.

• Homes with in ground pools are not eligible.
  
• Closing cost assistance is also available with the program up to $2,000
• We can't make any major purchases until escrow closes because they'll disqualify us, so no camera this summer BUT there's always that $8,000. Thank you Mr. Obama.
  
• The program for the unincorporated areas DOES NOT WORK at the moment, and they've not been able to qualify a single person for it because of a really stupid requirement of "purchase price must be 15% below appraised value of the home (meaning a house for $120,000 will have to take an $18,000 pay cut, which is like, duh no way.)
• We will win at the game of life this time, because we are winners.
  

So basically, nothing can even happen until July when we take that class, which is fine because we need our credit score to go up anyway which we are already in the process of fixing, so all is good in the neighborhood. Whichever neighborhood we choose.

We canceled our appointment to see that green house today. Besides not wanting to live in SanJac, we also don't want to have to pick parasailers out of our spruce tree.

lol, their little arms and legs are flailing, "help us!"

lol.

As lulzy as that is, we can't do that. Just like we can't keep Steamroller for her lulzyness. As much as we want to, we can't.

I heart professionalism as much as I heart the Beaumont.

Besides, there's plenty of blog fodder to go around. Especially if we're staying here with these wacky bastards.

Scouting SanJac

I can't stay, David is fixin to grill us up some steaks and some corn and I am making dessert out of a bunch of fresh berries, hot fudge, and some adorable little angel food cups I found, but I will show you what we found when we ventured over the hill today.

Now, we have an appointment to see this house tomorrow with a lady (not the Steamroller, who is fired) but we wanted to drive out to San Jacinto today to get a feel for how far it is from where we call home, what the neighborhood is like, and where the Stater's is located. We were surprised by our results.

Photographic evidence of the scouting:

Behold the "Stater's House" (which we might not get with the unincorporated program but could still be possible come August with the other program)





The views around the neighborhood were familiar: houses and hills



I think probably the neatest thing is that we saw a bunch of parasailers gliding in the air over by the foothills. This was taken from the street the house is on:



In addition to all of the other cool places that are within walking distance, we can also walk to the Cult Of Scientology's gold base, where David Miscavage hangs out. Convenient for protests, which I may or may not be involved in, I won't say.





All in all, we decided that SanJac isnt too far from home, but we won't go any farther. It's kind of pretty out there, and it didn't smell much like cows. Then again, it was a nice cool day.

I leave you with the pretty sky...

The Seven Year Itch

We can never agree as to when we first sort of formed, because it was gradual and then *poof* we were an item. We do agree that it was somewhere in the first week of June back in 2002.

Enter the Seven Year Itch.

We're fine though, not really itching.

After seven years there is one thing that I am totally sure of, and that is the fact that David is absolutely my match. He's got my back, and he would go to hell and back for me. I've never, ever had anyone I could trust and count on as much as him.

There is a lovely green house on a hilly green court that we want to inspect together on Monday. We want to buy cherries from people's front yards in the morning.

Our little some sort of picture perfection. The picket fence is brown though, but that's okay. It's charming.

And all those motherfuckers who doubted us.

The traditional present for the seventh anniversary is wool, which is why this year might be so itchy. I already knit him a sweater with a less itchy wool blend, so...what, do I knit him another one? And technically since this isn't a wedding anniversary per se, does it require woolen gifts?

I'd like some wool. I love it when I get yarn.

And I took a huge risk in knitting him that sweater. Every knitter knows about the Curse of the Boyfriend Sweater.

There's also some other stuff about this itching at seven years thing too, not just about men having affairs with Marilyn Monroe (if I find that bitch I'll kill her.) They say that you replace about half of your friends every seven years. I have entirely new friends...well, old friends that I renewed after the membership expired. I no longer associate with any of my old female friends, and the only female friend I have is the neighbor, who by the way, brought me a black frosting rose in the middle of the night, and delicious home made pecan bars just now.

They're still warm.

If only things could stay like this forever.

The movies tell you that seven years is when people start questioning their relationship. Or they wonder why it cant be like how it was. Or Marilyn Monroe shows up and walks over a grate wearing a flirty flowing dress and it all goes down hill from there.

Maybe it's the predictability that sucks so bad in marriages that itches. But the only things that have ever been predictable for us have been good things, like night time cuddles, or having nothing to really be upset at. We're just kind of watching life, and even when some unpredictable bad thing happens we get through it.

We've both matured a lot. I've mellowed out quite a bit in the last seven years because David is the calm blue ocean guy by nature. He finally stopped eating from garbage cans. He still eats bum food, that's a habit that we are working on. I love him for trying.

There's nothing we want more than each other. The things that we uniquely have, like him and his disk golf and beer tasting, and me and my cluster of guy friends and internets. He loves you too internets, but he doesn't have you like I have you. One of the journals for the journal wrecking project by the way is going to contain the password to all of my accounts, including my Blogger account. I am entrusting this to a friend so that in the event of my death I can posthumously surrender my internets. I must like this person a lot because that's so not like me to be surrendering my internets to people.

The modern 7th anniversary present is actually copper, replacing wool. People there is a god and he is a gifting god, because you know what? God knew that I wanted David to have some kind of gift made from copper, and so he sent a bum to The Cans to recycle several coiled feet of copper piping which David could not pay him for but that he could keep. The copper piping? Fits neatly inside of his big brewing pot.

David finally has the means to make a wort chiller.

The gods must be crazy.

Happy anniversary baby. Enjoy your tooooooooobing.

I Wont Try To Explain What I Do Not Understand

Out of sheer fascination of this woman I'm sticking with the Steamroller for the time being, just to see what the hell she's all about. I do things in the name of lulz sometimes.

In response to me asking about where exactly the unincorporated areas are, and if The Ranch House is bank owned (because then it wouldn't qualify for the August program) she said "I have to do double work to figure these things out, because even when I do find a house I then have to go look it up in a Thomas Guide."

I'm a cynic by nature, but honestly if I were buying a $350,000 house I don't think she would be complaining to me about "double work."

I'm also kind of an asshole by nature so I want to see where this is going. She could very well redeem herself, and who knows, I could very well be reading things wrong here. But it's been, what, two weeks and I haven't even met this woman?

Loan Lady Man called me yesterday, through Steamroller Lady, or on her behalf to say, "Steamroller Lady cant show you any houses until she has a loan letter, and aren't you guys trying to boost your credit scores at the moment? So...she wants to know why you guys want to see houses right now if you're not really buying till August."

Um, I don't know, we're jumping the gun because we're excited and we want to learn exactly what all of this is about? We want to see a house so we know what the hell to even look for in a house? We have questions that need answering and we don't need another handful of listings in Cabazon and a "woe is me" response?

I am trying, very very hard, to understand all of this. I am reading a text book that is heavier than my computer just to try to grasp the concept of real estate law and how it all goes down. I would like to speak to someone, and all my realtor is giving me is vague and passive aggressive emails laden with guilt. She is the mother in law of realtors, I swear to god.

Loan Lady Man apologized for something that I didn't understand, and sounded a little like she was being the mouthpiece for the Steamroller. It was totally weird, like, she was giving me answers as if she had completely misunderstood what I had asked Steamroller in the email...which it's like...the Loan Lady Man probably didn't read, so it's possible that Steamroller misunderstood my questions, relayed them to Lady Man, and Lady Man just said, "You know what, why don't you come in and speak to me."

THANK YOU.

I would LOVE to come speak to her, and we have an appointment on Monday. Obviously a connection is not being made here, maybe it's with us. Maybe we are blatant fucktards who cant fucking understand ANYTHING. I'm willing to accept that, but I do need to have this shit explained to me because I don't want to be in the dark about this. This is huge for us. Huge.

Liz in Seattle tells me that Realtors are not supposed to complain about having to do work, they're supposed to say "Thank you sir, may I have another."

Not that I'm doling out lashings here, I'm really not. And I don't think I'm wasting that much of this lady's time, not enough where I'm physically trying to drain her of her time like a vampire, I just need some god damned answers. I need someone who will give them to me. So I'm keeping Steamroller through the weekend, at least, because why not, right? I'm going to talk to Loan Lady Man and find out exactly what our parameters are, what our options are, how many options we have, and to tell you the truth I want to keep our Lady Man because she is awesome and does a really good job of explaining things. I love this. So much.

But Steamroller is really getting on my nerves, and yet I'm still curious to see where this will go.

Is that wrong?

I mean hell, if she ends up redeeming herself I might just stick with her, know what I mean? It's not bloody likely at this point since she's not really answering my questions and kind of giving me a bunch of bullshit answers. The ONLY reason why I was even remotely interested in seeing houses this weekend was not to take up her precious time which she seems to have very little of, but because the Lady Man said that there is money in the unincorporated areas program right now and we could qualify tomorrow if we wanted. That is why I "bothered" Steamroller. That's why I "bothered" to confirm about East Hemet being unincorporated. That's why I "bothered" to even LOOK in Hemet.

I don't want to move to Hemet. Last night as I was trying to sleep it made me sad to think about leaving Beaumont.

Okay so screw this unincorporated program, screw this Hemet shit, but why on earth did she say "All the listings you qualify for aren't enough house for you."

Those of you who have seen the listings, would you agree that even the lower priced ones are not enough house for me?

How the hell could she know how much is "not enough" house for us when she isn't exactly comprehending what we want?

Is this because David is the can man? Because remember kids, she actually gave him her business card while she was there recycling, and she has asked him many many times when he was going to buy a house. She hustled him at work. She cannot be all discriminating against his shitty jobs. Shitty they are, but stable, and more than enough to pay the mortgage, and that should be the end of that.

You know who I guess I could talk to is my dead ex boyfriend's dad. He buys cheap houses and then rents them out to scumbags. I think he owns like 12 properties, I'm not sure, and I know a handful of them are in San Bernardino. But it's still weird talking to his family, they look at me weird. It's almost like they're hurt that I moved on, even though it was for the best. And I still look at them weird too because I broke their dead son's heart and they're still awesome to me and tell me that they had always wanted to keep in touch, and it's sad that we came back together over something so tragic.

Then again if he were still alive there was no way I'd of ever gotten the chance to speak to any of them again.

I called a friend to inquire about Hemet. And yep, it still smells like cows. Which is quite a sour smell.

Steppy just snaps his damn Trident and says "Dump her. You know better than this."

God but I WANT to see her TRY! She's GREAT BLOG FODDER! She's like Mustang Sally. I know I cant keep her. I cant keep Sally either if I move, and that will make me so so sad, and I will miss her 10:00 pancakes and packages full of diet pills that she doesn't need. I will miss her crying and her fucking random guys in the park and her talk of a land called Transylvania and how magic and curses are real. Romanian chicks are cool, and I know I'll never find another one.

Somehow, I don't think I'll miss Steamroller, and I will find a realtor that is better for us to work with.

But I am still mildly amused.

Join me?

*facepalm*

I love my network. I'll say this again, I love my network. I am in LOVE with my network.

First of all, for the record there is a website I've created that is public, and it holds the bookmarks of the listings to the houses we are looking at. I wont be posting this link here or on Twitter, but you can email me and I might could let you see it in case you're wondering about the houses we're looking at. The site will display the notes I've made on the houses, including clever (and sometimes not) names for each one, and it will be updated as things get added and taken away.

I love my network because Liz in Seattle gave me a heads up about the Realtor, saying maybe she's not all that great.

I had my suspicions.

For all intents and purposes, Let's name my current realtor Mrs. Steamroller, simply because Liz used the term "steamrolling" on the phone when we were discussing her.

Okay.

I knew something was wrong when she hadn't called us back after the loan lady man ran our stuff. In fact, we called the loan lady man back ourselves, found out that because everybody and their niece is applying for home loans right now the loan lady man might have just forgotten about us, and never followed through with Mrs. Steamroller. Then again, that's Mrs. Steamroller's job.

This is bad sign number one.

Liz in Seattle tells me that Mrs. Steamroller should have been emailing us listings, should have been calling us daily if not every other day, and she should KNOW what we want. Furthermore, when David did call her the day before last to ask about seeing homes on Sunday and she said she would call him back tomorrow (yesterday) to tell him what she found, and she didn't call back, that's bad sign number two.

"Maybe because David is so soft spoken and nice she's trying to steamroll him, kind of push you guys aside because you're buying a cheaper house. But even still, her commission on this house will still be $3,000. She needs to be working for you, not you working for her. Why don't you call since you're a little more forward with people?"

That I am.

I know it's a small amount of money, but it is money. David's other realtor customer said "I'm sick and tired of selling all of these $34,000 fixers. It's the same work for me for less money." Right. We wont be using him if it comes down to needing to find another realtor. She's aware that we are serious, that we might not make a move till August, but we do want to check out these unincorporated homes because actually if we do end up liking something we really may just go for it now.

I call her just after 6:00.

I ask her why she hasn't called and she says "Oh I've been so busy I never had a chance to look for those houses for you, I've been so busy."

"Okay, well I've been looking and I've found a lot of really nice places for cheap but I don't know if they're unincorporated or not. Can you tell me a little more about the unincorporated areas around here?"

"Uh...well...I don't know them. I'll need to look at a map."

Liz said "If she's been working there for more than a month she should KNOW where all of the unincorporated areas are."

*facepalm*

"Do you even know what we want?"

"Um...not really?" *soft nervous chuckle*

*flabbergasted chuckle* "Okay..."

*very nervous laugher* "I think you guys are looking for like a...three? Four bedroom?"

*facepalm*

"We want a three bedroom minimum home. We love old houses, we don't mind doing some work, but it has to be livable when we move in because we probably wont be able to make any repairs or upgrades for a long time. We want to stay in Beaumont or close to it. We may not move to Hemet but we want to at least check it out before saying no. We want a big yard, and a safe neighborhood. Okay? And do you even have our email address?"

"Um..........no I don't, no I don't."

Long story short, she emails this morning with a message saying "these are the only listings that fall under unincorporated," and sends us to six houses in Cabazon and one in Whitewater.

*facepalm*

Oh. My. Crap. She. Is. Retarded.

Okay, so let me just show you these Cabazon listings since we wont be moving here anyhow.

Three years old, $99,000, middle of fucking nowhere

4 bedrooms 2 baths and a beautiful fence of real chain link

Never lived in because who would want to live in fucking Cabazon

Never lived in because it leaves so little to the imagination

Hooray for couch in front yard land!

Look, some people get off on the desert thing. I don't. And remember that David delivers pizza so he goes to these places at night, he knows that every house in Cabazon is guarded by a pit bull because it's the land without laws and people get their houses broken into constantly. You think it's windy in Blowmont? Try living next to those giant fucking fans.

This gorgeous picture to the right was taken in Cabazon. That's what it looks like for miles all around, except in technicolor (I have a boner for black and white, but you already knew that.)

Caba-freaking-zon, no thank you. And Whitewater is just father back into them thar hills, even more of a no man's land.

I emailed her back and said, "Thank you Steamroller Lady, but I did some research of my own and found that all of East Hemet is unincorporated. Did you find that as well? Because we are not at all interested in living in Cabazon, and in regards to Hemet we want to see the houses first before we decide, and if we decide we don't like it we will be waiting till August and we will be looking in Beaumont for sure. We just want to have all of our options in front of us."

I'm not holding my breath, I'm this freaking close to dumping the bitch because I should not be doing her job for her.

Signs of a bad realtor?

1. She doesn't call.
2. She treats you like less of a priority because your price range is lower.
3. She doesn't know the unincorporated areas.
4. She doesn't know what you want in a house.
5. She doesn't follow up with the loan officer to see what you ended up qualifying for.
6. She laughs nervously on the phone.
7. She tries to get you to buy a house in Cabazon.
8. She's such a mess that you're ready to pull the plug on her before you've even seen a house.
9. She cant be bothered to email you back with proper listings.
10. She thinks your name is Jessica *facepalm*

Dumping Bitch in 3...2...

A Fence Of Real Chain Link In The Pine-Sol Scented Air

Here's what I now know about Hemet:

-it has a police department as opposed to a contract with the county sheriff's

-it has a lot of registered sex offenders, but there are some "clear spots" on the map

-it smells like cows (where as Yucaipa smells like chickens)

-same weather as Beaumont (100+ degrees in the summer, mild to no winter) but it flash floods all the time and has even had the occasional tornado.

-places to eat, places to shop, places to join cults and look at cows

-you can buy a 4 bedroom house with a pool for $85,000

Um yeah. This new "buy in the unincorporated areas" program forced me to look in unincorporated areas like Hemet, and I found a CRAP load of cheap houses. There are at least four in our price range with pools, I'm not even kidding. There's a Victorian home that was built in 1890. I already ran all of the addresses through the pedophile machine Megan's Law website and put a big red x on the places with violent offenders living next door, which there were a few.

But then it's like...I don't want to live in Hemet. Do I?

Do I?

My horoscope was so right on, by the way.

Don't be surprised if you find yourself surrounded by people today, each anxious to confer with you on one subject or another. It seems you are the authority on all topics, dear Sagittarius. All the attention is flattering, but it makes it difficult to get any work done. Do what you can to help your friends, and then inform them that the help desk is closed for the day. You want to leave work early so you can be with your loved ones.

Here I am trying to figure out my own shit so I can be prepared when we go with the realtor lady on Sunday to look at these places, and my niece is calling asking for help finding furniture, Steppy's asking if I think he should get a vasectomy, and Pico's like asking me where to buy shrooms.

I don't know nothing about no shrooms. Why bother asking me? Do I seem like I know anything about shrooms?

And why am I in charge of Steppy's fallopian tubes or whatevers?

And why is my niece convinced that the same day she was approved for a home loan she's going to need furniture?

"Dude, please do not do drugs Pico, you will ruin your chances of getting a job with anyone, and aren't you going for CHP?"

"Shrooms wont show up in a piss test."

"But they do show up on your lie detector test and you will be disqualified."

"Well fuck CHP, I don't want to do that shit. That's the same shit I'm already doing right now."

"Okay, so then what are you going to do?"

"Go to mechanic school. Be a mechanic. They have a 95% hiring rate out of school."

"Okay...and when were those statistics taken? 1995? There are no jobs right now, comprende? You Marines and your skewed version of how the world works. You go from Mommy's house to Uncle Sam's house and you have no idea how to live on your own. You'll be without health insurance, you wont find a job--"

"Look, I get enough of that crap from the military, I don't need it from you."

"Um, when they tell you that there are no jobs out here they're being honest with you, just like I am. Look I don't want to spoil your fun of getting out of the military but this isn't high school, you cant just go eating mushrooms and then expect to find a good job. It does not work that way."

"Stop talking to me like I'm an idiot! I'm an adult!"

"I'm just trying to be the big sister here, and you are an idiot because you seem to think that I have connections to drugs. I don't even have a landline phone, dude. I mean do what you want, but good luck with that. I'm just trying to warn you that it's not easy on the outside."

Fucking loser.

And why does a man who isn't having sex need to get his tubes tied?

Oh my god they're giving my niece a loan?

They're giving ME a loan?

Okay so Hemet has really kick ass homes at really kick ass prices, but the problem is that they're in Hemet. David's jobs are in Beaumont. Granted he might be able to transfer or whatever but the whole point of loving the Ranch House and the Cottage is he could jog to work. Well, he says ride a bike but FUCK if he's ever riding a bike again. We alllllll know what happened the very last time David ever rode a bike.

This picture to the right is Hemet, by the way. I took this a few months ago.

The houses we have bookmarked in Hemet don't have names or anything yet, mostly because a lot of them are McMansions and we bookmarked them because they're cheap. We don't love them, but they're there. The houses that do have names though, like This Old House (the one built in 1890 that has been completely remodeled on the inside and is totally landscaped) and the English Garden and the Famn Damnily house, we love those.

I'm only weary of Hemet because every time we drive through Hemet we say "God, I wouldn't want to live out here. This sucks." But we only ever drive on the main roads and there's nothing on the main roads worth looking at. The Elementary house is right across the street from the school and it's another one of those victorian beauties that has been completely remodeled.

The English Garden? Brand new remodeled "gourmet" kitchen with a brand new 6-burner stove.

A number of these are corner lots and like I said, a number of these have pools. As long as they have been vacant for 90 days and they're in unincorporated land, we'll get our down.

God but I don't want to leave Beaumont. I actually like Beaumont sometimes, and I've learned to ignore the wind.

I don't know, I mean if we end up falling in love with a house we end up falling in love with a house. And even if he had to drive back to Beaumont for his jobs, I mean, I don't even use the car other than to take Ty to school, which I would be able to walk him to if we were close enough to one. I don't know. I want to at least look at these houses because these are some fucking bargains.

I don't want to buy a house where you can jump from roof top to roof top, or where there are rules against painting your front door lime green. I'm not saying that I will paint my door lime green, but I want to have that freedom.

A pool? Sure it makes your water bill go up but an $85,000 house with 20% down makes it about $68,000 and according to the mortgage calculator we'd be paying less than $400 a month. Even with tax and insurance, we're still paying less than we've ever paid for rent here.

Pools are high maintenance but in the summers when it gets to be over 100 degrees that pool will be fucking sweet. One of them has a waterslide. One of them has a library room. Um, I am all over that shit.

You know what all this reminds me of, right?

10 points to the first person to get this reference...

A matchbox of our own
A fence of real chain link,
A grill out on the patio
Disposal in the sink
A washer and a dryer and an ironing machine
In a tract house that we share
Somewhere that's green.
He rakes and trims the grass
He loves to mow and weed
I cook like Betty Crocker
And I look like Donna Reed
There's plastic on the furniture
To keep it neat and clean
In the Pine-Sol scented air
Somewhere that's green

Tied Up And Twisted

The parks around here are just...shitty.

We thought we found a nice shady park for the kids to play in yesterday, but as we walked through the grass David kicks this little sandwich baggie that's tied in a funny knot so that there's only a tiny little space to put something below the knot, rendering it useless for holding a sandwich.

"What was in it?" I ask David.

"I dunno. Meth. Coke."

The trees all have things scratched into them, not just names but BMT written in crazy gang letters. BMT, one of the gangs they refuse to acknowledge here, as well as South Side Beaumont, who wears plaid. Oh no, we don't have to worry about our gangs yet, they're only violent with each other, and they wear plaid, how threatening is plaid?

It's all young kids, like that Thugsy McGee boy who spray painted a penis on my front door. Did you forget about that incident? Because the story is here. Thugsy has a tattoo and is in high school, and David heard him the other day with his friends go "Man, if I had five bucks I'd go get me some Old E and fucking down that shit." His friend goes, "Man if I had five bucks I'd get some Old E for my DAYOM self!"

Old E, according to David, is Old English, which is beer that the trashiest of the trashy drink, like even homeless people won't go below Cobra. David is an expert on who drinks what because he's the can man.

The Beaumonts. We want to like, live here. Loan lady man today tells me that there's yet another program we qualify for that would move us into a house right this minute, something about if we move to an unincorporated area (Cherry Valley, Oak Glen, Forest Falls) we'll get our 20% down and the money is already there for the program, we won't have to wait.

It's an option.

Oh and the possible short end of the stick here? That program says we have to live in the house for 45 years for the debt to be forgiven. In 45 years I'll be dead most likely. Woo hoo! Free money! They cant come after me if I'm dead! The only thing is that the property has to have been vacant for 90 days, they wont kick anyone out, they just want to fill in the blanks.

Oh, and with the Riverside County program? She forgot to mention that we cant buy bank owned homes. I'm 90% sure that the Ranch House is bank owned. The Cottage, which falls in the unincorporated Cherry Valley area, has people living in it.

Back to the ol' drawing board.

But the realtor is taking us house hunting soon soon soon, brothers. Soon.

We're standing by the empty bag of crack and this gold SUV with big long antennas comes driving through.

We both go "cop" at the same time.

They're not fooling anybody.

Wait, I know the son of a bitch in that car. He hasn't called. Son of a bitch.

Ty says, "Mom, someone wrote the word Fuck up here."

I forget that Ty can read.

If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the 'Fuck' signs in the world. It's impossible.

"Yeah just don't read that stuff, bad people wrote it."

"Oh. Okay."

Later as David and I are roasting marshmallows over the heating coil on our electric stove the man from the gold SUV calls and says hey. He saw us at the park. He asks if I want to go gambling and I say no because I'm broke and I'm not spending any money this summer anyways. Oh but he'll give me $40, I can keep whatever I win, please? Because he's bored?

Fine, but I'm driving.

It took me twenty minutes to lose the whole $40 at the roulette machine. I lol'd. Not my money. No I already ate. No I already had dessert, we were making S'mores when you called. I don't want to gamble any more, I'm doing really badly and it's all smoky in here. Yeah, then I guess there's not much else to do here...sure you can go rent a room, but that's an awful lot of money to pay to masturbate for the next 10 hours...cha, you know vat? Uh-uh.

He gets like this every once in a while. He knows better but he still gets like this.

He suggests bowling, and I'm like no, I'm not wearing socks, and besides that I didn't want to stay out long anyway. But it was fun while it lasted. I know that back at home David is laying on his belly with a stop watch in front of our open closet, timing glurgs that his bucket of science makes so he can determine if his beer is still fermenting or not, saying "Jeez! Why wont it stop fermenting?"

Longest. Fermentation. Ever.

After all the convincing he does of trying to get me to stay out later, he asks if he can kiss me. I take a page from Mustang Sally's book and say, "You can kiss all the way up to here," and I hold out my arm and draw an imaginary line below my shoulder. "And no slobber." Another Sallyism. God love her and her words like "slobber." Words I forgot existed in the English language, she's only discovering for the first time. He's executing the whole Gomez Adams thing, then he's sucking on my finger tips and I say "That's enough. Sucking leaves slobber."

Sally's words.

She's so fun.

"Starbucks," he says, "please?"

"Drive thru only, but okay. Then I want you to come up and hang out with us for a while. You need to snap back to reality, dude, stop acting like this is going to happen."

He sighs and says he knows. And thank you for putting up with him. And then he starts on my arm again and I'm like "I need that arm to shift." He doesn't care. I thwack him when I go to shift. He stops after a while to sing along to a Dave Matthews tune, and when we get to the Bux I order a drink for David too. Back at the house, just as I suspected, he was on his belly nerding out with his stop watch. I try to speak and he shushes me, he's trying to get a clear reading. A thousand apologies. Nine thousand more.

There's one house in unincorporated Beaumont (aka Cherry Valley) that I'm almost positive she'll end up showing us. It's the retardedest house ever, probably no bigger than a single wide trailer, and the back door opens to the edge of a canyon cliff. One thing is that we wont settle. We're smart people...or fairly smart anyway. I'm 100 pages into that real estate book, and I've learned about foreclosures and easements. Getting there, anyway. We wont settle and we wont sign up for anything we cant pay for. And we wont pay for something we don't love.

Over Starbucks I look at Steppy's Thomas Guide and find all of the unincorporated areas.

Cabazon is out of the question, even if you can get a house that was built in 2007 with five bedrooms on Esperanza Lane for only $98,000. There's still a lot of trash out there, and it's hotter than it ever is here and everyone has high fences and pit bulls.

Upper Banning? Though actually kind of pretty and right by a 200 year old cemetery? Still has the whole icky Banning school district thing going on.

And then there's Poppet Flats where I once lived, but it's also Banning Schools and the drive up that mountain makes me so so sick.

Realtor lady says "Hemet and San Jacinto."

Oh lord.

Hemet is home to Scientology's Gold Base, and a bunch of rocks. San Jacinto has...it has...or is that Hemet? Well all I know is it's right on the other side of the hill. Not so much a cabin in the woods as maybe a lot full of rattlesnakes and a handful of bedrooms. But they have an In and Out, so it might just be worth it.

We can always wait till August for the original program.

Let's not be too hasty.

Minor Annoyances

In case you did not know, my name is not Jessica. It has never been Jessica and it will never be Jessica. And I know that people come to the conclusion that Jessie is short for something on their own, that I get, and I correct constantly. But what blows my mind is that the people who get it wrong the most are the people who have access to things like my birth certificate, social security number, and driver's license.

I get this call this morning at 9 AM.

Well, Jessica gets a call at 9 AM regarding the health insurance paperworks, and they want to know why she LIED about David's employment with company FbzdbfjasdfgsrhfbgliasdbvasdbvlisfgioasefnWIO;E (pause: okay, "The Cans" is one of those companies where the headquarters is not the same name as where you'd say you work. In this case, HQ is literally a string of random letters that has no resemblance to the name they use for the sites themselves.)

So Ms. Lady is like really wanting to know why this Jessica girl conveniently forgot to mention that her husband works for FbzdbfjasdfgsrhfbgliasdbvasdbvlisfgioasefnWIO;E.

See here's what I don't get. First, Ms. Lady has a computer that is capable of accessing a system that shows where David is employed, but Ms. Lady does not have the Googles and cannot determine on her own that the string of letters is directly related to the job that was reported, which is The Cans.

And how does she have a computer that can tell where we bank before we even supply her with that information, but she can't get my first name right?

So I sat forever in an office today clutching paystubs, being told that "she'll see you very soon" just five minutes before everyone goes on lunch. Aint that some shit?

Just when you think the world is safe, someone you know from high school walks in.

This is always so uncomfortable.

And please, please understand this. Get a pencil, this is important. If I am cold and unresponsive to your small talk, it's because I don't want to talk to you.

Okay, so I don't wish this girl any particular harm or anything, and it's not like I completely dislike her, but her and I have two very different lives, two very different ideas of when high school actually ended, and though we were at one time great friends, we are no longer.

Yes I am also an anti-social bastard, but it doesn't really matter at the point where I've not asked any questions, pretty much indicating that I have no interest in chatting.

"So I heard..."

Yeah, nothing you heard about me is true most likely, considering your sources.

I've decided not to attend any reunions, or speak to anyone else I went to school with that I'm not already speaking to, and hopefully just remain a mystery or an afterthought to the class of 2002. Unless they google me, but I think they all think my name is Jessica, so I'm already one step ahead of those bastards. I clam up when these people find me, in fact a few weeks ago another girl from my class found me at the store and I totally mimed it. Yes. She asked how I was doing, and I put my hands upward and shrugged with my mouth open, and then when she asked where David was I pointed a thumb over my shoulder toward the general direction of his work...that's right, he wasn't even with me, he was 10 miles thataway.

I cant seem to keep them all straight. I've forgotten which people I like and which people I hate.

From 10:30 till just after 1:00 I was sitting on my ass with nothing to read or knit. I had David call the nice realtor lady so we could go catch a glimpse of the inside of the Ranch House, but she was stuck out in the desert or something so we wont be doing that until next week. In the mean time I sat by this girl and she asked me if we're having any more kids, like it's some of her business, and I just say "meh." Meh. Because for some reason I didn't feel like saying that my eggs are probably scrambled or something. Just whatever.

Only for Ms. Lady to go, "Did you fill this form out correctly? You have to print your FULL name."

Like I left the ica part off.

Or if you're Ty, and I left the ler part off.

Damn it all.