THIS YEAR FOR HALLOWEEN

I worked twelve hours.
Spooky, huh?

ADVENTURES IN HYPERPHAGIA

I came to school this morning and ate the contents of my brown bag lunch before 9 AM. Now I am shamelessly surfing the net for any/all websites that contain the words "frosted" and "cookies." Maybe it's the cooler weather. Maybe it was the butternut squash I had for dinner.

Who can say.

HOW DO I SAY

My realtor is a wonderful friend. He is sweet, generous, and funny. Unfortunately, he is not a very good realtor. Or at least, he wasn't a very good realtor for me. I found and bought a home in less than a month, so our time together was short. But in that short time frame he managed to lose emails, essential papers and arrive late to every scheduled meeting. He had never heard of special interest rates for first time home buyers and when it came to the closing, well, he couldn't make it. He had other obligations.

I consider myself confident and competent when it comes to things I'm familiar with, but like many people, when it comes to something totally new, when I'm thrust outside my comfort zone, I might depend on others (people that I trust) who are more experienced for guidance and advice. I knew the closing was going to go smoothly. I also knew that most of it was about my mortgage. It's just that I am doing this whole thing alone and would have liked to have someone there, in my court, representing me and my interests.

TIME OFF

So I close on the tree house this Friday. And I'm moving all my worldly posessions (and a few ethereal ones) on Saturday. That means all my free time from now until the weekend will be filled with anxiety dreams, stress eating, and biting my cuticles down to something unrecognizable.

I'll be back next week.

THE PROBLEM WITH PROBLEM NUMBER TWELVE

Last week, while reaching for the alarm, I banged my hand on the hot water heater next to The Steady’s bed. I cut my ring finger but it was so small I didn’t bother to bandage it.

Then, during my first hour of class a student came up to my desk and asked me a question from the homework. While pointing at his book, I smeared a small sample of blood/platelets on problem number twelve. Gross, right? Who wants math teacher blood on their math book? I was so embarrassed, I instinctively licked my thumb and tried to rub the blood off problem number twelve! With my saliva!

...And very quickly, gross became grosser.

MUSIC MISCELLANEOUS

A couple weeks ago, I went to an Ulrich Schnauss concert. Who, you might ask, is this Ulrich Schnauss? Exactly. That’s what I wanted to know.

A friend of mine really likes his music. I heard him play it once in his car. Let’s call it contemporary electronic. S’okay. I paid twelve dollars and waited in line for the doors to swing wide at 10 PM. The opening band was one middle-aged pot-bellied drummer and one tall skinny guy with a long hoary ponytail. He looked exactly like the kind of guy whose day job is selling valerian root in bulk and netti pots at the local homeopathy store. Let’s call their stuff eighties space music.

Actually no, let’s just call it bad.

After striking the drum set and various antique synthesizer boxes, I was starting to get excited about seeing Ulrich. But instead, we were made to endure another band; some horrible punk kids whose sole aim was to make our collective ears bleed.

Finally, the boys packed up their kitsch. It’s almost one o’clock in the a.m. when Ulrich takes to the stage. He’s a smallish, odd looking man but that does not stop The Uber Fans from yelling, “Schhnaauusss!! Schhhnnnnaaaauuussssss!” You can kind of see their point of view, though. It's a fun name to say.

In any case, he situates himself at a card table on stage. His instruments are a compact laptop computer, a tiny console with about nine knobs, and an itty bitty Casio keyboard. He starts to create sounds with said instruments, and I like it, it’s good, but his stage presence is kind of funny.

Here’s the artist clicking his mouse…
Now here he is tweaking dials…
God, he’s really good at tweaking those dials…
Now he’s back to clicking the mouse…
Hm. Is he just making bets on e-bay…
Or maybe he’s playing minesweeper…

LIKE FLIES ON OATMEAL

The Steady and I went camping a few weeks back and saw these flies on the picnic table. They are gathered around a glob of oatmeal like pigs at a trough. What gluttons!

ABOUT THE TOOTH

Whoa.

That shit hurt.

And it wasn’t so much the drilling and sawing and chiseling because the dentist shot my head so full of Novocain, I couldn't feel my own fucking eyebrows. What hurt was the rubber door jamb they used to prop my jaw open. My masseter muscles were absolutely stretched beyond their means. They were held in tetanic contraction for such a long period of time, the doctor had to duct tape my jaw shut before sending me home.

EVERYTHING THEY SAY IS TRUE

Hi Vicodin!

Um, what's up?

You play baseball?

...No?

What's with the bat?

*klunck*

Ooooh! I get it.

THE PRINCESS AND THE PEA

I can sit comfortably on a great many things: chairs, sofas, floors, beds, windowsills. But I have a really hard time sitting on words. Be they mine or someone else's.

TOOTHACHE

I wasn't joking about the root canal. Many years ago I had a cavity filled. Then, between 2003 and 2007 I was without health insurance altogether. During that time, my filling became loose and foodstuff was storming the castle of my poor enamel. I am scheduled to get it fixed this Wednesday. I expect only terrible, horrible things.

But it can't be any worse than the throbbing toothache I woke up to at 1:30 AM. It felt like my brain was rotting right out of my head. Oh, pity me!

DREAM EIGHTEEN

The Steady is going to move in with me. Perhaps this is a great decision. Perhaps it is a horrible one. I guess we'll soon see. I'm really excited at this point in time, because I like the way he smells and I wouldn't mind so much having his scent permeate everything.

A couple of weeks ago, right after we made the decision to Shack Up, he told me about a dream he had had the night before. He said I was on a ladder * and he was holding it and I fell and he cried because he thought I was badly hurt. It’s touching to think that your sweetheart would cry at the sight of your mangled body. Even if it is only in a dream.

* We were talking about cleaning gutters on the tree house.

OVERINDULGENCE

Today I:

A) Went for an impromptu 35 mi. bike ride.
B) Ate candy corns until my stomach hurt.

WII

Some friends recently moved back to the city I call home. This evening The Steady and I went over to their new place to drink beer and catch up and play Wii. I must say, I wasn't bad when it came to bowling and I excelled at air hockey. But I was terrible at tennis. And The Steady beat the tar outta me in a round of boxing.

DENTISTS: AN UPDATE

My hopes came true. Root canal does not rhyme with the word gravity.

Lucky me.

BABY'S HERE!

Just look at the little buddha!

I guess this makes me auntie.

DENTISTS

So, I have a dentist appointment tomorrow afternoon. It's been, I don't know, five years since my last professional cleaning? I hate going to the dentist. It always feels like the hygienist has this personal, extra-special, custom-made rancor, just for me.

Once when she was hacking away at my poor naked gums with a rusty machete, I swear to god, I caught a glimpse of some weird leather S&M undergarment thingy through the folds of her starched, white uniform. I heard chanting before I passed out from the pain, and when I woke up and was crying into my balled up fists, all she could do was upbraid me for not flossing more. "You know, your gums wouldn't bleed so much if you flossed regularly!" Yeah, okay. And you need to develop some fine motor skills you horrible, merciless witch-woman!

*Sigh*

Oh man. I really hope I don't have anything that rhymes with the word 'gravity.'

I HATE LANDLORDS

I got a message this morning from the building owners. They told me to stop referring the Craigslist people to them. They reminded me that I'm the one who wants to leave early, so I'm the one who has to show my place and find someone to rent it. Golly gee, that would have been nice to know before I posted the ad.

Apparently, the owners will gladly show my place to any general walk-ins/call-ins looking for an apartment, but they will not show my place to someone I captured through Craigslist. Oh c'mon, does it matter where the prospective renter heard about the availability? Would they really behave or look differently? If the owners insist on being assholes, why can't they just come out and say it? "Look Wrenny, we're assholes. It's what we do. We're not going to lift a finger to help you find someone to rent your place. Tough shit kid. Hwa-ha!"

I HEART CRAIGSLIST

So I saw the tree house for the first time last Sunday (9/30) and went in for a second look the following day (10/01). I put a bid in on Wednesday (10/03) and beat another bidder. I hear that's pretty fast as far as house hunting goes. Now I have to squeeze out of my current lease.

I went month-to-month when I decided to look for a house. But I'm still required to give the building owners two rental periods notice. So if I had told my renters on or before 9/30 that I had plans to move, I would not be obligated to stay (and pay) for December. But since I informed them of my move on 10/4, I have to stay through December until 1/1/08. In essence, I will have to pay over $1,000 rent for a space I will no longer inhabit.

Gawwwhh!

So I close on October 26th and I am trying to find someone who can rent my place November 1st. I put an ad and pictures on Craiglist and got an overwhelming response. In about twenty-four hours time, I received 30 responses; 49 responses total over the weekend. I forwarded them all to my landlords. I hope one of them sticks.

STOP MAKING SENSE

When I was a kid, I used to set my alarm clock even on the days I didn’t have to get up early for school. Like on the weekends. I suppose I didn’t want to miss the pleasure of knowing that I could sleep in that day.

DID I MENTION?

I have this friend, Hal. Hal is a smarty pants with nice eyebrows. Hi Hal!

CRUSHED

I hired a house inspector today ($300). His job is to talk smack about the tree house I hope to buy. My realtor warned me that he would be critical, harsh even, but you know he's supposed to be. That's his job ($300!!). I had to mentally prepare myself because all day today I've been running around telling people about this place and showing pictures as though it were something I pushed out my birth canal.

What can I say? I've a bit of a crush.

I'M BUYING THIS HOUSE

No fooling. I'm so excited, I could turn cartwheels.

TEACHING MOMENT: PART 2

Adam wrote: Sorry about the women's rights comment.

My reply: No need to apologize. Your comment wasn't taken personally. I warned you in class for your own benefit. Know that making pointless impulsive comments like that could get you into trouble or even fired in the future. Please mind the way you conduct yourself from now on.

See what I mean? I do it out of love.

TEACHING MOMENT: PART 1

This afternoon, I asked my environmental science class if women's rights have anything to do with human population growth. Adam, a student who (and I'm not going to mince words here) is simply a dolt said, "If women could work they'd do that instead of have kids and cook and clean in the home - like they're supposed to." This person's not particularly nasty, he is just stupid. But I made an example of him anyway.

Strung him up n' shit.

You know, because I care.