Saturday, February 27, 2010

Cat Nazis Part 3 of 3



Turn up the speakers and check this out.  It's less than 2 minuets long--slightly less time than it took to make. 


Ok so here’s the deal.  I don’t hate cats.  I just hate this cat.  Sometimes.  And the main reason is because I have to mop up pee every day because we can’t let the dogs out while we go to work.  I can’t “train” any of them to do anything because I’m gone for ten hours a day.  The rest of the time is spent cleaning, cooking, selling things on eBay, etc.  Shawn works nine hours per day, then goes to night school.  Can’t get rid of the bird or the cat because Shawn would have a fit.  The dogs are here till they die, so that’s never an option. 

Look, if you are a cat person, that’s cool and that’s your prerogative.  I can’t change your mind and make you believe that cats are not superior beings.  I’m going to even try!  I think it’s absurd that some believe cats are helpless outside or are destroying the bird population.  I gotta tell you, we’ve got trees surrounding our house and all are FILLED to the brim with birds.  If anything, the cats are controlling the bird population.  (Not good enough in my opinion)

My friend Patty, who is a self-described cat-person (“Because you could leave them alone for weeks if you left out enough food and water!”) agreed with me.  She didn’t come at me like a fire and brimstone television preacher! 

Is it “natural” that my dogs pee onto little pads in the laundry room and now the entire house smells like urine?  Is it “natural” for an animal clearly designed for hunting, to be confined within four walls?  Is it “natural” for people to attack others without fully understanding the situation?

Well, that last one rings true, yes.  Personally, I could not be kept inside at all times--even though I’m not an outdoorsy person.  I need fresh air.  My body craves sunlight after I’ve slathered on sunscreen.  And I think it would really be painful to have my fingernails and toenails ripped from my appendages.  I’m not gonna tie the cat to a two-foot long rope in the backyard--OR--keep her confined all day for the rest of her life.

Frickin’ Cat Nazis!  I got news for you people.  ALL animals--I do mean ALL ANIMALS-- started out in the great outdoors.  It was us, we people, that brought them inside and domesticated them and designed chick purses to carry them around in. 

I always wondered how the Egyptians could worship a cat (or any animal for that matter!).  It was here that Cat Nazis were born and decided that cats are better than people, better than all living things and we should reverie them and toss our virgins into fires for them. 

Our cable guy told me he went to an elderly couple’s house on a service call.  They had something like seventeen cats (all inside, all the time) and one them had spayed into the cable box.  That’s not natural.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Cat Nazis Part 2 of 3



I got a bum deal here.  I started looking into magnetic doors.  If I could find one that didn’t require power--if that were possible--I wouldn’t have to worry about a power failure and one of the dogs getting trapped outside in the rain or something.  And maybe the noise of such a door would scare the cat--if that were possible--so the cat wouldn’t use the doggie door, but the dogs still could by wearing a collar with a sensor. 

Sure, I’d still let the cat in through the back door.  She has her place here and she’s pretty much stolen one of the dog’s beds.  But I had to find out if the cat might be able to squirm her way in if the dogs used such a door.  I’d sure hate to come home from work and find one of the dog’s eyeballs on the couch.  One dog is terrified of this cat.  She just freezes like a deer in headlight.  The other dog, the small, bald one who think she’s a Pitbull, will take on this cat.  The problem with that is the cat outweighs the dog by a great deal and is three times her size.  Playing or not, things could real ugly, real fast.

So I went on an animal forum to ask about these doors.  I briefly explained that I needed to keep the cat out while allowing the dogs to come and go as they please.  At least SIX people asked why I needed to keep the cat out.

I hesitated.  I’d been through this once before.  I swore up and down I’d never go back to that forum because people (including me) had become hateful and mean.  I’d even got my feelings hurt a little at one point.  And that’s kind of hard to do unless you’re really close to me and know me.  I gave in.

I briefly explained that this cat is downright MEAN.  She claws up everything and terrorizes the other animals at times and I’m sick of cleaning up after the dogs in the laundry room. 

This is when the Cat Nazis came pouring out.  Here are some actual responses to my explanation as to why I do not want the cat inside unattended.

The poor cat!!!!
She's not mean, she's just doing what nature tells her to do.


Forgive me if I'm jumping to the wrong conclusion, but this sounds like you're fed up with refereeing the cat/dog/bird lives in your family and have decided that it's all the cat's fault.
Please don't lock the cat out, it clearly is desperate to be inside and has nowhere else to go. Making the cat stay outside is much too harsh a punishment for being part of the chaos that's driving you nuts.
If you can't find a way to bring peace to your pets' lives, please consider rehoming one or more.



I responded…
This is exactly why i do not like this forum.... This post is not supposed to be about my poor, poor cat who is desperate for attention, etc, etc, etc. It is not about why I am so horrible to this pitiful creature who is clearly better than me.
I asked about magnetic doors. Anyone is more than welcome to come over for a day and get your ankles clawed at in the hallway. It'll happen if you need to use the restroom. Come on over, I'll make tea.
Cat & bird are husband's--can’t get rid of. Dogs are both ours but I spend more time with all 4 pets. FYI, cat lovers--cats were originally born outside before housing was invented. Cats and turtles and zebras alike are perfectly OK outside. They've been surviving outside for thousands of years.
I apologize for my cynicism but die-hard-preachy cat people make me nuts.


Then the Cat Nazis came back….
I find this the most disturbing. If the cat and bird were your husband, did he not know that the cat and bird did not get along?? Why is it an issue now?? Perhaps you don’t want to referee the fights or chasing of the bird, but to ban the cat outside is harsh treatment. My cat still nips at my ankles as I pass her by, but, I try to control it, i.e., saying no (firmly) and if that does not work, then I spray her with a water bottle. And if all else fails, then she has a time out. But I don’t ban her from the house. I know that cats and dogs are different, however, a cat can learn not to do a certain behavior with proper training. I sure hope that you live in a warm climate and that there are no dogs or wild animals that would attack and possibly kill the cat.
I would hope and pray that there were not any children born either prior to or after the marriage, because if they can’t get along one will be banned to the outside. Sounds harsh, but if you’ll do to a animal, humans may be next.
Your posts appear to be that of an immature person. I said that because of this FYI, cat lovers--cats were originally born outside before housing was invented. Cats and turtles and zebras alike are perfectly OK outside. They've been surviving outside for thousands of years. Trying to rationalize your statements does not make it right. Good luck to you and your crew because you sure need it.



I responded….
Yes, I am immature and sarcastic but I don't care anymore! I'm SO sick on being judged because I allow my cat fresh air and sunshine. She was born outside--she weighs like 30 pounds and has muscles bigger than mine. She's quite alright out there! (and I was responsible & got her tubes tied--does that make me a meanie because it's unnatural???)

OH PUH--LEEZE do not compare cats to children. Cats are self-reliant. Children...not so much. They cannot even wipe their own noses.
May I be run down in the street by a PETA truck filled with kittens.
I'm out. Say what you want--that I'm a vicious pet owner & should reported because I GASP want my cat outside & to not claw out the dogs eyes and tear up the furniture or eat the bird. I prob won't be back.


To be totally fair, one person was speaking quite civilized….
I do think it is wrong to be so harsh in judgement of the situation. I agree I'd rather see the cat indoors but it's not my cat, my household, etc to deal with. I think that the cat harasses the bird is reason enough to be concerned with the cat being indoors and unattended.
All situations are different. Why would OP care if the cats and dogs get along fine at your house when they obviously don't get along fine at theirs?
It would be natural for a cat to attack and kill a bird, to suggest that since a behavior is natural that everyone should be ok with the consequences is a little skewed. I don't think anyone here would say that it would be fine for a pet cat to kill a pet bird but this is essentially the argument you are making with the whole it's natural thing.


And here’s excerpt from a Cat Nazi that practically wrote a novel on the subject within this posting…..
It's not ok for the cat to be forced to be outside, all the time.
First, a cat should not be outside, for the sake of the native bird population.
A very important reason to keep cats indoors is to prevent them from hunting and killing native birds that don't have any defenses against cats. Cats are NOT native to North America and are interfering with the native song bird population. There is a major concern in this country that cats could hunt native song birds to extinction.



HA HA!!  It is genetic encoding that tells a cat to hunt birds.  It’s called hunger and instinct.  And yes, birds DO have a defense.  It’s called--get ready for this--flight.  How do you give a cat a “time out” anyway?  Bunch of freaks.  Our cat has lived outside for two years.  When it gets unruly cold, we lock her in the laundry room overnight with bedding, food & water, and a small litter box.  She hisses and spits at me the whole time I’m trying to get her in that room, but I guess that’s nature telling her to do so.  Also, I get to spend the next day sweeping litter crumbs from EVERY square inch of the room.  Somehow, the cat has learned to fling poo like a monkey.  Lucky me.

And when I have my first baby, I might toss the crib and keep it in a cardboard box in the laundry room along with a tiny bowl of canned cat food, a shoebox filled with litter and a small blanket until it can properly walk.

Give me a break.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Cat Nazis Part 1 of 3

Oh I just know I’m gonna tick some off with this one!  I’ll advise you to mash your mouse over the back button if you are a Cat Nazi.  Allow me to further explain if you’re the normal, functioning sort that can talk about such things without screaming in my face because I share--GASP--an opinion that is not the same as yours.

Let me begin by explaining my love for animals.  There is a commercial on TV that shows abused and starving animals with some seriously sad music playing in the background.  I’ve seen this ad all of 537 times and I cry every single time.  “SOB!  Where’s my checkbook?”  I’ve been rescuing animals since I was a child.  I’ve even raised birds that had fallen from their nest or were abandoned.  At the tender age of nine, I experienced what it might be like to have a baby as a tiny mockingbird squealed from a box in my room at 2am. 

So, yes I am an animal lover.  There are many times when I like them more than people for obvious reasons. They aren’t judgmental, they don’t argue, talk back, and they’re loads of fun. 

I’ve dealt with Cat Nazis in the past and it is never pleasant.  This all began with the disappearance of our outdoor cat and the appearance of mice.  Shawn had found a two week old kitten left at his place of work, one cold February so of course he brought it home.  I told him I wanted a mouser, not something that could be eaten by a mouse.



We blocked off our laundry room to keep her separated from our two Chihuahuas and hand bottle fed her until she could walk and eat on her own.  We bathed her in the sink, we played with her.  We treated this tiny kitten with love and great care.

Then she grew up.  I’d already made up my mind once this cat was big enough to take care of herself, she would go outside.  We couldn’t have this many animals in the house!  It already smelled like dog and bird.  And how would this cat react to Shawn’s cockatiel, LuLu?  I hate cleaning up after that bird and HATE the idea of keeping any creature in a cage or on a rope, but this was Shawn’s bird.  We argued for months over this thing, primarily because I always thought it cruel to keep a bird in a cage.

But he won.  And now I get to clean up after an animal that poops, literally, ever ten to fifteen minuets.

So the cat got kicked out.  She was becoming mean as hell anyway.  I’m not sure what happened.  If we simply tried to pick her up, she would growl and spit and claw at you.  Protect your face!  She would stalk us like a cheetah trying to take down a gazelle.  As we turned the corner in the hallway, the cat would grab at your feet, claws fully extended.

For this reason, Shawn began to call her a dirty word, which I cannot repeat here.  Every time we’d reach out to pet this little psycho, she’d grab our hands and dig her talons into our skin.  At this point we’d yell, “Ah!  #$%!!”  And the name stuck against my wishes.  We both had scrapes and cuts up to our elbows dealing with the little monster.  I’m not saying there are never moments of sweetness with this animal--there are.  But they are few and far between!  This is just to give you a teeny tiny example of how ferocious this cat is.

The day we kicked the cat out, one of the dogs used the doggie door.  And the cat watched.  The dog did her business and pushed the door open to get back inside.  And the cat watched.  The cat then pushed the door open with her paw and promptly came inside.  WHAT THE….????

We had to train this dog to use the door and the cat, this horrible creature….ARRRGGGHHH!!!  Because of this, we had to block off the doggie door while we slept and worked.  I set up peepee pads in the laundry room and began mopping every single day and picking up poop.  Sigh.  The dogs began to look at me with a disappointed expression as if to say, “We haven’t been outside all day!  Let us OUT!”

Soon as I open the back door, the dogs tear out to the yard, the cat comes tearing inside.  I’d figured she might settle down after I’d had her fixed and she’d become fully grown, but no.  No, no.  I was in another room and heard LuLu shrieking like I’ve never heard before.  It wasn’t the sound she makes when a stranger comes up the walk, nor the sound that is made when a UPS truck hauls down the street.  This sounded bad.

I ran into the living room.  The sunlight come down through the window as if to pinpoint the culprit.  I yelled loudly at The Monster as I saw her furry little body hanging off the bird’s cage.  The cat had all four feet pinned to the cage rungs, eyes wild and full of mischief.  My yelling startled her and she leaped down and took off running.

I dunno.  That bird is pretty fierce.  I’m not sure who would have won if I hadn’t come running in there.

It’s natural for cats to sharpen their claws on anything and everything.  It took us two months to get her to stop clawing at the wall-to-wall carpet.  She would literally lift it from the floor she would dig in so hard.  So yes, the cat was inside on and off.  I had to let the dogs out for every second I was home.  The second the doggie door was open, all three animals were in and out like little anxious children.  Their ability to go in and out left less poop in the laundry room--which I had grown very tired of cleaning very early on.  I like things a certain way.  All things.  And I’m very particular about clean.  I wanted the cat out for two main reasons:  I didn’t want everything in the house shredded and I didn’t want to deal with a litter box….

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Everybody Does It

If you haven’t already noticed, I’m quite long winded.  I just go on and on and on…I don’t know how to edit.  That’s why I have a crappy job instead of being the editor of a newspaper.  Duh. 
Oh, also, I talk like that too.  I just go on and on and on and on and on……..




I’m not pregnant, but thanks for asking.  There’s nothing more miserable than broken down food being congealed and lodged within your intestines.  Now, before I begin, I would like you to know if you are squeamish or easily grossed out, you’d better hit the back button with a panic.  Why?  Because I am going to talk about poop. 

Now, if you are reasonable person, a reader of integrity, you will realize that we all poop.  You can’t stop it, you can’t hide it.  We just don’t talk about it.  And I’m not sure why because we ALL DO IT!  We can easily discuss what funny noise our car made last week but we cannot so easily disccuss what funny noises our belly made.  It baffles me that in our society it’s so easily to look at a billboard, the TV, pretty much everywhere and see disgusting symbols of sex--yet, nothing about pooping.

Because it’s so gross, ew!  Oh, grow up.  What are you, twelve?  I’ve been pooping since I was ripped from my mother’s womb and I have no problem discussing my issues.  Issues I’ve had since my mother put me on solid foods, that is.

You see, I’ve been constipated since I could walk--at nine months old, thank you  very much.  Once, when I was fourteen, I had a pain in my gut so bad that my crying prompted my dad to drive like a maniac to the hospital thinking I had a burst appendix.  Dad speeds for no reason.  Even at the age of fourty-five he drove like an old man.  This was one of very few exceptions.

No, it was nothing like a leaking appendix.  It was just poop, literally backed up within me.  The doctor suggested Dad get me an enema.  Id heard of these enema things, but I wasn’t quite sure what it was.  I later found out.

I sat on the bathroom floor of my parents home for about two hours, staring at this little plastic tube and bottle of saline, water, whatever the heck was in there.  And as I stared at this thing and read the instructions for the thirty-seventh time, I cried.

Occasionally, Dad would rap on the door gently and softly ask if I was OK.  “I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I can’t do this!!” I cried from the other side of the door.

This was my sacred area!  You just don’t put things up there!  How could I do this?  I wouldn’t do this.  I once read the side of a shampoo bottle with the words, “Use Externally Only”.  I asked my dad what this meant.

“It means don’t stick it in your ***hole,” he said.  See?  Even Dad knows you just don’t put things there!

Fast forward to fourteen years later and I still have this problem.  I’ve always known that “not going” is bad for you.  It’s got to be.  You can’t just walk around with dirty, digested food products in your body for a week and expect things to turn out OK.  It’s the equivalent of leaving dairy out in the hot sun and expecting it to be eatable.  Things are going to grow there, bacteria and bugs…  No, I would not eat cheese left out on the sidewalk.

And then there’s the pain.  I’m not only talking about the act of buttoning blue jeans when I am so bloated, but the pain of just being bloated itself.  It’s like my body doesn’t want to poop so instead it tries to push out the waste in a form of deadly vapors.
My stomach gurgles and gives off the appearance of a woman carrying around a six month old fetus.  In my young years, I’ve tried everything from peppermint tea to downing laxatives on the weekends.  I’ve gobbled down vegetables and cut out most processed foods, added fruit, and still carried around a volleyball.

A friend told me to get a bottle of pear juice in the baby aisle and drink the whole thing.  This produced nothing more than a gas that could easily be classified as a Weapon of Mass Destruction.  I tried to blame the dogs.  That sort thing just doesn’t fly anymore when you’ve been married to the same man for nine years.  And it certainly doesn’t work at my job.

Speaking of the men we’re married to, I don’t think it’s at all fair that my husband downs two gallons of Pepsi a day, eats frozen French fries like they’ll go bad, and still manages to poop EVERY SINGLE DAY WITH EASE.  If he ever gets constipated, he simply get s a hotdog at 7-11 and smothers it with that gross cheese that’s been sitting there for God knows how long.  Does the trick every time.  But I can’t eat those things every day.  Or....ever.  Ew.

My mom has always had the same problem and became dependant on laxatives.  I urged her to get off those blasted things.  She finally began bragging on some rat pellet cereal called All Bran.  “Misty, we’re talking EVERY DAY!  I eat one-third a cup with milk each day and it’s like magic!!” she says.

I tasted this cereal and told her it was like eating a box.  “You gotta put milk with it!  Here, have some with milk, it’s sweeter!”  Ah, Mom.  Still trying to get me to eat right after all these years.

I didn’t go with the All Bran, which yes, does in fact look like rat pellets.  I did, however find a cereal called Fiber One and I got it in the Caramel Delight flavor.  Who doesn’t like caramel?  I could eat a big bowl of melted caramel right now if I had it.

At the risk of sounding like a total commercial, this works.  That yogurt on TV with the active bacteria--that doesn’t work.  Tried it, been there, didn’t send me flying to the bathroom.  The problem with this cereal is that it tastes SO GOOD.  Like crunchy caramel flavored sugar squares.  A serving gives 25% of daily vitamins and 35% of daily fiber.

For the first time in my life--in my life!--I am proud to say that I have pooped EVERY SINGLE DAY for almost two weeks.  Sure, it’s a little sad that is a major accomplishment for someone in their late twenties, but a mountain that has been climbed none the less.  So lets see, I'm approaching my twenty-ninth birthday and so far I've quit smoing and became "regular".  Look at me go.

At work, I bragged to the girls who have been telling me to drink pear juice and swallow bits of cut-up prunes like a pill.  “I have pooped!” I announce loudly.

“Good!  Good for you!” they laugh.
“And it wasn’t a thirty minuet struggle, either!  I was in there, like five minuets and lost three pounds right there!”  This has been a long time running gag at work.  My poop issues, I mean.  My coworkers are genuinely happy for me.  Or maybe they’re just happy they’ll no longer have to discuss my issues with me.  Either way, we’re all happy about this amazing feat.

I can’t say if eating this cereal will work long term.  In the past, anything that I tried that worked, only worked for a little while.  I’m sure fiber is really good for this sort of thing, but I may look into a pill form of fiber.  This cereal is kind of expensive and I’ve been eating it like a glutton.  Coupons allow me to do so.  It’s also got a lot of sugar in it, which I’ve been trying to take in with a bit discretion these days.  I've actaully had to start measuring it out so I don't plow through half the box in one sitting.  And I will, too if I take the box with me to the TV.

I’ll leave you with that.  As with my coworkers, don’t be afraid to talk about poop.  We all do it; it‘s as natural as taking the trash to the curb.  Some of us clean up other’s poop.  Some of us develop foods to help others poop.  The point is we all do and we should not be afraid to talk about it.  Go on, now.  Don’t be scared.  Just don't ask anyone to look at it.  Remember, it's alright to talk about it.


Don't live a little, live on fire

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Groundhog Day

I started watching “The King of Queens” reruns because it made me laugh.  And, falling back to my self-esteem issues, I continued watching because I had become enamored with the character “Carrey”. 

You see, Carrey has perfect skin and great hair, whereas, I do not.  Carrey has great clothes and the most perfect figure, whereas, I do not.  Carrey has a job a legal secretary, which may not seem glamorous, but compared to schlepping around poopie pants all day…  Well, let’s just say Carrey works somewhere that smells nice all day, whereas, I do not.  Carrey has a beautiful home, has a best girl friend, gets to go to the gym, eat out, etc, and so on….

This is where I become jealous of complete and utter fiction.  How low can you go?  Carrey’s hair is perfect because a team of hair people are fixing it every twenty minuets.  Her home is beautiful because it was designed by a team of set designers.  The designers forgot the clutter, the dust bunnies, the dog pee stain on the rug.  Yeah, definitely fiction.

I just get so caught up in it.  I always feel as though things will never change, that I will never change.  Part of my daydreaming strategy at work is to amp myself up for something.  Nearly every day I tell myself, “I’m gonna do some sit-ups this evening!  It won’t be so bad.  I’ll pop in a movie and just do a few, wait a bit, do a few more.”

The problem is, I never do.  I’ll be twenty-nine in less than two months.  I’m nearly out of my prime and this is probably the best my body will ever be and it depresses me. 

I have not owned a bathing suit since I was ten years old and at this rate, I’ll probably never own another.  “You got a cute little body,” one of my female coworkers had once told me.  Ha!  If only she could see the volleyball I carry around in the front. Hiding bulges and squishable deposits has become an art.

Yes, I lost a considerable amount of weight some years ago and the rest, well…  It just never went.  And my butt has disappeared and formed a plateau otherwise known as White Girl Butt. 

At this point, a cubicle sounds nice to me.  I’d decorate it like a second home.  I’d hit the gym after work, and I’d go out for Chinese food every week!  Nah, it’s exactly what it is, a daydream and nothing more.  I know I’d be bored out of my mind if I had to sit all day.  I know my behind would get flatter and more spread out.  I know I’d never “hit the gym” even if I had a membership.

Some of my daydreams are hardly obtainable, like cleaning the clutter from this house.  There’s so much clutter and piles of crap everywhere, it gives me panic attacks.  Seriously.  This is what happens when a control freak marries a pack rat-slob.  As a teenager, I’d rearrange the furniture of my bedroom over and over until I had the most open space possible.  The more clean floor space, the happier I was.

I don’t know why I obsess over these things I cannot change.  I obsess, I get depressed, I become angry and downright frustrated over all these things I cannot change.  At work, I make a mental list of what drawer or closet I will tackle.  When I get finished with my daily chores and errands, I open the drawer or closest, filled to the brim with most of Shawn’s crap, small piles of nails and screws, stacks of baseball cards…

And I become so overwhelmed by it all that I might just stand there and sob.  Sometimes I simply slam it shut cursing him, “Why does he need to keep every single piece of garbage for me to clean out?”  Sometimes I just shrug my shoulders and think, “Eh, it’ll still be there later. ‘Seinfeld’ is coming on in a few minuets.”  Yes, I STILL watch “Seinfeld” reruns.

But nothing ever changes.  The drawer never gets cleaned out.  The Super Wal-Mart where I do most of my grocery shopping never becomes a fresh produce market.  The work lunches still have to made every single day.  The same trip must be made to the same bank every week.  Another month goes by and I didn’t go anywhere new or meet new people. 

Peter Pan had it right when he said he would never grow up.  At least children are equipped with the imaginations to take them someplace new where they can explore new and fantastic things.  Peter Pan must have known that the adult life was filled with nothing more than repeating the day before.  Adult life is nothing more than “Groundhog Day” without the added hilarity of Bill Murray.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

When The Boss Is Away....

Here's a little something I wrote a couple years ago.  Found it tucked away in my Microsoft Word files.


I inadvertently set a small fire at work today.  Now, before you go jumping the gun and passing judgment, you must listen to the rest of my story.  I know many fantasize about setting small fires at their place of work but mine truly was an accident.  I swear.

    Today was my last day of work before going on a long awaited, much deserved vacation.  Not that I was going anywhere, but away from work for a week is always good enough.  The day was drag.  Literally, the day just dragged on with no end in sight as one would expect.  The boss was away so I decided to sneak out to smoke a cigarette on a non-designated-break-time.  GASP!  I know.  It’s truly a crime.  I should be locked away with my wrists and feet bound with nothing to eat but crust of bread.  I should be dragged out into the street and beaten with a stick.

    What can I say?  I was having a rough day.  And since the Designated Break Time was implemented, I’ve only cheated twice, which is saying a lot considering how often I get so frustrated at work.  On one occasion I had a serious cold.  You know the kind; you feel like you’re going to die but you’re not vomiting or running fever and there’s no one to cover for you at work.  So you say to yourself, I’m going to go to work, do just what is absolutely necessary and then go home and get drunk on some NyQuil.

    Well I started feeling more and more awful as the morning progressed so I snuck outside for a smoke.  And was seen.  Yes, I’m the one who always gets caught no matter what.  Nothing was said to me because my nose was both running and stopped up and I suppose the boss figured a bit of sympathy was in order.  I could have called in, after all, and smoke at whatever time of the day I felt like it.  “Bar keep!  I’d like another shot of NyQuil.  Ah, what the heck, how about a round for the house?”

    The second time I snuck out, I had severely burned myself.  I actually didn’t get caught but I figured that skin instantaneously peeling from my body was a valid excuse for “slacking off on company time” as it were.
    So, back to my last day.  I went around back just in case the owner’s wife came back.  As if she wouldn’t be able to both see and smell cigarette smoke coming from around the building, but at least I wouldn’t have to look her in the eye.  When I was done, I pitched my cigarette butt on the ground and it landed on an old rag.  I stomped it out, removed the butt from the rag, separating the two, stomped them both out again and promptly went back to work.

    Later, people were flittering about at the back door.  “Misty, we got a problem back here!” my coworker, Liz shouted at me.  Everyone was in a mass panic.  “Something’s burning!  The generator’s on fire!  The generator’s on fire!”

    Actually, we don’t have a generator so I had no idea what they were talking about.  I assumed they meant the air compressor that sounds like a 747 jet revving up, but that remained to be seen.  I went around back to the gate that allows access to the air compressors and breaker boxes.  I figured the air compressor was burning up and I could simply shut it off, along with its breaker and go about my merry way.  Upon reaching the back of the building, however, I did not find a burnt up air compressor.  What I found instead, was an old rag.  Smoldering.

    Ah-ha!  Now I knew exactly what had happened.  Mystery solved.  The old once-was-white rag now had a big black circle burnt into it with smoke calmly lifting up, as though that’s why it was put on this earth.  I just as calmly picked up the rag, dropped it on the concrete parking lot as another coworker frantically ran over in a panic to stomp it out her sneakers.

    I went inside where Liz was getting a bucket of water and we put out the inferno.  The crisis had been averted.  Still, to look at my coworkers, you would think their own clothes were on fire.  After things calmed down and everyone went back to dragging through the day I bumped into Liz and she about fell on the floor in a fit of laughter.

    “It’s because you sneaked out, because you were being sneaky!” she laughed.  She laughed and laughed until tears were rolling down her face.  Another coworker wandered over and asked how the fire started.  Liz, like a well programmed robot, suddenly stopped laughing and switched to a very serious demeanor.  “We don’t know!  We don’t know what happened!”

    “Probably someone was driving down the alley and pitched a cigarette out the window,” I said.  And as far as anyone knows, that is what happened.  Naturally, as though on cue, Liz began howling with laughter.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

How to Quit Smoking. For Real.

I think it’s a safe assumption to say that I have very low self-esteem.  This began around the age of nine which was when my body began to change and mature.  I blame the hormones in the milk I was forced to drink daily by my mother.  Aside from being dragged to Wal-Mart for a so-called training bra, I had also developed an ability that most women gain later on in life:  Weight Gain.

From this point on, I was no longer The Skinny Kid.  I had in fact become The Chubby Kid and this was accentuated by my later need for glasses.  I had always been the one other kids picked on, even the chubbier kids.  And even into high school, where I fit in like a square peg into a round hole, I was bullied, teased and driven into a state of depression that required a short hospital stay.

At the age of fifteen, I started smoking cigarettes because I thought it would keep me from eating.  Keep in mind that I was only maybe ten pounds overweight but in my head I was a huge elephant that everyone thought was ugly and no one could ever like.  My now husband, had broken up with me because our families were fighting like rabid animals stuck in a pen with dollar bills being passed about as each one fell.

Quite mature, I realize that now, however at the time, Shawn was my only friend.  He was my first kiss, my first real boyfriend.  More importantly, he was my only friend and he chose to leave me. 

So I chose to smoke, thinking that if I had a cigarette in my mouth, I would not have food there.  And no, it had not crossed my mind the damages that smoking can do to one’s skin, hair, and nails--aside from the skillion other health issues it may cause.  It did not occur to me that I would one day go through boxes of nicotine patches and nicotine gum and long lists of other items to get off the blasted things as I had watched my parents do so many times.  I had not thought about the stink I would carry around with me on my clothes and in my hair.

This inevitably earned me the nickname Stinky from a group of particularly hateful boys.

Yes, even the boys picked on me.  They even wrote “STINKY” in permanent marker on my locker.  They once even shoved me into the gross boy’s restroom and held the door shut until I nearly passed out from the urine funk injecting itself into my nostrils.  And I was the stinky one?  Boys are gross.

Five years later, I attempted to quit smoking.  I made it until 4pm using some sort of nicotine lozenge that tore my stomach to shreds.  From there, I tried the patch, the gum, cold laser therapy (twice), the gum and the patch at the same time (nicotine overdose and throwing up!) hypnosis at some hotel, that inhaler thing you get by prescription, Chantix, anti-depressants……

I never once made it a full day without a cigarette.  I was so miserable a few hours in, I would give in to my desire to fulfill the need my body had so hungered for.  This is the description of a junkie, only without the stealing and not having a place to live.  But in essence, I was a junkie.  I could not function without cigarettes.  No matter how badly it tasted, how yucky I smelled, no matter how it affected my sense of taste, I needed it.

Around the age of twenty-seven or so I became obsessed with making myself look better.  I began researching face creams, magical lotions that made pimples vanish, hair conditioners, what foods to eat, and so on.  It was at this time that I realized if I wanted the energy to exercise, I would need to quit smoking.  I knew for a fact my skin would look better and I’d feel better; good enough to do those sit-ups I’d been putting off for the last decade or so.

This was the deciding factor on my quitting smoking:  Looks and money.  As the government raised the taxes on cigarettes, I did the math and checked our budget.  One of us would either need to quit smoking or quit eating.

I had gone through this many times.  I would pray and cry, scream at God, “Why won’t you take this addiction away from me?  I need you to help me!”  I had often felt as though God was not hearing me.  “It’s in His time, not yours,” my mother would say.  No very helpful.  I was so discouraged after every attempt; I felt like such a loser!

I found out about electronic cigarettes when I turned on the internet one day.  The news articles popped up and there was a photo of hundreds of Chinese women on an assembly line.  The were building the e-cigs, a device that allows you to inhale a water vapor spiked with liquid nicotine.  It was born out the fact that China had had the most smokers in the world,  I checked into this extensively.  I found a forum where I read everything, talked to everyone and asked a lot of questions.

This began in April 2009.  I had a lot of trouble at first.  Spent a ton of money we really didn’t have trying different things.  Things would break, I’d drop things, I accidentally let myself run out of supplies.

I easily got down to five cigarettes a day--without even trying.  And this!  This after smoking at least two packs a day, three a day on weekends.  I moved up to a device that had more power behind it and easily quit smoking.  I went two straight days without even craving a cigarette!  The smell disgusted me and the taste was foul.  For the first time in thirteen years, I didn’t want a cigarette. 

On the third day, I dropped my gadget, busting it into three pieces.  This is exactly how my entire journey had been.  I stood right there at work, in front of everyone, and began to cry.  I knew I would smoke again.  And I did…in about five minuets.

To fast forward a couple of weeks, it is now February 6th, 2010 and I have not had a cigarette in twenty-four hours.  I had a couple yesterday morning, and one around 8pm--which tasted so disgusting I didn’t even finish it.




Eating is not a problem.  Waking up is not a problem.  Stressful situations are a breeze.

Even though we weren’t paying forty dollars for a carton a cigarettes (we ordered them online), I’m barely spending anything on this e-cig gadget.  It was costing me five dollars EACH DAY to smoke cigarettes.  Now, I’m on easy street with an average spending of thirty dollars per month.  Of course it wasn’t easy getting here.  Some people have the stupid of luck of opening their first starter kit and quitting smoking cigarettes right there on the spot.  Some of us have a bit more of a struggle.  But I never gave up.  I never gave in.  Maybe the way God presents us with doctors and medicine, He presented me with the electronic cigarette.

Of course, there is the intention to get off the nicotine one-hundred percent, eventually.   For now though, I’m looking forward to glowing skin, healthy hair, and yes, finally the energy to get rid of those pesky ten pounds.  I’ve even started eating steamed vegetables with dinner.

Go me!



An interesting piece I had posted on Electronic Cigarette Forum:
http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/electronic-cigarette-reviews/64826-review-comparison-901-510-5v-pt-gg-nano-chuck-help-frustrated.html

Monday, February 8, 2010

I Don't Get Paid Enough For This

I suppose I will go ahead and go with a blog.  Why not?  There’s a teeny, tiny chance I might make a little cash on it.  Though I doubt it.  You readers may notice a slight inconsistency in my writing style.  Actually it’s not the writing that’s inconsistent, or rather my mood.  I also do not speak in the same manner of that which I write.  No course not.  Who does that anyway?

My job.  Naturally, everyone hates their job.  Most days, mine isn’t so bad, and it wouldn’t suck so much if it weren’t for all the poop.  See, I’m a dry cleaner.  You may think it’s fun to play with chemicals all day…until you get a chemical burn or inhale the fumes of something you shouldn’t have.

My job is redundant and monotonous.  That entire sentence is redundant.  I’ve removed pen marks from white cotton shirt pockets so many times, I could do it in my sleep.  And yes, I have done it in my sleep.  The problem with having a job is that you spend most of your waking life there and once free and in the warm safe comforts of home, alone in bed dreaming….

Dreaming of work.  All day I strive to get out of that building.  I gobble up the sweet scent of freedom wafting through my car window as I plow through all the soccer moms on the interstate.  At night I curl up into a tight ball because I’m a stress-case and hug the blankets because the heater will only go up to seventy degrees.  But I’m home, in my bed that does not smell like a cologne bath or dog urine.

And I dream.  I have strange dreams that would bore you to death if I told them.  They are nothing more than random thoughts and memories picked up over the day or last week, or even over the last few years.  Then, as if by some cruel joke, I dream I am at my job.  The events may be strange or unorganized, but alas, I am at work.

It doesn’t seem fair.  I was there already today!  Oddly enough, because my job requires me to do the same mundane tasks, day after day, week after week, I have plenty of time to allow my mind to wander.  I daydream.

I think about what I could sell on eBay to avoid any more voluntary overtime.  What could I buy cheaply, out of a huge box and sell over and over for a tidy profit?  I think about all kinds of things really, but this one comes up the most because it will save me from wasting my life away.  The problem with making barely more that minimum wage is that everything equals an hour of overtime.  I’d like to see one of those fancy IMAX 3-D movies.  However, the nearest IMAX theater is an hour’s drive so for my husband and I to both go would cost roughly, three hours of overtime.

This is how my mind rationally calculates whether or not something is worth the cost.

The other thing that comes up most often is what I could’ve done with myself.  I should have gone to college.  I should have begun to eat more healthy years and years ago.  I should have done something--anything with myself.  I do find myself wondering what I could have done, what I would’ve become.

And that, dear readers, is what I really do all day at work.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Genuinely Real: The Introduction

I honestly don’t know what I’m afraid of.  I have no problem being critiqued or even if someone were to tell me, “It stinks.  It’s just plain awful!”  I’d be OK with that, really.  It’s just that I’ve started this blasted….thing, this novel or blog or whatever this will turn out to be this time….  I’ve started it many times before.  I think most of all, I’m afraid of failing.  I’m afraid I won’t finish it.  I’m afraid I’ll write endless pages only to have a virus enter the computer and wipe everything clean.  Well, thankfully that’s only happened once before.

I never know how to start, where to begin.  I know I want to write.  I know what I want to write about.  I just never know how get things going or how to take it from here to there.  At work, I start things off in my head and it sounds absolutely brilliant.  Of course, I cannot stop work and jot down everything into a notebook so by the time I get home, I’ve forgotten just about everything and wind up with long, run-on sentences that go on for days.  But what do you care?  Are you, the reader, an English major?  And so what if you are?  What can you do besides teach English?  And not the language, but the “art” and “study” of places verbs and pronouns into a rocket ship-shaped diagram.  Nobody wants to hear from you anyway.

Oh, and that’s another thing.  I go through various stages of what sort of writer I aspire to be.  Most of the time, I want to be Dave Barry.  Reading many of Dave’s articles have caused me to produce a sound many would recogonize as laughter.  It’s kind of hard to get me to laugh out loud, genuinely.  I laugh, I really do.  But to produce a genuine laugh, now that takes something really special.  It’s not that I’m a mean person, I tend to think of myself as more intelectual in fact that it takes a smarter joke to cause the sound of laughter to erupt from my gut.

On the other hand, an unexpected squeaky fart noise will cause the same type of laugh.

I thought I was funny.  I make people laugh at work.  I go back and read the pages and pages and pages of somethings I had written only to discover I wasn’t funny at all.  Heck, that’s not even interesting, I say to myself.  To be fair, about ten percent of what I wrote trying to be funny was actually funny.  Chuckle worthy, maybe.  Not gut-busting funny.

At other times, I wanted to write seriously.  I attempted to write a true life account of my husband’s life as a teenager in a seriously serious manner.  But of course I would need humor.  His hundreds of stories are not without genuine giggles.  I had the exact image in my head of what this story would be like, what the movie would look like and I had even picked out the soundtrack.  It was so perfect that even as I write this, I want to stray and go back to that project because I know how positively beautiful it could truly be.

But when I write, it never turns out like that.  No, it’s all out of order and that guy wasn’t even there, didn’t that happen before this, and this was much more funny/dramatic/sad/adventure-filled when it was told to me.

Maybe some stories are better off being told instead of written down.  Or better yet, maybe some things are better left to the professionals to write them.

We had discussions at great lengths about this.  I wanted it to be honest, funny, and for the reader to connect with the main character, my now husband.  But how would I write about someone else’s life?  How does one even begin to do that? 

You write as though the stories are being told to you.  You tell the stories as best as you remember and it will not be perfect.  And still, I have not gotten back to this.  I’m afraid I won’t be able to tell it correctly and that the stories won’t encourage the reader to laugh or cry as I did when they were told to me.  You see, it’s something I do not wish to even begin unless I know I can do it right.

Yes, then there’s The Blog.  I began keeping a blog--a sort of online diary or news feed or coupon database, whatever you wish--because I heard you could make money with blogs.  And some people do.  I assure you, I researched these folks that don’t even have a day job because of the money they collect from advertisers posting they’re brightly colored images of detergent and dog food on their own websites.

I never made any money on my blog because I was writing to make money.  My little stories were not funny because I wasn’t writing for me.  The best stories I ever wrote were because I wrote them knowing another soul would never see them.  I even wrote twenty-three glorious pages on what I’ve learned through my short years.  It was meant to be humorous as I guided the reader through the process of purchasing a “fixer-upper” home, first jobs, and learning how to cook as gravy quite literally exploded in the kitchen, covering every square inch of exposed space.

I meant to write a book and just never got back to it.  I became stuck.  I didn’t know how to lead the reader from the exploding gravy to our kitchen ceiling caving in, or what have you.  But it was good.  And it was funny.  All that holds true because I wrote it for myself with plans to take it to a publisher, rake in my millions and spend my days playing in my water park that was built in my back yard.

I never finished because I had become depressed.  It’s hard to write funny, let alone write funny when you are so deep into The Pit that you can’t see the light at the opening.  So I gave it up.

Oh, the depression comes and goes.  At least as longas I can remember, since around the age of seven or eight.  And along with this emotional roller coaster has always been my desire to write.  Even as a child, I wrote long, boring stories--the kind only a child can write--accompanied by illustrations and stabled bindings.  In high school, my English teacher offered to set me up with an internship with the newspaper.  She thought I’d be great in that type of setting.  I’ve come to realize that many writers get started in newspapers.  Dave Barry writes a weekly column for a newspaper and has oodles of books, not tom mention oodles of cash I would imagine.

My downfall was that I was a teenager.  A non-paying job?  No thank you, I said.  And from there I went on to work for a horrible apartment complex, cleaning urine from the crisper box of a refrigerator. 

I often wonder how my life may have differed had I take that internship.  I find myself thinking of all the different possibilities, where I’d be in life now had I made that one tiny decision differently.  Naturally, it’s quite simple to focus on the positive things that may have happened.  I might be making more money; I might have been on the Best Sellers List, and so on.

But maybe it would not have turned out for the good.  There are just as many things that could have gone wrong as could have gone well.  And see?  I did pay attention in English class.  I wrote “well” instead of “good”.  Though I’ve never been one to think that it matters.  Who cares if it’s considered proper English.  Who speaks that way?  The words both have the same meaning.  Some college professor somewhere at some point in time needed money so he wrote a text book on all of this and you know what?  NO ONE CARES!


So why write now?  Why right now?  Why do this at this present moment when I could be sitting in front of the TV eating potato chips and watching The King of Queens reruns on DVD?

Because I think I am supposed to.  All this time, all these trial and error moments, all the times I read an article about a writer, each time that I watch a movie that has a writer as the main character and I say, “I wanna do that.”  It keeps nagging at me, prodding at me, and it will not let me forget it.

I’m not sure what I’ll write about yet.  As I write this, I don’t know if I’ll forge another blog or leave this on my six year old computer’s hard drive for no one to ever see.  Even as my head throbs because my eyes keep darting back and forth from keyboard to computer screen, I know I am supposed to be doing this.  Even after three pages, my wrist aches from damaged tendons produced only from hard labor jobs.  I’m not gonna go back and re-read everything.  I’m not gonna have so-called proper grammer.  I’m not gonna flawlessly glide from one subject to the next.  (And so far you're saying to yourself, "Well, duh.")

I’m writing this because I think God wants to use me for something and I can only ignore God for so long before he pulls the chair out from under me.  I don’t care how long and drawn out each subject is as this intended-to-be-one-pager turned out to be.  It may not be funny at all times and it might even get down right boring.  This is me.  Raw and uncut.

…And my head is about to explode.  Where is the Asprin?
F9TBWDBH9VX8