Happy Father's Day

If only every little girl could be so lucky...

The New War at Home

So all that crap I wrote not too long ago about not having any waged wars with the neighbors? Yeah, apparently all that was needed to resolve that was some new blood in the neighborhood.

I briefly introduced you to Jabba the Slut, my new neighbor, last week. Since I stay at home all day, I've been able to learn a little bit more about her by observing her habits: her apparent favorite habits are smoking on the front porch, yelling at her 2-year-old son Nehemiah (whom I am convinced does not own any clothes since any time I see him, he is running around in a diaper, regardless of weather conditions), eating, and loudly partying with gentleman callers on her porch. All of the above are done loudly. She is nothing but an absolute joy to live beside in my previously-quiet and serene neighborhood, even if it is overrun by the Feline Minions.

At this point, I'd like to pause to mention that despite ongoing wars with Creepy Cat Guy and Kidney Boy, I actually do get along with the majority of my neighbors. My favorite neighbor is Fred. Fred is my guardian angel, in the form of a tattoo'd, gruff, Harley-riding ex-trucker. Whenever I'm in distress, he magically appears -- whether it's being locked out of my car (arrives with slim jim in hand), fighting with the lawn mower (spark plug and a little luck and he had it running again), or help pushing a comatose car out of the street (that was a fun winter). Fred's a good guy. He's abrasive, but I'm not exactly smooth as silk myself. It's hard not to like Fred within five minutes of talking to him.

It's at this point that we teleport to yesterday afternoon. A warm June afternoon, I had my windows open when I hear men yelling at each other in angry voices, accompanied with a slew of curse words. I look out the window, and there's Jabba the Slut's current booty call/baby daddy/pimp/provider of McDonald's, this tiny skinny white guy, all thugged out, screaming at Fred to get off his (mind you, SHE rents the house, I have never seen Skinny in my life) lawn.

Fred is yelling back, obscenities are exchanged, I got called a skinny bitch in the whole mix. (Again. Confidence levels = all time high.) Fred goes back down to his house and I go inside. I come back out a little later and Fred's talking to Sharon, my other next-door neighbor (Kidney Boy's mom... she and I are cool).

BASICALLY. The story is, Fred was walking past Jabba's house, stopped to introduce himself and chat, and she referred to me in conversation as "the skinny bitch next door." Fred interjected that I and my husband are good people, and not to talk about me like that. Somewhere in this the fight escalated and Skinny pushed Fred, conflict ensued, police were called. Drama, drama, drama.

So basically, the neighborhood is quietly rallying to evict Jabba as efficiently and swiftly as possible.

Wars are fun when you have an army that doesn't consist solely of your blog and message board friends. Don't get me wrong, guys, you all rock, but this is going to be an amazing summer, full of calls to the police, filing complaints, calling her landlord, and who knows, maybe I'll get drunk and egg her house. Because THAT will solve the problem.

Hold onto your panties. This summer's gonna get interesting.

The new baby

So it's official. A. and I are now really, truly, officially, totally married.

We were married October 31, 2007 in a Las Vegas quickie wedding, after I had waddled my 5.5 month pregnant ass around Vegas to get to the license bureau and then threw up in the license bureau bathroom (pregnancy-related, not nerves). We were really married when I gave birth to our daughter, whom we had created while consumating our relationship (for the umphundredth time). We were reeeaaally married when we bought a couch together. But now it's official:



Meet our new baby. We bought a car together.

Yes, as of today, A. and I are the proud owners of a 2002 Jeep Liberty. She's beautiful. And I feel hot as hell driving it. Which really is the most important thing. Gas guzzling be damned -- I'm sexy in my Liberty.

It was a day I never thought I'd ever see. After the worst winter ever, when both of our cars took a shit on us, my grandmother gave me her car to get us through the winter, fighting with the Lumina every other week, and getting A. to finally admit that his Honda Prelude is NOT family friendly... followed by months of us fighting and arguing over what kind of vehicle to get.... it's here. It's in the driveway. It's mine and he can't take it away from me, namely because my name is on the title, too.

First, A. saw the car at a dealership. Talked to the dealer (I was not around for this), liked what he was hearing. Told me to go test drive it, which I did the next day. I fell in love instantly. Then I told A. as much, at which point he rambled on for awhile about the impracticality of it, and how it's a gas guzzler and.... who cares, all I heard was "Blah blah blah, I don't love you and you can never have a car you want, blah blah blah".

What ensued was a tantrum that would make even the most spoiled three-year-olds stop and marvel at the skill of my game. My tears are magical, ya'll. My bodily fluids in general are sheer magic. My breast milk makes a consistently 98th percentile baby, and my tears make a grown man buy me a car.

Don't think I am not without my match. After waiting 2 hours at the bank to get the car loan (after being told it would take 20-30 minutes), A. had the bank branch manager calming him down, offering him everything from water to her own private stash of Diet Pepsi to donuts from the Wells Fargo employee break room. I wasn't around to hear just how it reached the point of the bank manager groveling and offering donuts, but I don't doubt he was epic. Gotta love being married to an Irish man with an Irish temper.

But now it is mine. And I am content. The How2 has spoken.

You know your weight loss is paying off when...

... you hear your trashy fat blob of a neighbor on the phone on her front porch refer to you as "the skinny Stepford bitch next door."

Yes, we have a new neighbor. The idiot elderly couple who own the house next door, which has been empty for almost two years, have found someone to rent to again. I don't know what her name is, but I do know she has a little boy named Nehemiah James. I know his name because she screams it at him, along with random strings of obscenities, about every five minutes.

She seems delightful.

Skinny bitch.

Since I had not one but two rousing rounds with The Plague in the past month and a half, I've lost quite a bit of weight. I didn't really notice it until I looked at pictures from our zoo trip on my birthday last week:


I'm looking a bit gaunt. And it looks hot, I'll say it. (And OMG *gasp*, an elusive How2 pic... it's okay, you can't see my face.)

I've always been leaning toward the tall and lanky side thanks to amazing genetics, but I think this is a new record in the skinny bitch dept. I'm still working to get my appetite back from the aftermath of The Plague, but ya know, I really kinda dig the new weight, whatever it is. (I'm not allowed to have scales in the house... as someone who's battled with weight/body image issues, I will weigh myself every hour on the hour if there is a scale in this house. So we don't own one.)

I know I keep talking about running a half-marathon, or a sprint-triathlon, or I don't know, getting off my ass, but this time I mean it. I really kinda want to maintain this weight without getting some virus that has me pleading with my husband to mercy-kill me. We have a treadmill in the basement I haven't touched in, oh, say a year. And it's beautiful out; the evening weather is perfect for running.

Then I start thinking about taking Punky running with me, because wouldn't that just be something, me, jogging along all MILFy like? But then that requires me to get a jogging stroller, and that's just an added expense on something I have a sneaking suspicion will turn out like the treadmill. But you just can't go jogging with a baby in a regular stroller, because then you just look like you're intentionally running away from something.

I mean really, think about it. You see a woman running down the sidewalk pushing a baby in just a run-of-the-mill stroller? Your first instinct is to look behind her and see if there is a rapist or a monster behind her. You see a woman running with one of those three-wheeled, sleek jogging strollers? You think, Hey, she's really in shape!

And let's face it, once I start running, I'll have to keep it up so A. doesn't accuse me again of "never following through"... and there's also the simple fact that running sucks. Running really sucks. I'm sorry. I know people do marathons like I drink (as in, they do it to function), and I had friends who ran cross country in high school and college, but ya know, I think these people are, for lack of a better word, stupid. Running sucks, it's boring, there's nothing fun about it. I lost all interest in running a half-marathon, not because it seemed hard, but because running 13.1 miles would bore the living shit out of me. I would detour off after like half a mile, or whenever I found a pub or bar. Because seriously. Fuck that shit.

So basically, in the course of this blog post, you've witnessed me go from "YEAH! Skinny is AWESOME!" to "Enh, fuck it. I'm going to go get a martini." Which is a good mindset to have, because it's 9:45 am and I still haven't had a glass of wine yet.

ETA: Problem solved.

Won't you be my neighbor?

I haven't had a good feud with the neighbors lately. Cat Guy has kept his minion army mostly at home base, Kidney Boy stopped parking in front of our house, and I've actually befriended a couple of our neighbors, namely Lonely Lady (a 50-something woman who lives by herself), Formerly Fat Guy (aka FFG, who plowed our driveway and sidewalk all summer for brownie compensation), and Ram Guy (whose name I do actually know, is Fred, and always randomly appears when I'm in distress). So I've been rather bored since I haven't had anyone locally to take out my passive-aggressive rage on.

It's not that I actively seek out conflicts with my neighbors. I just have a zero-tolerance policy for bullshit, and it's especially so when it infringes on my living space. I learned the hard way, from my early days as an innocent and naive college student living alone in her first "big girl" apartment, to the long, embittered journey that brought me to this house.

My first apartment was actually really nice for a first go at independence. It had a beautiful view of a "lake" (it was a big pond, but it was beautiful nonetheless) on a nice side of town. Unfortunately I got herded into the same building as some real nutjobs that quickly transformed me from the sweet little college girl into a shiv-wielding, trust-no-one hermit.

On the day I moved in, I met Kevin. On my first encounter of Kevin, he seemed nice enough besides an inherent creepy vibe. He wore a light gray t-shirt and light gray sweatpants and black socks with Birkenstocks, and this apparently was his uniform, as he wore this every single time I ever saw him, like some sort of cartoon character. He was quiet. He avoided eye contact. And whenever I walked past his apartment door, on the rare occasion that it was open, it was obvious this man was a packrat. Newspapers, boxes, computer parts, plants, weird things that I don't even know, piled from floor to ceiling in his dimly lit apartment. On the rare chance that I walked by and he was coming or going and I peeked into his apartment, he'd quickly the shut the door and stare at me like I'd mortally offended his mother.

Kevin was creepy and I soon decided that he was a serial killer. He would talk on his cell phone outside -- maybe better reception, I don't know -- but he'd walk around the apartment building on his cell phone, smoking cigarettes, and giving you dirty looks if you glanced his way while he was talking. I stopped looking at him after awhile because I was pretty sure that if I continued to give my obligatory half smile, he was going to kill me and make a suit out of my skin.

Directly above my apartment was the Somalians. I was never sure how many people lived there. It seemed like they switched people out like Swatch watch covers. But they were always African (like "click click" African), and always had a shitload of children. And they were loud. God, they were loud. And perhaps they wanted to take their dysfunction outside away from the children, or maybe they just wanted to share with the rest of us in the building, but they always went out on the balcony to scream at each other in whatever their native tongue was. I think it was angry yelling. I was never really sure. But they'd scream and fight and throw ceramics off the balcony (which hey, I got a really cool free pot with only a few minor chips that way). Then they'd have sex later.

And because I lived in the apartment directly beneath them, I was the lucky winner of several used condoms on my balcony. Which is a little surprising, considering how many children they had running around. Maybe they learned from past mistakes. I don't really know.

Also above my apartment, and one over, was a young college couple, Matt and Ashley, who were my age. Initially I thought they were pretty cool -- Ashley had family in my hometown, Matt and I had a lot of really similar music tastes. After a while, I found myself up in their apartment, or them in mine, about every night, having a beer and watching TV or movies or playing games. Pretty normal stuff. Then I began to realize Ashley was bipolar. Really bipolar. Like we went out to IHOP one night and when she didn't get her hash browns with her meal, she had a complete meltdown. And was completely inconsolable.

After I realized Ashley wasn't exactly stable (but I mean hey, who of us really is?), I started to realize that Matt and Ashley fought a lot. I could hear them screaming at each other frequently. Then one day I caught an argument where she believed he was cheating on her with me (no). This insecurity turned into resentment and pretty soon it became really obvious that she didn't want me hanging out with them anymore. Combine that with the fact that on a crazy day, Ashley asked if I'd have a threesome with them... our friendship kind of dissolved after I discovered I don't have a high tolerance for Crazy.

Some of the craziness wasn't even from residents, necessarily. I quickly encountered a nemesis in the form of a very obese woman on a motorized scooter who would come and pick through our trash. She was accompanied by what I was never quite sure was either a child or a midget, and they'd rifle through the dumpster beside the apartment building, collect their treasures, and then escape down the road on the motorized scooter. Where they came from and where they went, I don't really know, but I saw them booking down the street on more than one occasion. The woman wasn't exactly pleasant; she screamed at me that I was a slut on more than one occasion, but I never responded, namely because she saw me getting out of my car once and I really didn't want her to do anything to my car. I started leaving expired groceries and canned goods beside the dumpster, after I figured out her patterns, and hoped that maybe she'd appreciate my good deeds, and not scratch my car, or maybe even stop calling me a whore. She never did stop calling me a whore and a slut, but I'm fairly certain my car made it out of that lease unscathed.

Eventually, my lease expired, I moved to another apartment, and then into A.'s house, and neighbors have come and gone and battles and feuds have been fought, some won, some lost, all passive-aggressive in their own right. But I'll never forget that first apartment and the creepy serial killer, the horny, angry multiplying Somalians, the Schadenfreunde, and the insult-screaming obese woman on the Rascal and her pet midget. These are the people that fate brings into our lives to make them interesting, and to make us appreciate deadbolt locks.

It's so convenient that my current age is also the same number as some popular TV show I've never seen. (No, really. I've never watched Lost either.) But yes, just an FYI, because it's my blog and I can attention-whore if I want to (because that's basically all this is here) -- today is my birthday, and I am 24. Today also marks the two-year anniversary of Punky's conception... so provided my good buddy Mirena doesn't fail me, we can make it the second consecutive birthday in a row that I don't get knocked up! Woo woo!

Though, in the birthdays since the notorious 22nd, I haven't gotten falling down drunk and writhed around on a pool table or danced on a guitar amp in the same night. The two may or may not be directly correlated.

Anyway. It's my birthday. And I am old.