My skin has mostly stopped peeling away and mostly I don’t look like Reptar, Molting Queen of the Underworld. I do still have a few spots of burn that really and truly look like actual burn, not sunburn but actual hot brand on my flesh burn or something. eeeuw. I’m pretty.
Went and looked at a place to rent on Friday and hope hope hope to get it. Cute duplex, in a cute part of town. Just a few blocks from Lakes Nokomis and Hiawatha and up the street from one of the 2 dog parks that I go to. Also, a couple blocks from the Mel-O Glaze bakery (yum) and closer to United Noodles and Coastal Seafood.
This place is cute with a fab kitchen (the entire rest of the place could be a tiny shithole, I woulsn’t care, it’s the kitchen that sells me every time. The only real complaint I’d have is the bedroom is rather small with a tiny closet, but there’s a giant linen closet right outside the bedroom, next to the bathroom that could be used for clothes.
Separate dining room means I’ll probably keep my dining room table instead of downsizing to the little 2 seater table I have.
Also, garage parking! yay!
Anyway.
Friday night D and I went to see a high school production of “A Midsummer’s Night Dream”. It was surprisingly good for a high school play, but the best part was that because it was high school they tweaked it so much they ended up cutting out huge chunks of show for time’s sake. Now purists would argue that huge chunks should not be cut out of anything, but I’m not a purist and I think Shakespeare occasionally forgot to stop writing. Some stuff is just too damned long and pointlessly so. If it were being done professionally, then by all means keep it pure. 15 year olds can cut what they like as long as the gist is there. Also, the kid who played Puck was gonna go somewhere in life. You could tell. It may not be in acting, but it was gonna be somewhere.
And the weekend keeps rolling on…
Saturday morning David ran a 5k. Now, I figured if someone was running a race his or her friends or family would come along to cheer. Granted this was a shorter race and it had a fairly low turn out, but there were only two people there to cheer, me and this other guy. Perhaps it was because it was cold (damned cold) and very early (the ducks at the pond were still asleep) but still! After the race (he did well, but they were a little disorganized so we don’t know what place he was in specifically, but he came in pretty shortly after the winners) there was a guy (the winner, actually) with a 10 week old english bulldog puppy!! Her name was Minion and she was a cross between a toad and a pork roast! So cute, so fat, so hoppy hoppy! Every time I played with her, she hopped up and stuffed her head in my purse. Another girl and I told him we were gonna steal his puppy and he said “I will never let that happen” and I let him know I could probably knock him down pretty easily.
After the race was breakfast at the Highland Grill where I had the crab cake benedict. Woo.
The buyer’s inspection was that afternoon (and luckily they left their trash on my table, I’m really pleased about that) so I took G to the dog park for a bit (and a lady there tried to get me to adopt a black lab she had at her animal rescue place. As much as I would like another dog, not a lab). then over to D’s for a nap.
During my nap I had 2 really disturbing and vivid dreams. Both dreams involved Target, but it wasn’t Target that upset me. The first dream had me anti-shopping at Target. I was going down the aisles and putting back all the things I owned that I would not need once I moved into a new place. After I was done there I headed over to the fish market (fish for eating, not displaying) to get dinner. They had all these bins with shellfish and the like and as I went to pick out clams (i’m craving shellfish like mad right now) I noticed that about half the bins on display were full of live bugs for sale, various kinds of centipedes and beetles and crawly things. Also the floor had mice and centipedes running all over the place. I went to the next room only to find more bugs on the walls and floor and a large, flat basin full of oversized (hugely oversized!) bugs and houseflies and the like. aaagh, I ran out of there and called my mom!
I woke up, rolled over and had another dream. In this one David and I went to pick up his friend, Marshall, at the airport and we were driving on the freeway. Look at the map because the freeways in my dream were surprisingly accurate. We left the airport, drove up highway 5 to highway 55. Where 55 and 62 meet there’s a tight-ish curve (and this IS how I drive home from the airport). At this tight curve Marshall decides to fix my hair and his hands get in the way and I cannot see. I don’t see the curve, we go flying off the road (rather gently, my brain doesn’t like crashes so we sort of float down). My car is totalled but no one is hurt and I lay on the ground sobbing for the loss of my car. To make me feel better, D and M take me to a giant candy store next to the brand new Target corporate headquarters (david got cookies for himself, I got chocolates).
I don’t know why I told you my dreams, but they were upsetting.
Today was breakfast at OPH with D, Alan, Mary Alice and Matt. Tonight is Roller Derby and this afternoon is chillin like a villain and finishing my book.
One last thing before I go…
Is there anything happier than looking up to see the puppy curled up with the boy as he practices guitar? No, not really.

Yesterday I wrote a very very very long email abou the politics of ice cream. It was silly. Who knew there could be so much to be said about ice cream? Well, no one except me, no one worries about the politics of ice cream as much as I do. I will sign the Ben and Jerry’s accord if I have to.
The politics of the dog park are a wholly different thing. I go to 2 different parks here in town (one is more fenced in and has trash cans and water bowls, but the other has nicer grounds and you can watch the planes take off and land). Dogs have their own politics and they’re all about establishing their own hierarchy quite often to their owner’s chagrin. They prety much spend most of their time together mock-beating each other to figure out who’s strongest. We owners should trust that they will be fine, but if your dog is getting beat up (like ghengis and the weimaraners or ghengis and the pit bull or ghengis and that dick poodle mix ass dog) you want to protect your dog. If your dog is doing the beating (ghengis and the corgi, ghengis and the lab/boston terrier mix, ghengis and the overly shy goldenn retriever) you want to grab your dog as fast as possible and apologize and get him to a different group of dogs as fast as possible.
But dogs are fine, they sort of know the rules (mostly) and they figure stuff out pretty quickly.
So, I went to sign the papers for the offer. The initial offer isn’t terrible, it’s in the acceptable range. Once you factor in the fact that we’re to pay for their closing costs you realize the offer is in fact considerably lower. Oh well, I chalk it up to the price you pay to move on.
I also had to spend 8.2 million years in the cable company office trying to straighten out the clusterfuck that is their billing department. From what I can tell, this is what happened…
I went in to change the name and the billing info on the account in my house after jen moved out. It didn’t work. I went in again to do it again, change the account to my name, have them stop debiting her account and start sending me the bills. It didn’t work. I went in again. I filled out some completely different forms and they assured me that they’s run this downstairs and email the guy who made the changes.
Well, I never ever got a bill but every month they called me saying I hadn’t paid my bill and I said, “well, here’s my debit card number, I’ll pay it now. Please start sending my bills.”
They called me the other day but I hadn’t had a chance to call them back yet and it wasn’t critical, they hadn’t turned off my internet access. Yet.
But…they did turn off Jen’s access! Seems they changed the name on the account. They changed the name on her NEW account, leaving her on the old account. I’d been paying her internet access all along, but my slowness to respond to the call got everything shut down and brought to light.
We’re not done yet. Since they obviously fucked up the name change it stands to reason they fucked up the billing as well. Well, yeah. So I’m paying her monthly bill oer the phone every month for the internet access in her new apartment. The billing for the internet access for the house I live in is being charged to Jen’s bank account, but the account number got changed because of some security issue unrelated to all this. Every month Time Warner tries to charge my internet access to an account that doesn’t exist and every month it gets denied. So the bill for the house is very very high as it’s been accumulating for a while, but my internet access has not been turned off.
Also, Jen’s been paying for something, we just don’t know what. Perhaps her payments are going for internet access for some 3rd party we don’t even know about.
I am not looking forward to moving and having to set this all up again. Also I hate Time Warner.
Anyway, back to rambling…
When you get an offer on the house and it’s no longer on the market or being shown you can relax a little, which is nice. You don’t have to be so vigilant about being clean. You can debate whether or not to pee on the kitchen floor (still ‘NO’ but worthy of discussion).
Okay, anybody in the twin cities area looking to rent half a duplex to me and my dog and perhaps eventually the boy? need 2 bedrooms, laundry and yard for kind of, but not completely cheapie.

So I go out and take the dog to the dog park and walk the perimeter a couple times (it’s a big park, there’s a lot of walking to be had), the walk did me some good, less cranky now.
I’m also less cranky because it was reaffirmed for me that no matter how much my life might be bugging me at the moment there will always…ALWAYS…be someone who hates their life more AND their coping skills are so bad that you have no choice but to realize that you’ve got it pretty good.
Tonight I met a woman I’ll call Mary. She hates her job AND she’s completely clingy and desperate to share her pain with you. She kept asking me about myself and my job and weaving my short answers into her longer diatribe about how awful things are.
Apparently…
* People will stab you in the back any chance they get.
* The christian funeral care business is rather cut-throat.
* She spent ten years as one of the best sales managers in the district only to be shoved out by people with no ethics or moral compass.
* Her christian co-workers won’t train her to do new things at the funeral home.
* Now (NOW) is the BEST time for me to make my funeral arrangements, I can lock in 2005 prices and the longer I live the better a deal it will be. (I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of investment scheme paid off at the time of your death).
* The biggest mistake you can make at a job is to train in your coworkers because they will learn and then pass you up, leaving you behind to flounder. I wanted to point out the inherent flaw in this logic, but the dog was tangling with a ridgeback and I thought I should intercede.
As I left she continued to holler at me, “It’s so nice to finally meet one human being who is not obsessed with money…you know people only care about money…you’re not like that…”
I’m not like that. Good for me.
Everyone needs a daily Mary affirmation, go, now, to your local dog park or crazy house and have Mary show you the way.