Update: On the 10th of May, a Maryland driver tried to make an illegal right turn from a marked straight-or-left-turn-only lane. One minor problem: I was in his path, going straight in the unmarked right-hand lane. Long story short, I got T-boned; I insisted on calling the police to report the accident, and he got a summons to court, plus a most-likely painful insurance hike >:)

This was a much more positive experience than in the past, as for once I was totally prepared and didn't freak--because I had the wonderful Collision.kit. It is truly worth its $15, and possibly five times its weight in gold.

Anyway, once everything was settled down, I took a moment to send See Jane Work a commendation on one of their awesome products, the Collision.kit by Buttoned Up. I didn't expect what followed next: not only did I get a prompt response from the always-awesome Customer Service team at SJW, but they took it upon themselves to forward my rave review to Buttoned Up's self-proclaimed Queen Bee, co-founder Alicia Rockmore.

Long story short, it floored me when Ms. Queen Bee herself emailed me, kindly expressing her condolences, and offered to send a new Collision.kit, free of charge. Now that's what I call true customer service. (It makes me want to drop everything to go beg a job off a company this awesome!)

Current Location: Home
Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Happy birds & angry squirrels

To all my friends, those who have children and those who don't, but will understand this, anyway...I thought this was too funny to not share:

So, we had this great 10 year old cat named Jack who just recently died. Jack was a great cat and the kids would carry him around and sit on him and nothing ever bothered him. He used to hang out and nap all day long on this mat in our bathroom.

Well, we have 3 kids and at the time of this story they were 4 years old, 3 years old and 1 year old. The middle one is Eli. Eli really loves chapstick…LOVES it. He kept asking to use my chapstick and then losing it. So finally one day I showed him where in the bathroom I keep my chapstick and told him he could use it whenever he wanted to but he needed to put it right back in the drawer when he was done.

Last year on Mother's Day, we were having the typical rush around and try to get ready for Church with everyone crying and carrying on. My two boys are fighting over the toy in the cereal box. I am trying to nurse my little one at the same time I am putting on my make-up. Everything is a mess and everyone has long forgotten that this is a wonderful day to honor me and the amazing job that is motherhood.

We finally have the older one and the baby loaded in the car and I am looking for Eli. I have searched everywhere and I finally round the corner to go into the bathroom. And there was Eli. He was applying my chapstick very carefully to Jack's . . rear end. Eli looked right into my eyes and said "chapped." Now if you have a cat, you know that he is right -- their little behinds do look pretty chapped. And, frankly, Jack didn't seem to mind. And the only question to really ask at that point was whether it was the FIRST time Eli had done that to the cat's behind…or the hundredth.

And THAT is my favorite Mother's Day moment ever because it reminds us that no matter how hard we try to civilize these glorious little creatures, there will always be that day when you realize they've been using your chapstick on the cat's butt.

Current Mood: chipper

For your edification: A check-list of signs of spoiled children adults (this applied to most DC-area residents):
_ Rarely show appreciation or say "thank you."
_ Don't seem satisfied with whatever they get.
_ Ask frequently for things and gets upset if they don't immediately get them.
_ Don't have any family [or financial] responsibilities.
_ Frequently complain about being treated unfairly.
_ Rarely offer to help someone else.
_ Expect others to accommodate thier wants.
_ Rarely compromise or share with others.
_ Have a "what's-in-it-for-me" attitude.

Maybe it's just that I live in the DC area, where the luxury item-of-the-moment simply MUST be displayed by its owner, but self-entitlement is disgustingly rampant here. A lot of civilians/feds/laypeople in general seem to think that they're entitled to getting their way in any situation, just because they're in "the nation's capital" and, I suppose, important by proxy.

95% of the people I encounter at work, or during my 40-mile-round-trip daily commute--are overt assholes. Is there some unspoken contract that people should be as obnoxious, inconsiderate, and oblivious as possible?

(Source for the "spoiled" check-list)

Current Location: Work
Current Mood: Disgruntled Employee
Current Music: Co-workers

Me being the crazy woman I am, I skidded and cursed my way to work yesterday. On a normal day, I hate traffic. The catastrophe that occurred yesterday was un-fucking-believable. They actually shut down the Beltway for part of the day due to idiots driving too fast and crashing.

Anyway. Enough with the stupid drivers. Onto the "ruined" Valentine's Day. Previously in the week, Rob inadvertantly told me part of the surprise--we were going to an Italian restaurant.

After a failed attempt to find a dress at T.J. Maxx, I came home feeling like I'd worked 14 hours instead of 7, almost getting stuck pulling into the driveway. I make my way into our room, which is dark, and flick on the overhead light. A freshly-shaved and -groomed Rob is lounging, on the bed, in a full tux. (He's a hottie when he's unshaven and in loungewear, and as I expected, our waitress flirts with him.)

The bed is covered in more than a dozen red and white roses. A silver card tops the pentacle-shaped rose formation. This, suffice it to say, stops me in my tracks.

"Hi honey," he smiles, as I hand him his cards and perch on the edge of the bed. We open our cards at the same time. Inside is a beautiful poem by him, saying that every day is Valentine's Day with me. Taped to the inside of the card is a credit card I've been waiting for for quite a while. After flashing to my incorrect, long-held assumption that I don't inspire any romantic ideas in him, and feel horrible. I thank him quietly and give him a kiss.

( After freshening up, redoing my makeup, and getting dressed, I panic when I can't find my engagement ring... )

Tags: love, rob, romance
Current Mood: drained

What Your Soul Really Looks Like

You are very passionate and quite temperamental. While you can be moody, you always crave comfort. You are not a very grounded person. You prefer dreams to reality. For you, it's all about possibilities. You see yourself with pretty objective eyes. How you view yourself is almost exactly how other people view you. Your near future is a lot like the present, and as far as you're concerned, that's a very good thing. For you, love is all about caring and comfort. You couldn't fall in love with someone you didn't trust.

Current Mood: working
Current Music: "I for An I", Bella Morte

Disclaimer: The following is used, without permission, from Salon.com. All content herein is copyrighted to the author and site unless otherwise noted.

Disclaimer, Part II: Just because I post a Maher rant does not mean I hold to his views. He has interesting points, but I'm not that extreme. (Yet.) 

Disclaimer, Part III:  If you are a parent (or contemplating having the little lampreys, or otherwise inclined to warm squishy feelings towards the little lamprey assholes-in-the-making of our future generations), read with caution.  And blame Maher, not me, if you get offended.  Free speech, y'all.
-----------------------------
We demonize Mark Foley but ignore the industries medicating children and making them fat, and even open our schools to people trying to kill them -- military recruiters.

By Bill Maher

Oct. 13, 2006 | If you think the worst thing Congress doesn't protect young people from is Mark Foley, wake up and smell the burning planet. The ice caps are cracking, the coral reefs are bleaching, and we're losing two species an hour. The birds have bird flu, the cows have mad cow, and our poisoned groundwater has turned spinach into a side dish of mass destruction. Our schools are shooting galleries, our beaches are cancer wards, and under George W. Bush -- for the first time in 45 years -- our country's infant mortality rate actually went up.

Read the labels on your food. It turns out the healthiest thing you can put in your body is Mark Foley's penis. He was probably the first fruit those pages ever came into contact with that wasn't drenched in pesticide.

But that's America for you -- a red herring culture, always scared of the wrong things. The fact is, there are a lot of creepy middle-aged men out there lusting for your kids. They work for MTV, the pharmaceutical industry, McDonald's, Marlboro and K Street. And recently, there's been a rash of strangers making their way onto school campuses and targeting our children for death. They're called military recruiters.

More young Americans were crippled in Iraq last month than in any month in the past three years. And the scandal is that Mark Foley wants to show them a good time before they go? When will our closeted gay congressmen learn? Our boys aren't for pleasure. They're for cannon fodder. They shouldn't be another notch on your bedpost. They should be a comma in Bush's war. If I hear a zipper, it had better be on a body bag.

Why aren't Democrats and the media hammering away every day about who we're supposed to be fighting for over there and what the plan is. Yes, Mark Foley was wrong to ask teenagers how long their penises were -- but at least someone on Capitol Hill was asking questions. We're the predators. Because we have an entire economy built on asking young people what they want, making the cheapest, sleaziest form of it they'll accept, and selling it to them until they choke on it and die.

You know who's grabbing your kids at too young an age? Merck, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline, by convincing you they're depressed, hyperactive or suffering from attention-deficit disorder and so they must all get medicated. The drug dealers hooking your kids aren't in South America, they're in the halls of Congress handing out campaign donations to your congressmen. Mark Foley says he never slept with those kids, and I believe him, because American children are so hopped up on pills I doubt any of them could get it up.

From 1995 to 2002, the number of children prescribed antipsychotic drugs increased by over 400 percent. Either our children are going insane -- which we might look on as a problem -- or, more likely, we have, for profit, created a nation of little junkies. So stop already with the righteous moral indignation about predators -- this whole country is trying to get inside your kid's pants because that's where he keeps the money Daddy gave him to stay out of his hair.

I don't care if Mark Foley had been asking boys to describe their penises because I have some sad news for you: Your kid is so larded out on Cheetos and Yoo-hoo, he can't even see his penis. We live in a country where the ultimate consumer is an obese 16-year-old hooked up at one end to a Big Gulp and at the other to a PlayStation. So many of our kids today are fat drug addicts, it's almost as if Rush Limbaugh had had puppies.

In conclusion, we can pretend that the biggest threat to "our children" is some creep on the Internet, or we can admit it's Mom and Dad. When your son can't find France on a map, or touch his toes with his hands, or understand that the ads on TV are lying -- including the one in which the Marine turns into Lancelot -- then the person fucking him is you.

Tags: politics, rants
Current Mood: waiting to get off work

What the hell's been going on?

I have a full-time job with a security company. This means a 2+ hour commute (round-trip), every day.

The one fun thing I'm doing this week, aside from getting my paycheck, is going to Faire on Sat. to celebrate a good friend's birthday. Faire might be awkward, but I'll cover that later.

Bygones, please? Respond if you think you know what I mean by this.

Current Location: Work
Current Music: "Dust", Bella Morte

I'm still alive, for those who care.

Emma, sadly, is not.

After a six-month long battle with endstage renal failure, we made the difficult decision to end her misery. A vet came to our house and euthanized her. I never stopped petting her except to run inside and get more tissues (I need some now) for my father and I.

We decided to cremate her, and she is back with us, resting above my bed, right beside a cherub.

Plesae consider purchasing this for the following reason (my letter to the seller):

"I am purchasing this in memory of my Welsh Corgi, Emma, who passed on almost two months ago from a long battle with kidney failure. I strongly support the HSUS and applaud your creation and its cause. Thank you, from Emma and I.

Sincerely, Anne"

-----

I had the job in Alexandria, lost it due to a boss whose first language was Russian, and now have a new job near Reston. Rob and I are saving up money to get an apartment out there (his job is within a half hour drive of mine). We're thinking of taking Eliot with us.

-----

I lost my engagement ring in the shower a week ago. Unfortunately the plumbers didn't find it in the trap, or anywhere in the sink plumbing for that matter. So I am building a new ring. So far it is going to cost me $320. But the new ring will be comparable to the old one (same carat size diamond, same color, same shape, etc), but I feel horrible about losing an irreplaceable family heirloom.

-----

I can't write any more. I need to go take care of the soggy mess that is now my face.

-----

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.

Current Mood: tearing up

Still alive. Probably have no one left on my flist....anyway. I'm working now, fulltime. So y'all will see even less of me. Should I just let this LJ go? Leave a comment with your opinion.

And also. I preordered this from Amazon. Click on the cover, I love it. Not exactly how I pictured Dancy, but I love Ted Naifeh's artwork anyway...and Kiernan is a goddess of literature, I swear.

Other updates? Best friend had a son on April 19, 2006. He has his daddy's hands and ears; hopefully he has his mommy's hair and eyes, but we'll see.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: "Prostitute", NeuroticFish

For those who haven't kicked me off their Flist (rightly so since I never update), my future stepfather-in-law got a little ahead of himself at Passover Seder tonight (no, I'm still Pagan--haven't convereted to Judaism nor do I plan to--I'm just trying to be diplomatic for once). He was asking Rob to get me a drink since my feet were hurting like hell (stupidly, I'd worn true-to-size pointed-toe heels...when will I learn?): "Rob, do you want to get your wife--I mean fiancee--a drink?" LOL.

In other matters, I checked up on a once-friend's journal. Things still remind me of you, you know. Dragonflies especially. It hurts whenever I think about what happened. I wish I could go back, could take away the hurt and betrayal(s?) and lies and drama. Even if we were to become friends again, it would never be the same as what we had. I will always regret that I broke it off when it didn't need to be broken off. But I've said that already.

I just wish...I hadn't shut you out of my life. The space you left hurts too much.

<EDIT>
You're right, dragonflies do come back. I'm still waiting to see a certain one ;p

Current Mood: sad
Current Music: "Failure to Thrive", Faith & The Muse