Category Archives: Humor

Nov21

I feel like I’ve been in a car wreck…

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Oh what a night. Saturday, that is. iDJ and I had to go out to meet a friend. He doesn’t live here all the time, so when he’s home we can’t tell him no. It’s a little hard because we shouldn’t be spending the money we don’t have in the pub. However, it’s such a huge part of Irish culture that not going is an insult.

Luckily, we spent a good few hours at our friend’s place before the pub. We also went back there after closing hours to continue the session. It was the same as the night I turned 40 – everybody dancing in the house, making a mess, having a great time and eating caviar. It was black caviar this time, which I found out I like a lot more than the red. His house is a great place for a house party: no close neighbours to complain, and last winter the house flooded so there’s no carpet to worry about, just concrete.

It was (again) a great mix of people, different ages and different lives. I tell ya, we 40+ ers can really par-tay. It’s almost as if the booze is a stimulant, and we go bonkers when the music starts.

It’s not just us old farts that get down n boogie, though. One of my friends is 24, and she and I were hamming it up in the kitchen. The way I remember it is that she jumped into my arms… I held up for about .0003 seconds, and then down I went. Knees first. On the concrete. Carrying my weight and hers (thank goodness she’s a little thing). She snapped forward and smashed my nose, then backward and smashed her head on the dishwasher.

I was more worried about her. I can be very protective… Once we confirmed that we were both okay, we carried on. I didn’t look at my knees, but my nose was bleeding out of both barrels. Pretty. I’m glad I bothered to put on mascara before we went out.

Having loads of liquid painkiller in me, I didn’t think much of it at the time. Probably didn’t even check to see if I had blood all over my face or not – I don’t think about my looks often. The walk home hurt a lot, though. My knees weren’t happy…

So yeah, I have a blue and red nose, and some gorgeously colourful knees. Especially the left one, it looks like a sunset and is rather swollen. I can’t go down the stairs unless I go backward, it hurts too much the normal way.

My back is fine, though. Lift with your knees, not your back…land on your knees, not your crooked tailbone.

Here’s the gore:

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Nov19

Socks has a… prune?

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Right, so it has come to my attention that new readers have no idea why on earth I’m talking about socks that have olives and prunes, and heartbeats!

Short version: Socks is the nickname of my best friend, and she is having her first baby. Since I can’t be there with her, I’m chronicling her journey on my blog.

Long story: go here, then here, and the rest are my weekly updates: one, two, three, and four. That will catch you up to now!

***

Socks had another doctor appointment this week. Doc couldn’t hear the heartbeat at first so did another ultrasound, all is good. Baby Prune had…

Ok, no, I can’t call it a prune. I just can’t. Instead, I’m going to share the nickname Socks has started using in her head: Button. I love it! When she told me her secret baby name, I sang a little bit of ‘Button, button, who’s got the button’ and made myself cry. Keerist, I’m not even the pregnant one.

Baby Button (oh, that’s better, isn’t it?) had its back to the ‘camera’ so the picture wasn’t clear. The heartbeat was visible, though, and then it did a little jump! “How awesome!”

She’s officially due June 15th. She liked the 14th better, because every older person they told immediately said, ‘Oh, Flag Day.’ Socks conjectures that Flag Day used to be a big deal at one time, because we youngins wouldn’t have a clue when it is.

You’ll be glad to know Socks is HIV and STD free, and she doesn’t have the gene for Cystic Fibrosis, so Bear doesn’t even need to be tested for it; it’s one of those diseases that needs two carriers to be passed on. Oh, she’s also not anaemic, and doesn’t have to take an iron supplement. We think it is because she eats so well and would rather get her vitamins the natural way than in a pill.

She has switched from oatmeal and yoghurt in the mornings to Wheat Chex. I found this interesting as a few weeks ago she was talking about something called ‘muddy buddies‘ on FB. It was a craving thing, and that got her started on Wheat Chex for brekky. She knows what she needs! She says that since she has always listened to her body, eating now may be easier for her. She’s still not very pukey, unlike her whole family…

…which brings me to The Quote Of The Week, a new feature in my Socks update. (Those of you who watch Harry Hill’s TV Burp, please read this new title in his voice, complete with background singers.)

“I don’t know what all you pregnant women are bitching about. This pregnancy thing is a breeeeeeeze!”

After I got done laughing my hole off, she asked that I make sure the sarcasm was clear.

She’s only gained one pound (.45 kilos), but Bear told her that she’s ‘pooched out a little.’ Button is about 1.5 inches (3.81cm) and looks more baby-shaped. “A little like an alien, but not lizardy.” Button is growing tooth-buds, knees and ankles. Socks said the book tells her that every body part and organ are pretty much formed, and from here on Button nearly doubles in size every week. Important juices are being made in the stomach and kidneys, and if it is going to be a boy, this is when the testosterone starts flowing.

Bear still hasn’t come to grips with what is going on inside his wife. She mentioned fingernails to him and he started fanning himself as if he was going to faint. Then he got all panicky over trying to figure out how he was going to teach his child ‘life lessons.’ He wants to teach the important things, without screwing the kid up. Good luck, Bear!

Oh! I nearly forgot. The doc’s office gave her her first bag of free ‘new baby!’ samples and coupons. It was a culture-shock moment for Socks. Coupons, adverts for portraits, samples of … nursing pads? Bottle inserts specifically for storing breast milk? An itty-bitty diaper with Pooh Bear on it? She is “rallying against the typical baby bullshit” and doesn’t want this rubbish. The sheer amount of strollers for sale blows her away. There’s a ‘micro movement monitor’ that will let you know if the kid so much as farts in its sleep. Why would anyone want that? When are you supposed to sleep yourself??? Bear thinks the kid just needs a rag for its face and one for its arse, which is a bit naive, but apparently it is just crazy-mad the amount of marketing that is being directed their way now.

The worst, by far, are the breast pumps. There is a version called a double pump. Yes, that’s right, a milking machine. Just walk into your stall and stand there with both tits in it until Farmer John lets you out to pasture. Fuck off! She says one at a time is okay, but both? Hell no, she’s not a damn cow. There’s even a double pump you can walk around in while wearing it. Good lord, just what you want to see in Wal-mart. (I’m freaked out by the whole idea of breast feeding, BTW. Fine for you, but the idea of me doing that makes me want to scream.)

Okay! Long one today, no wonder I put it off so long. Oh, I’ve also been asked why I named her Socks. I came up with the name years ago, because she loves long, colourful socks – striped socks, argyle socks, even toe socks – and she always, always, wore peep-toe shoes to show them off. She doesn’t always wear peep-toe anymore, but she’s made herself sleeves out of socks to wear with short-sleeve shirts. The obstetric nurse loved them, too. So there’s why she is Socks. (She promised me pics of her in the sock-sleeves. Hint hint)

Oh. I’m totally, utterly, jealous of her new Vibram FiveFingers toe shoes. In red.

Nov14

Cats and zombies go bump in the night

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Uuuurgh. It’s not quite seven am and I’ve been up since 6:20 after a sleepless night ending in Spot starting his screeching nonsense and hubby getting up to inflict the cure. I’ll have to explain that another time. In any case, the cats think it is great fun that I’m downstairs and they are rampaging through the house to show their pleasure. Fog, my arse. It’s thunder little cat feet reminds me of.

I have had a weird half-head headache that comes and goes in short blasts behind and above my right ear. It’s probably sinus related, but may be an ear thing. I’m going with sinuses. I’m not particularly congested, but the right side of my nose is a bloody mess inside. Don’t think I’ve had something like this go on for so long without getting better or turn into an infection. I avoid the doctor as long as possible; until it turns into an infection I’d rather not have antibiotics. Even if I wanted to see the doc, I’ve got a 10 am job interview.

So of course, I’ve had very little sleep. Right before bed I read a good short story about zombies that inspired some great dreams. I mean that – not scary but very exciting. It takes some serious gore before I get scared in a dream. It did wake me up, or perhaps I just woke up naturally at a point where I could remember part of the dream. I tried to keep it going when I went back to sleep but only succeeded a little bit. I was zombie hunting!

One of my thoughts on reading the story was my continuing disappointment in how the women never, or rarely, kick ass in zombie tales. Seen The Walking Dead? The women in that show are skinnier and weaker than the animated corpses. I’d rather look at a rotting shambling dead thing than see the female lead in shorts and a tank top. She is so thin she makes me feel sick to my stomach. But that’s beside the point. The point is that even though I enjoyed the story I read, the only female character was a computer whiz hidden away from the action.

The guys, of course, are running around blowing the heads off zombies with accuracy and alacrity, and a good dose of stupidity. How can you not smell a damn zombie?

There’s these yahoos running around inside buildings, looking for the undead. They get surprised a lot. Of course that’s exciting in a book, it would get old fast if no one ever was in any real danger. But where are the women? The most prissy girly-girl in the world would be a great addition to a zombie hunting team! Much better than some hardened career soldier, a fashion junkie will notice disgusting things. Put Barbie in a room full of furniture and one tiny spider, and she’ll find it. Loudly.

Well, the loud part isn’t good for zombie hunting. Maybe an earbud sensor that beeps for the rest of the team when she pisses herself would be more efficient. Not very dignified, but since she’s insisting on full makeup and heels in the apocalypse, she doesn’t get to refuse.

And I wonder why I can’t sleep.

(The story was an excerpt from Orpheus by Dan DeWitt, released this year, his first full-length novel apparently)

Nov13

Socks has a medium green olive!

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I know, what happened to the fruit? The similes are getting stranger and stranger.

I have to admit in advance that I somehow drank quite a bit on Oirish Tirsday. So my notes are pretty illegible, by page…four? If i wrote down that much, it seems I thought everything was funny as hell, too. But I’m going to start off with something that really shocked me.

It seems US schools are no longer teaching kids how to write in cursive: just printing. Socks learned this about three years ago, I learned it on Tirsday. WTF? Why on earth not? I suppose there’s an argument that we type more than print, and print more than write, but to not even teach it anymore seems a bit premature. And as Socks pointed out, silly. How does someone have a signature without cursive? How do you teach someone that bit of originality that says that you are you, if they can’t even hook their letters together? Are we moving into thumbprints or retinal scans? Will the postal delivery or UPS/FedEx person have a filthy, beaten up eyeball scanner instead of those disgusting electronic signature pads? Seriously, I’ve never seen one that didn’t look encrusted in other people’s hand sweat and coffee that the driver spilled. I really don’t like the idea of sticking my face onto something similar. And I’m not even germ-phobic. Or has the US moved on in the last 6 years and those pads are already obsolete?

I still remember learning to write ‘properly.’ I remember because I got really frustrated, to the point of tears, over the fact I couldn’t make a capital ‘O’ perfectly. Yes, I was an anal-retentive, perfectionist little smart ass even then. I also remember learning metric and thinking it made a lot more sense, another teaching they stopped ages ago. Y’all must really think kids are stupid over there. Anyhow; no cursive. We’re doomed.

Socks and I talked about holidays, because she’s got family back home that want her to come. This has stirred up a shitstorm of conflict for her: she’s starting a family, and the holidays are all about family, and since she’s awash in hormones she wants to have her own, relaxing holidays – and also have a big soppy family thing with all those she loves. Except family things have their own quirks, don’t they? Some good, some bad. I don’t envy her, I’ve only ever had a few around me for holidays and it’s no different here. I’d get completely weirded out by dozens of cousins and baskets of babies and oodles of elderly.

She likes Thanksgiving best anyway, and is doing that at her place this year. Yay!

Which brings me neatly into talking about food. We talked about how she will make a new recipe, love it, write it out and put it into her book…and never cook it again. Makes me ask now: what about Thanksgiving? Isn’t it a comfort to have the same meal every year, with perhaps a new dessert or two? Or is it only the spinach dip in the pumpernickel bowl that gets a repeat performance? I know Bear has made the turkey recently and I forget the secret… brined? This week she made gnocchi with kale and butternut squash. Unfortunately the sight of the packaged gnocchi slumping into the pan inspired a bout of yarking, so it was a no-go. Bear whipped up spaetzle and cabbage for her, aw. Apparently for the next day’s lunch, replacing the slimy gnocchi with cous-cous worked. I should offer them a guest spot on the blog to tell about what they cook. I can’t write about these things because a) I’m a picky eater b) they don’t sell most of the interesting ingredients here c) if they did sell it, I couldn’t afford it.

Oh, we learned about kale chips. If I can find kale, I’ll make them and let ya know. But they get massive thumbs up from Socks, Bear, and Miss Fierce.

So let’s see, the Olive Garden inside Socks has fully developed eyes, but they are fused shut like a kitten’s. There’s fingers and toes, too – but the special part of this week is that it is Gonad Week! That’s right, the bits are becoming bits. But at this point, Baby Olive can still go either direction. Bear apparently gets a little ‘grossed out by what’s happening inside his wife,’ the poor dear, so I’ll talk about it for her.

Otherwise, she’s eating more and better, not as exhausted or even simply tired. The hormones, however, are taking over. She says she’d slap herself if she wasn’t so happy, the way she feels about Christmas nostalgia makes her want to take a foot and shove it right up her own ass, and that she knows that she isn’t herself anymore, but it’s funny as hell.

Best quote: “Pre-baby Socks is watching pregnant Socks, and is constantly saying WTF while laughing and rolling her eyes.”

I think I’ll leave you with that one!

Nov11

I embarrassed myself with two words

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I love words, and the origins of words and phrases are an endless source of entertainment. I save the most interesting ones in long term memory, even – a place that barely keeps names or which light switch turns on what light.

I got in trouble over on FB yesterday by congratulating someone on their new job in a large retail establishment. I said that it had to be better than slinging hash, because the last job this person had was in a restaurant.

What else could I possibly have meant? Oops. Yes, hash does have other meanings, doesn’t it? I never thought! Would anyone even call drug dealing ‘slinging’? The phrase ‘slinging hash’ means only one thing to me; a colourful way of saying working, especially cooking, in a cheap restaurant, like a diner. I can’t remember if the restaurant was a cheap one, but I figured it’s a former job, so it couldn’t have been that much fun to work at and a little insult to it would be okay. I actually thought of all that before I used the phrase – and never once thought of anyone not knowing what it meant.

The offended party is early twenties, and maybe never heard ‘slinging hash’ before. It does seem like a 1940’s sort of phrase. Can you even get hash in a restaurant anymore? I don’t eat it, I wouldn’t know. Or perhaps the phrase has grown a whole new meaning in the six years I’ve been over here.

Maybe it’s because I was speaking to an American and I expect all Americans to know the strictly Yank turns of phrase. This is one of the ones I wouldn’t use here, because here ‘hash’ really only has one meaning, and it isn’t corned beef. I’m more likely to use American slang when I can, because I’m quite aware of when I can’t. I think in three versions of English: American, English, and Irish. Like knowing that I can never say ‘ride’ in Ireland, but it is fine in the UK and the US.

In any case, I’m sorry if I freaked anyone out, I was innocently trying to say congrats on a better job.

Nov8

Camouflage and cooking

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iDJ is off work this week. We’d rather he wasn’t, but as a reward for his company doing the best out of a large group of companies, everyone is forced to take one week a month off. This means unemployment also known as the dole, or in Cockney rhyming slang: the rock and roll. He’s been taking his week as holiday pay so he gets a full pay check. Sorry, cheque. Ugh, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that spelling. It’s not like we are going anywhere on holidays, after all.

Last time he was off, he learned just how little gets done in a full day at home. Made me feel a bit better. This week, he’s trying to be more productive. It didn’t hurt that he found me already hard at it when he woke up yesterday. I think it put him into work-mode.

He cut the grass. It looks worse now than it did before. Hacked, wet, and uneven. Bare patches of mud that had been covered by the blowing blades are now uncovered by the mowing blades. Even the mower itself was embarrassed by the job it did, and tried to hide at the scene of the crime.

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Yuck. I cleaned it off and tried to console it: the grass was too wet, you did your best, not your fault. Then I repeated my platitudes to iDJ, but I think I felt more sorry for the mower.

Then, since it was nice out, he decided to grill. Out came the Weber for pre-cleaning.

Oh dear lord, what in the hell happened here? It’s been so damp this year that fuzzy grey mold was growing inside the grill. Not just on the grate, but on the unused charcoal. Barfola, as we said in the eighties. I’m very happy this is his toy and I didn’t have to help, other than fetching a bucket of hot water and a scrubber, and to bitch when he spilled filthy muck on the concrete instead of into the drain.

I think he got it going by five, and by then it was getting pretty dark. I hid inside next to the fire while he cooked. Sorry, dear, I’m not freezing my tookus off just to give moral support. It was cold enough that he put on fingerless gloves, and dark enough that he couldn’t see the smoke drifting up. He smoked his eyes. Repeatedly. Until they were blood-red.

Which meant funtime for me, as I had to administer the eyedrops. He gets freaky when you go near his eyes. It was easier to give the dog eyedrops when she needed them. She didn’t struggle or whine nearly as much.

Nov6

Portrait of a jealous dog

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It was cold last night. So cold that Spot didn’t budge all night from his place on the couch documented in the first pic of the previous post. He didn’t get up until about a half hour ago. Of course, he’s now full of stored energy and takes it out on us by going into what I call ‘Super Love-Me Mode.’ This involves lots of head butting, leg rubbing, dog annoying, lap jumping, and purring that can be heard from the next room. Only two things satisfy him when he’s this wound up – a good brushing, or a car trip.

I asked iDJ to take him for a drive, as I needed smokes. He grumbled but agreed, as long as I gave him the last of the coffee. Deal! Spot had to be carried around the house as iDJ got dressed, because otherwise, he leaps into iDJ’s arms or stands on his hind legs and paws at tender places…neither action one that makes it easy to get anything done. Spot knew well he was going for a drive! (I should explain something to my US readers. I carefully avoid the word ‘ride’ because that word has a totally different meaning in Ireland. I’ve been conditioned not to use it due to the snickers and giggles I heard when I first moved here.)

Off they went. Lokii couldn’t care less, for him the world on the other side of window glass doesn’t even exist. Neko, however, was jealous. She watched them leave, and then waited at the front window for their return.

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How…why…I wanted to go, too…

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They’re home! Why aren’t they coming in? Why wasn’t I invited?

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Hurry UP!

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Hi! You’re home! Now come inside. Is that bacon in your pocket?

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Poor dogeen. We torture her so.

Nov5

I have more legs than usual, or, My blog is named appropriately today

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Two days in a row it has been lovely enough to sit outside for hours. It’s chilly, so I’m not in shorts and sports bra like I would like to be, but I have my sleeves pushed up and my sweatpants pulled up over my knees. At least my shins are getting some sun. It feels fantastic. I’m a sunshine junkie and I follow it around the garden from March until the winds drive me inside for the winter.

This will be my sixth winter in Ireland, and the angle of the sun this time of year still surprises me. We are so much higher in latitude than anywhere I’ve ever lived before. At 9 am, the sun was glorious coming through the windows of the house – but only the upstairs windows. The neighbouring houses block the sunshine from the ground floor. The sun just wasn’t high enough yet. Currently it is almost noon, and the length a shadow cast is twice the height of the object casting it. Weird for someone who grew up in Florida, where noon means no shadow at all.

There’s not a cloud in the sky, either, which is very unusual. Here, I’ll prove it:

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That’s the sun! Funny warm yellow thing in my sky, please stay a while.

I’m surrounded by happy bees and wasps and bluebottles, all recharging themselves after the cold night. They are all trying to drink my coffee and sample my pumpkin seeds, too. I don’t mind until I have to fish a corpse out of my cup.

I’m also grateful that I actually do like spiders, because I am covered in them. The sun has brought out all the tiny baby spiders to send their parachute lines up into the breeze and carry them off to a new home. Which is me, quite often. I’ve picked three off me since I started writing this, and my shins are ticklish with the webs stuck to my stubble. My beloved Coleman folding camp chair (beloved because it has two cupholders) is covered in fine webs, and I just took a break to watch a spider the size of a full stop tilt her bottom into the air, spin, and launch from the arm. Amazing wee things.

One of my blueberry bushes looks like a Christmas tree sparkling in the sun: green and red leaves bedecked with silvery webs. I’m glad the berries are done, it is a bitch to clean the webs off berries, especially when dog hair sticks to the webs. Beware my blueberry pancakes, they might have extra keratin.

If I shade my eyes, the whole back garden is adrift in spidersilk. I can catch an aviator or two in action if I watch for a while.

Oh, that was a good one – I assisted another spiderling to launch, she was on my thumbnail and I expected her to spin. Instead she started crawling straight up in the air on a web I couldn’t see. I raised my arm, but she was still climbing straight up. I brushed the web free of my thumb and woosh! up, up and away!

Just had another land on my iPad as I was going to get up to see if I can photograph the blueberry bush. Probably was in my hair.
No picture. The crappy iPad camera can’t do it justice. And I had to check my seat before I planted my arse back down.

Sorry if I’ve freaked out any arachnophobes. I like just about all critters, with a few exceptions. I can’t hate anything without a reason, and spiders never gave me a reason. Quite the opposite, in fact, I’m having a great morning sitting here watching a free airshow.

Nov4

Socks has a (large) Raspberry!

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Howdy! Oirish Tirsday was back on Thursday again, so another marathon phone call took place.

After we got my job-interview sagas out of the way, I asked how Halloween went at her place, as this is the first one she’s had there. She was tired, but manned the door for the eve.

Best Costume was won by a dad who was dressed as Bob Ross. Ya gotta love a man who picks Ross as a costume! She’d love to know, are they artists? Or was he just a quick thinker with an Afro and a palette sitting around?

Second prize went to a small boy dressed as Mario of SuperMario fame. She offered him the candy bowl and his response, said in the manner of Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons, was: “Oh. Skittles. I have not seen those for a very long time.” Poor little geek-kid. You just know he’s not going to grow out of that voice.

We also talked about how neither of us ever did a trick to anyone. Except, she said, once on her birthday she and her friends toilet-papered a house. But that doesn’t really count, because her dad drove the getaway car, and bought the TP for them to use.

So, on to the baby-growing update! She’s still in fruit stages of development, and this week BabySocks is a large raspberry. I can’t help wonder what the book is going to say when she is further along…will they be brave enough to say cantaloupe? Watermelon? Don’t tell me, Socks, I love the giggle every week when you tell me the new fruit.

Raspberry now has a head bigger than the body and looks less like a lizard. It is growing hands, knees, elbows, lips, nose, and eyelids. There’s some twitching movement, too, but nothing she can feel.

Speaking of feel, the container BabySocks is growing in is now the size of a grapefruit, but she can’t feel any bump or lump yet. Seems like you would, doesn’t it? I asked if she is in the habit of sleeping face-down, because that would probably have to change. But she doesn’t, so sleeping will still be comfy.

Socks is still nauseated, and/or has a sour stomach. Food is becoming an annoyance – not a big deal, but eating has to be thought out in advance. Things that sound really, really, good turn out to be ‘meh’ when on the plate; the happiness of mealtime is a bit lacking. Even her home-cooked mac n cheese was “Not as awesome as it sounded on paper.”

She’s still tired, too, and can see a difference when she doesn’t get enough iron in a day. Zzzzz. Bear took her on a drive through the country to look at the autumn leaves, and she slept through them all. She was hungry, out of snacks and feeling ill from lack of food. But the restaurant he had planned on stopping at was closed. She said she felt terrible that she was spoiling the day by feeling sick and sleepy and didn’t want to tell him. As usual, more worried about others than herself.

All in all, not too bad, really! When she told Bear that she felt pretty good, and was surprised given her family’s pukey history, he leaned back, hooked his thumbs in his belt, and said, “I’m a cattleman. I can pick out a good breeder.”

And she not only let him live, she laughed.

Nov2

Job hunting in the wild, wild whest of Ireland

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Wow, total panic there for a bit! My WordPress app crashed on opening my blog. Restart the iPad, no. Check for updates, yes there was one, update, crash. Update a lot of other shite since I’d already entered my iTunes password, restart, WordPress crash. Check forums, nothing. Panic. Will I lose all my crap if I delete the app and reinstall? Bite the bullet and delete and reinstall, restart.

Working! All my crap is still smelling as rosy as it ever did. Whew. An iPad shouldn’t need restarting so much, but I live with an IT manager so I’ve learned good habits. Hell, I need a nap every now and again, too. I drive this thing hard, poor Shiny Happy (from the engraving iDJ had put on the back).

Interesting, though, to find myself actually worried and jonesing for my writing fix. Am I showing my age and slightly dodgy history with the term ‘jonesing?’ I can explain it. Really. Anyhoo, I’m pleased to learn that when I want to write, nothing else will do. I considered giving up and doing a Brushes painting instead, but I’ve not had a good subject since Usyaka, so I’m less than inspired. Despite doing a post earlier today, I really felt a need to blurt out my random thoughts and the schtuff that happened today.

So! Job interview! It went really well, I think. I liked yer man, and I think he took me seriously. When I said things that might come off ‘wrong,’ he understood and agreed with me. He wasn’t up his own hole, he was a real person and even cursed a few times. He mentioned doing so later, so an ‘oh yes, I’ve a potty-mouth, too’ bonding occasion was born. I think I’m in – but I felt that about the last job and was way wrong. That interview was about 10 minutes long and felt like 20, this one was 45 and felt like 10. I do take the length of the interview as a good sign, too.

Unfortunately, I won’t know for a while if I’m hired. Fortunately, he explained why it will take time, and it is a valid reason.

I also did another interview, of a sort, today. Go, me! This one is for a call centre customer support job at a company that makes computer and platform games. A possible nightmare for me, as I’m not good at bending over and taking one for the team. At least the customers are all nerds and I totally speak nerd. I decided to apply because I’m a Yank, and we Yanks know the customer service rules, don’t we? I might hate myself at the end of every shift, but I’d give good CS nonetheless.

The fun part about the application process is that it has been entirely on-line so far. I registered, uploaded my CV (résumé), and my ‘first interview’ was also online, in the form of a questionnaire.

Not so much fun. I could tell they are US-based when The Dreaded Question popped up: Where Do You See Yourself In Five Years?

Really?

Really?

I’d even joked in my ‘real’ interview about that very question, and the one where they ask If You Were A Vegetable, What Would You Be? So, I might have been a little sarcastic in my response. But not nearly as sarcastic as I’d have liked to be. I did say “I’m not as young as I was yesterday” which is a thickly-veiled hint that I’m too fucking old to answer stupid questions. Or perhaps they are too up their own arses to see that?

Maybe I was just trying to say that I’d kiss the customer’s arse, but not theirs. I donno. The pay starts higher than the ‘real’ interview, but it is much further away (if you think gas in the US is expensive, I’ll tell you what we pay) and would be nights and weekends, oh joy. I’m also too old for that shit, and have been for a while. I’ll suck it up, though, to not lose my house.

Sheeeeit, I feel like I’m on a downer note now! I’m not, really. I’m over the moon to have had not one but two chances at employment today, after so long without a response or even anything I could apply for. Yay!

Right, I should wrap this up as dinner is almost ready. I still feel like I’m leaving on a low note, so here is my dawg being adorable:

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That’s my foot she’s holding on to, and still is:

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What I like best about this is that she lay down, then reached out and grabbed me. It reminds me of my Bengal, Spot, who has to, has to, touch my face if he can reach it. I have successfully created a dog-cat. Or a cat-dog… Love my furry kids.