Yesterday, I saw the grossest thing ever. I realize that I say that a lot, but I think this might actually be a winner. Here goes:

There was a Mom with a little boy (about two years old), and he walked up to her and said something. She stuck her hand down the inside back of his pants and starting scratching in the area where a butt-crack would be.

This continued for 57 seconds. I timed it. I do things like that…don't judge.

Anyway, she then proceeded to go about her business, touching all kinds of stuff without bothering to wash her hands.

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

As soon as she left, I went into freakout mode and Lysol-ed the crap out of all surfaces that might have been invaded. You know that lady's hand was covered in fecal particles. 

57 SECONDS of butt scratching. 57. 57.

I can't even stand it.

And to those of you who think I am over-reacting, imagine the poo particles, perhaps on a doorknob. Imagine yourself touching said doorknob and then grabbing a sandwich. Then imagine this:

(via oldsweetsong.com)

So, yeah. Except it won't be rainbows. And hopefully there won't be a clown.

Google norovirus. I am totally not kidding. Also I think there's one of the hepatitises that is transmitted like that. I think it's the A one.

So, yeah. Wash your damn hands. And don't scratch your kid's butt-crack for 57 seconds. That is just…so many kinds of wrong.

This morning, there were about ten posts on my Facebook News Feed  pertaining to the closing of the San Diego Opera. All of the posts went as follows--

Opera Person:  Gee whiz, it's sad that San Diego Opera is closing. I hope this isn't a sign that jobs in our industry are becoming scarcer. That would not be good.

Opera Person's Close Friend/Husband/Wife/Mom/Dad:  That is really scary, but you're so talented that you'll be fine. (Optional smiley face here.)

Opera Person's Facebook-Only Friend Who Likes to Be a Turd:  Well, I don't know anyone who spends $40+ for a date night. I sure wouldn't. Opera is completely irrelevant.

Crickets chirping. Facebook silence.

Ten of these. They all went like that. It would've been funny if I didn't love opera so very much.

But I do.

At any rate, I think if a business is no longer viable, it has every right to fold and make way for other businesses. I also think that maybe some of these organizations are structured in an un-sustainable way. As in, six-figure salaries for administrators while the artists are working side jobs at Denny's to be able to afford the hours of lessons and weird rehearsal schedules. That's not a great choice, either.

However, to the people who say that, and I'm loosely quoting here, "Opera is for people with advanced degrees making six-figure salaries. Who can afford $40 tickets for a night out?" I say to you: Seriously? Have you ever seen a professional sporting event? Even a minor-league baseball game costs $20, and that's for the cheap seats. Those Dallas Cowboys games cost fans WAY more than $40 a ticket, and the stadiums are still packed.

Not to mention the fact that a concert ticket, perhaps to see the über-talented Britney Spears, can cost over $100.

Don't even go there. Just don't. I will hurt you.

Also, it should be noted that the person who made this comment colors her hair (at a salon, not at home with a box...I can tell the difference), and has manicures and pedicures regularly. She also has multiple large tattoos, which cost quite a bit of money. 

I can't afford to do any of those things (well, I have tattoos, but they're very old and very small), but you can bet your butt that I'd spend $40 to go see an opera. Or an orchestra concert. She just doesn't like spending her money on those particular items. Which is fine, but don't tell me $40 is too much for the excellence in an opera.

I get that not everybody likes it. But there's no way it's an upper-class thing. I've never been upper-class and I love it. Not just being part of one, but seeing something that still demands a level of technical proficiency and emotional artistry that isn't provided by machines and/or very expensive boob jobs (not that opera singers don't get boob jobs, because I'm sure they do, it's just not usually a big part of the show). So, yes, the industry is having problems, and, yes, sometimes businesses are run poorly and have to be shut down. The artists will still find a way to make their music, even if it comes to self-subsidizing (which most of us are having to do, all of the time, anyway).

By the way, Mrs. "It's Too High-Class!" I would never, EVER pay $100 to see a football game. So there you go. Facebook-Only Friend? You really are a turd. Enjoy your date night at KFC, followed by a thrilling time at Monster Jam (tickets for that run about $30…I checked). I can just feel your mind expanding every time a truck runs over another truck.

Actually, that sounds kind of cool.

We're all pretty self-centered, right? I think we were probably made to be that way, so that we would actually care enough about surviving to actually get up off of our lazy butts and, I don't know, go harvest some corn or something. I wasn't actually around at the creation of our species, so I'm not exactly sure what the plan was, but I'm sure it included many, many self-protective instincts just floating around up in our brains.

But...

I don't think it's cool to be totally self-involved. Not even on social media, such as Facebook. Maybe, I don't know, one should actually LISTEN to the words being aimed at one's head by the individual whose lips are moving. Those are called sentences and they may actually be important, even if they are not about him.

Maybe don't just sit there, waiting for the other person to finish speaking, in order to start talking and shift the subject back to the all-important YOU. I realize we all have things to say. I get it. Sometimes we all have something we really want to talk about really really really a lot.

The rules of living within a society of people involve these little things called, "manners," and if we'd like to be considered people with good sets of those, STOP DOING THAT.

Listen, once in a while. REALLY LISTEN. Turn off your, "me" filter. Maybe the other person has things he or she would like to talk about, as well. Maybe the two of you could, I don't know, take turns.

Does this sound a little like stuff we might've heard at some point in our lives? Maybe in pre-school or kindergarten? Yeah? Then maybe we should all try it out. I promise, it hasn't gone out of style.

Facebook aside, life is not all about pushing our own agendas to the forefront. A person's status is his own little place to just speak his piece, and no one else should hijack it to make it about himself. A person's conversation is much more fluid, involving verbal give-and-take, yet we should still make an effort not to hijack that.

Or, one should prepare one's self to have no friends. None. Because nobody likes that. Nobody.

No, I am not annoyed with anyone this morning. Not at all. Have yourselves a flipping sunshiny day.

I'm pretty sure my day yesterday was representative of what happens when I make a statement like, "Blah blah blah…I'm having a great week, blah blah blah." I'm pretty sure sure that's life's way of showing me what an idiot I am.

At any rate, this is what I say to yesterday. (This is the film version of me, Corky St. Clair, from Waiting for Guffman.)

Take that, yesterday. I just…well…this…

So I think my new favorite thing, beside Spinach Pie (which is freaking awesome, by the way), is the way people make meaningful, heartwarming digital posters for people to put on Facebook walls, which have text-speak in them.

You know, as in, "U are so special 2 me. Repost" or, "Ur Mom did a lot 4 U. Give her a hug."

No. Don't give her a hug. Give her the extra two letters in the word, "YOU." Moms love letters.

Is it just me, or is that ridiculous? People aren't making those poster thingies on the run on a mobile device with a little teeny keyboard. They generally use a big, regular-sized computer for those with a big, regular-sized keyboard. Not that I text with any abbreviations. I don't really judge people that do, but…

…well, yes, yes I do. I know it's hard for some people to text on those tiny keyboards, and I get it, but it still drives me bonkers to get texts from full-grown adults that say, "C U Ltr." Because, really. I feel like I'm worth the extra letters. That what it really boils down to.

Also, don't you want to appear as educated and smart as you really are? Don't you? I mean, if you're driving along…well…you shouldn't be texting if you're driving along. But if you're in a hurry on your way to an important business meeting, as I know we all are about twenty hours per day, don't you want to get into that mega-competent frame of mind and use a whole sentence? Such as, "I'm going into a meeting. I'll text you later." Not, "Gng in 2 mting. Txt U ltr." 

Seriously. The first choice is definitely the successful, well-educated choice. That is the power-suit, drinking-a-skinny-mocha-and-using-an-iPhone choice. The second option is like the track-suit-with-"JUICY"-written-across-the-butt, drinking-a-40-of-Mickey's choice.

Therefore, when making a heartwarming Facebook poster, hopefully one with kittens, please make sure to choose the power-suit choice. Not the juicy-butt choice. Nobody wants to see the juicy-butt choice.

I realize what that sounds like, and I mean it in the worst, grossest way possible.

(I realize that this is horrendously wrong. I needed a graphic way to illustrate my point, and I sincerely feel that this does so, but I apologize to anyone who may vomit or die a little inside. It had to be done.)

Well, we're finally doing it. And by "we," I mostly mean "my husband," because he is the one who's going to be doing most of the hard work. What will we be doing?

Remodeling our gross bathroom!

It's very exciting, but also very expensive. Not as much as if we hired other people to do the work, but not as little as if anything at all in this bad boy was salvageable.

Unfortunately, the bathroom is 49 years old and has never had any remodeling besides a handicapped-accessible shower stall and a weird little handicapped-friendly toilet. Accessibility is great, but the shower and toilet are leaky and it's time to say goodbye. I don't think any tears will be shed, at least until it's time to pay for the whole thing.

Yes, we've decided that the warped floor and pile of towels we have to keep behind the toilet to sop up the leakage from the toilet need to be gone, and since the sink doesn't drain properly and the shower is just blech, we should go for it.

We went to Home Depot this weekend. We purchased tile. Just tile. Nothing else. We went and looked at some other stuff, but just the tile took hours, and I was done by that point. Did you know that, in the 60s, nothing was ever, ever made by any sort of standard measurement and, therefore, we're going to have to special-order everything requiring a precise size, such as a shower door?

Guess how much a shower door costs. Just go ahead and guess. Unless you've purchased on recently, you may be so shocked, I won't even say the price because first of all, your head might explode, and I don't want that, and secondly, if I see it down in print I might just say, "Do we really need a shower door? Can't we just be careful with the water?"

Yeah. It's that much.

It is fun to see the display where they show how you can flush a whole basket of golf balls down the one kind of toilet. That's impressive, but I wouldn't recommend it. I want to see a display where they show people trying to flush more than two squares of toilet paper down one of those low-flow bad boys. That would be awesome.

At any rate, the whole thing is going to be messy and stressful, but I guess in the end it'll be worth it. I feel like we just finished the kitchen and the windows and we had wanted to have a break in-between, but I guess the leaky toilet had other ideas.

Yeah,  I'm going to post pictures when we're done. Try to calm yourselves. I know looking at other people's renovations is the most fun thing on the planet. Almost as much fun as vacation photos. At least there will only be a few, since it's a tiny bathroom. And no more weird, short, square toilet! Yay!

Yesterday was not the catastrophe it could've been; however, there are still two days left in my workweek and I'm sure life has a little bit left to hand out.

Not necessarily catastrophe. It could be anything. I just want to sleep through the next two days. Is that too much to ask? Yeah, I think it might be.

At any rate, I had a student say something really odd to me at her lesson yesterday. My cell phone kept buzzing with texts, and I kept saying that I was sorry. She said, "You can answer it if you want." I told her that it wasn't an emergency and I would check it later. Then, she said the unthinkable: "I don't ever want a cell phone."

After I picked my jaw up from the floor, I asked her why. She replied that she didn't want people bothering her unless she wanted to be bothered.

That girl is awesome.

I said, "Yep, a phone is like a leash. It kind of stinks being reachable all of the time." She told me I should just get rid of it, then.

Of course, then she threw in, "Did you know that before cell phones, almost half of kids died on the side of the road because they couldn't call anyone for help?"

That's when I realized I was talking to a nine-year-old.

I replied, "Yeah. I know I did…die on the side of the road, I mean. You realize I'm a ghost, right?"

For a fraction of a second, a mere micro-second, I got a look that was just outstanding. Then I got the "you're full of it" look to which I have become VERY accustomed.

So, yeah, yesterday could've been a lot worse.

I hope today is a Parker Stevenson/Shaun Cassidy kind of day. Complete with feathered bangs. And a cravat. Definitely a cravat.

Today is going to be rough. I can already feel it. I realize there are many of having rough days out there, and I don't mean to minimize that, but this is going to be one of epic proportions. Why?

I am disappointed.

Disappointed in a situation that eventually involved me having no control, and disappointed in my response to it. Disappointed in my lack of progress.

Mostly, though, disappointed in being unable to get something I really wanted.

I feel like I'm four and someone took my stuffed Bambi away again. It's that bad. There may be crying at work. There will most definitely be putting my head down on my desk and, for those of you who read this and also happen to work with me, there will also be an excess of eye-rolling, sighing and throat-clearing whenever I happen to be asked to do anything. ANYTHING.

Your best bet is to put down your receipts and back away slowly. I may or may not decide to write your reimbursement check.

Oh, and if I hear one more person talk about how much he or she needs a vacation, I will lovingly remind him or her that I haven't had a day off since Christmas, and even then it was only one day. Only one. My last real vacation was in October, and everyone else has had at least one, if not two, since then. I will do said reminding with my ring hand, if necessary.

So, yeah, today's going to be awesome. Watch out.

Yesterday, the situation in my house got to levels that were completely unbearable, and I was forced to do something about it. I realized that my favorite pair of trousers was almost completely worn through at the seams (which is completely reasonable, considering they're almost five years old and I wear them once or twice a week), and the unthinkable occurred:

My favorite jeans broke in the gluteal region.

It was a sad day. I went to my local store to look at a new pair, but they were closed, so I had to stop when I went to my voice lesson in Albuquerque. I went to the Target, figuring I wouldn't find anything at all, since I only had thirty minutes or so in which to look.

I was wrong. There were six acceptable pairs of pants in my size and for a reasonable price. Six. That's like losing your keys and finding out that you have a whole bunch of spares and each is on a magical key ring.

Except for the trying-them-on part. That part is not magical.

So I go into the dressing room, and I'm filled with dread because the last time I bought jeans was just under two years ago, and it was a traumatic experience. I tried on jeans at five different stores, not finding any with an adult-appropriate rise (I do like them to cover my entire butt-crack, thank you very much), and ended up crying in a dressing room at Kmart and buying four pairs of the dreaded Mom Jeans because, first of all, they're comfortable as all get-out, and second of all, they were $15 apiece, and who can turn down comfy $15 jeans? Not me, man.

They look atrocious, though, so I have just been wearing my old jeans and hoping that the Mom ones will just mysteriously look better someday when I pull them on. They never do. I die a little inside each time I try them out. Sometimes I tuck in a t-shirt and laugh a little, but then I realize that I'm standing around in a pair of Mom Jeans that go up to my tatas, laughing at myself, and that this behavior might be a little crazy.

I still usually giggle a little more, anyway. It's pretty freaking funny.

Without my favorite trousers and jeans, though, I am in big trouble. Thus the need for a try-on.

So I go into the dressing room, after getting my tag which says, "6," which I knew must be a sign because that's exactly how many I had and that's the maximum, and I prepare myself.

First, I look at my old pants. I had worn the Mom Jeans (albeit under a big old shirt that covered most of the momliness), so I had a comparison for the new jeans. I looked at the front, which was terrifying enough, but then I looked at the back. Those of you who've worn Mom Jeans can testify to the horrendous things they do to your butt. It's not right. No one should ever have to confront the sights I saw yesterday afternoon. <Shudder>

I then took off the Momtasticness and bemoaned the state of my thighs for a minute, then lifted up my shirt a bit and squeezed the fat on my stomach and felt properly disgusted with myself for eating cake/meat/cheese/cookies, etc. Then I sighed a little bit and decided I needed to do some more stomach-reducing exercises.

Then it was time for the pants try-on. I started with the pair I liked the least. Now, mind you, these pants were all the same brand, and ostensibly the same size, but asking for standardized sizes at Target is like asking my Mom to stop making those delicious hamburger patties encrusted with cracker crumbs and pan-fried to delicious crispy goodness and then served with a truckload of ketchup. It's just not going to happen.

Mmmmm. Food. 

Anyway, the first pair fit, but it was a disaster. They didn't cover my underpants, and they were so low as to be almost offensive. I like a little more coverage for my bits. Therefore, I left them on a little while, so I could feel properly digested with my sad, sad lack of butt and ample quantities of, well, everything else.

Time for pair two.

Pair two fit, along with the rest of the pants. What? Now, they were all way lower than I've gotten used to, and I may need to trade in my ginormous underpants for ones that don't go all the way up to my belly button (don't judge…coverage is your friend), but at least they all went on and zipped up. It was just the rise issue again.

Am I crazy, or did they used to have pants that covered your butt crack and not your belly button? I seem to remember that being the case. I feel like the two years of Mom Jeans has ruined me for all other jeans. Except for my favorite jeans, which are at least six years old and purchased on clearance for a mere $8 and I've never found another pair. Sad, sad, sad.

I can patch the butt, but then they'll be all scratchy and I just can't deal.

So I ended up with a pair of dark wash jeans that fits okay but feels a lot lower than I'm used to, a pair of jeans that has fading and whiskering on it, which I never would've bought except for the fact that it does miraculous things to my butt (still lower than I'm used to), and a pair of black trousers which is, amazingly, not too short and not too low.

Now I'm all set for a couple of years, at least.

Unless I'm too scared to wear them and they stay in the drawer, mating with my Mom Jeans and creating a hybrid jean that makes my butt look great AND covers all of my belly junk with a thick, thick layer of sweet, sweet fabric.

Let me have my dream.

It seems to me that a few of the people who complain the most about the world being an unkind, uncaring place are the people who do the least to be kind to others in their daily lives.

This could just be a terrible generalization caused by a few lazy hippies, but I don't think so. I think that some people get so wrapped up in what they perceive as unkind behavior toward themselves that they become incapable of taking care of their day-to-day lives and then force someone else to pick up the slack.

And I think that's unkind.

It's a lot friendlier and more thoughtful to take care of yourself and not force your loved ones to do so than it is to spout a lot of platitudes about how mean everyone is to you, and how you're all about feeding starving orphans in Africa. This is not to say that I'm not concerned about the poor. I am. I think it's terrible that there are many people who go hungry while many of us have so much that just goes to waste, but I don't think it does them any good for me to get mentally wrapped up in their situation and stop taking care of the work that I need to do just to keep my household and workplace running.


In my opinion, that's a load of crap.

I realize that I have a lot of opinions on how to save the world, but this might just be my favorite one: Get off your ass, take care of your business, and THEN worry about the orphans, or kittens, or kids on drugs, or whatever it is that tugs at your heart (it's definitely puppies, for me).

If you are fortunate enough to be in a situation where you have another person to assist you in the day-to-day business of staying clothed, fed, and sheltered (as far as I'm concerned, at least), you have no right to complain about how mean the world is to you. Especially when you're out gallivanting about and your person is working his or her butt off to keep your livelihood intact.

I'm calling B.S. on that, right now.

It seem ridiculous, but it happens more often than you'd think. Did you ever stop and think about the fact that the universe is doing you a solid by giving you a person on whom you can depend? Did you ever think about how rough it can be, just being the dependable one? Did you ever notice that the steady paycheck that comes in is what makes all the difference in the world to your family, and also keeps your family from having to ask for help from the government, which, in turn, frees up some resources for another family that might not be fortunate enough to have an opportunity to earn an steady paycheck? And that maybe, just maybe, you should chip in and assist your person and be thankful for him or her and maybe, I don't know, give him or her a freaking break once in a while and stop being such a Harpy?

Huh? Did you? Huh?

Yes, I am an expert. I earned my SKE degree (that's a She Knows Everything Degree, btw) from Life University. I minored in accounting. Suck it.

Okay, this isn't that hilarious. I realize hilarity was promised in the title of my blog, but I just felt really annoyed this morning. Deal. For those of you who don't know, head on over to Wikipedia to find out what a Harpy is.

from wikipedia.com