Pot Roast

That's not a pun.  I know, week of 4/20 and all I should just let you all assume that it is, but the fact is that I'm at work right now and I don't work for a technoweb-i-company or anything, so there is no pot, just pot roast.  

A nearby coworker has been preparing some fucking delicious-smelling pot roast to eat at his desk every afternoon this week at about 3pm.  

I don't even eat meat and I want to jump over the cubicle walls and rip his face off to get at it.  

I'm concerned I have the Iron Deficiency or akinatopsia or something.

Telethon in my honor coming soon.

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http://irregulargiggling.blogspot.com

It has been once in a blue moon!

So, in a moment of desperation yesterday, I googled "cleaning services Chicago" just to see how much it would cost to have someone ELSE prepare my apartment for showing, since I have this whole job thing going on and Houseboy is in the midst of the most important exams of his life except for that first one they give you when you're born to make sure you don't have any terminal baby diseases.  Anyway, apparently what it will cost me is about $175, two cleaning people, four hours, and a viral message sent from my hotmail account to everyone I've ever known.  

If you're one of those people, I apologize.  If you're not, I apologize double, since apparently the message was funny enough that several people assumed I was being hilariously ironic, which I am choosing to take as a compliment.

Anyway, I've heard back from friends I actually talk to regularly, but I can't wait to see if I get messages from my former bosses, high school acquaintances I've lost touch with and my own cell phone.  

The internet is an adventure!

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http://irregulargiggling.blogspot.com

I Don't Drive Anymore

Back when my sister was first learning to drive, she used to slow way down while driving down Main Street and I'd jump and roll out of the car, and then chase her and try to jump back in.  We also tried out me steering while she drove down the highway at 60 miles an hour with her eyes closed.  

Once I got my driver's license, I was very concerned about roadkill and kept a shovel in the back of the station wagon so that I could pull over on those country roads and give the animals a proper burial.  The first time I ever tried it I retched so hard at the smell of rotting raccoon that I never did it again.  

On the other hand, I did stop to save a baby bird and had to watch it get run over by someone else instead.  I also stopped to help a cat that had been hit by a car and once a coyote pup that I thought was a dog, which resulted in a massive dressing-down from the park ranger who told me in graphic detail what rabies shots were like and that if the coyote had rabies they would have to put my dog down (who had been in the back seat of the car) because they don't have rabies shots for dogs.

Once, on a road trip to Texas, in which I drove for 28 hours straight, I saw a drunk driver weave in and out of traffic behind me, then cut me off and drive straight off the road into a signpost.

On my second drive into Chicago, I stopped before an intersection because there was traffic ahead and I couldn't get through it before the light turned red.  A man started honking, I flipped him off and he went apeshit, drove into oncoming traffic to pull up beside my car and scream through his open window at me until the light turned green again.  I sold my car and I've only driven about five times in the last seven years.

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I Promise I Don't Hate Poor People

Sure, I find the poor Distasteful, as do most Americans.  I think their choice of couch covers is almost always extremely gauche, for example.  But I don't hate them in that way that you're not supposed to hate them.  In that way where I acknowledge that it is their actual poorness that is the object of my hatred, or that I think that Being Poor is a character trait that I abhor.  

In fact, I even sometimes give money to The Homeless when I have a dollar in my pocket and they make sure not to look me directly in the eye, or if they have a child with them, because The Children are our future, even the poor ones.  

I prefer not to give money to people who stand outside my grocery store, because I feel that they are being emotionally manipulative by making me feel guilty for having reusable bags full of chips and ice cream when they don't actually have a place to sleep.  I don't want to reward them for that kind of behavior.  I will give money to the obviously drunk and/or high, however because if I were homeless, I'd be high all the damn time because it is cold outside and it even rained today.

Anyway, I don't usually actually become incensed by the actions of Chicago's poor folk, even the ones outside my grocery store, but I did almost slap a well-dressed teenager sitting on a bike who just held out his hand and said "Money?" when I came out of the drug store this weekend.  

Does that make me a racist?

Yeah, it probably does.  

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I am. Sofa King. We Todd Ed.

Just a few notes on the things I like and hate about Chicago as I enter my last few months here.  In the "like" column:

•  I rode on the bus yesterday woman with a woman reeking of booze at 7 o'clock in the morning, and she was wearing nurse's scrubs.  I hope she didn't kill anyone yesterday.
  
• Last night we tried to order Chinese food, but the gas was out at the restaurant, so we settled for Indian.  Where I grew up we didn't have pizza delivery until I was 12.
• Last weekend someone rang our buzzer and told me they wanted to tell me about a funeral, and I came downstairs in my workout clothes only to find out that it was a funeral for Jesus, being put on by the Mormons.  

In the hate column:

• I have to go to a work party this weekend at a coworker's house, and it is 20 miles from my house, and we both live in the city.  And I don't even live at the farthest South end.  Where I grew up, 20 miles got you to the big town that had a 4 screen movie theater and a Walmart.  That was more fun.
• It has not even gotten warm yet and already the air here is choking with tar stench.  Why does every roof in the city need to be re-tarred every spring and summer?  Can't they invent some kind of new tar that lasts more than a year?
• The White Sox.  And the Cubs.  And the Bears.  And the Bulls.  I hate them all, to differing degrees and in different ways.  The Blackhawks are wearing on me too.

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