...a gray pube for the new year?

I'll be kind enough not to elaborate on the title of this post, other than to comment that I spend enough time on the crapper to be inspired in such ways.

But really, it's a sign of advancing years.  I'm not as old as most of my blogger buddies, many of whom are dealing with more health issues than I (I'm not dealing with shit other than my shitty teeth).

For me, it's more the realization that things don't work like they used to.  This year in particular, I've found my body not wanting to do what I want it to, be it an inconsistent sleep cycle or jumping/bouncing over shit.  And then there's my stiff neck, the easily stirred bitch headaches, and the general lethargy.  I had to struggle like fuck (and take off my blanket) to get up long enough to get the computer fired up.

Needless to say, this means I barely get shit done.

I've been scrolling through the channels since 11 o'clock.  The networks are running commercials.  The cable news channels suck ass.  I'm reduced to watching some motherfucker jump a river or something at midnight on ESPN to usher in the new year.  And considering I usually only stop briefly if at all, I'm nearly at the bottom of things to do on this night.  A couple more years, it's bedtime at 10 (if the boy stops pissing the bed).

I suppose it's inevitable that this happens to people.  I figure there's a point at which everyone hits their prime.  I'm past that already, unless I get something in the world that puts the fire back in me.  It gets to the point that I don't check the blogs, or the email, or any of that shit.  In fact, my Gmail has 17 messages, my Yahoo mail (which tracks comments on my blogs) has 31 messages (although I might not have deleted anything in over a week), and my Hotmail has 24, half of which are junk (and sadly, there are probably even more in the junk mail filter).  Hell, this is the first time today I've even been on the messenger.

 In the end, I'm going to probably go to bed the first hour of the new year, because it's not like I have anything else to do.  Of course, even if I did, I'd be struggling to find someone to watch the kids so I could do something.  Instead, I'm just going to post this and try to get it linked on Facebook while it's still 2009 (I have a couple minutes).

Fuck, I'm feeling old....

...getting back on track.

One thing that the holiday season tends to do is yank my world off the tracks, and it's in reaching the next year that I get things all steady and shit.

Like my car insurance.  I get a cancellation notice, plan to pay it, but it gets lost in the paperwork, and I get the cancellation paper on Saturday (Merry fucking Christmas).  To fix it, the paper and the website say I have to call my agent.  So I call my agent on the way their direction with the expectation that I have to stop in and sign papers.  But no, I have to call the insurance company directly to fix it (which I could have probably done before venturing out onto the shitty roads with a high potential for accidents had I known.  But I ironed it out, although I'm still a couple of bucks off (as the website posted a different amount than what they wanted and I paid that). 

Then there's the bank.  I go to the ATM before Christmas, pull out $20.  And when I open the mail Monday at lunch, that $20 overdrew me by $2, which cost me $30.  And my paycheck deposited the next day.  So the overdraft was legit, EXCEPT that the ATM let me overdraw.  And this at a time when money is tightest.

But oh well.  I did get my living room and the kids' bedroom cleaned, and the paper and cardboard from Christmas taken out and recycled by fire.  I tried to do the plastic too, but it was putting out too much smoke that the snowstorm wouldn't disguise it.  Yes, I was burning shit in a snowstorm.  But the kids were away, so it all worked out.

But the worst of it is that the weather is not cooperating for me to be at my peak.  I run slow when it's cold.

On Christmas Eve, we had snow.  It rained and melted all the snow away for Christmas day, replacing it with freezing rain (and I had to get up early to work, go to my family's (and eat bloody delicious prime rib and shrimp cocktail (YUM-fucking-O!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!  !)), got a bitch headache and fall asleep, then go back to work (although double time makes it worth it).  So I sat inside and relaxed the following sunny Saturday, only to have it snow like a bastard on Sunday.  Then it gets cold and icy and drifty on Monday.  Shit.

And then it's off to work, where the phones were ringing hard for the most part (one ISP we service has multiple problems and no one checking emails or answering phones (leaving us to stutter for pissed off customers)).  And that's on top of the usual cavalcade of the fucking dum.

Here's a hint:  When you call in to tech support, we don't expect you to know shit.  It's job security for us for you to not know shit.  We do expect literacy.  The ability to follow directions like "click on this" or "type this."  The ability to answer simple questions with some degree of accuracy, like "What lights are lit?".  If it's technical, then we'll do our best to work with the problem.  But if we have you type an email address in and instead of using the "@" symbol you type "dumbmotherfuckeratlalaland.net.com" then you should bathe with your computer.  At worst, your computer will fry.  At best, you reduce your impact on the gene pool.

To illustrate:



Scary thing is that I've had calls this bad in reality....

...tracking Santa and baking bread.

I'll be honest here in the fact that I've been feeling lazy and run down, especially in the face of the impending Christmas holiday.  It's why I've been lacking in my posts here and have gone mostly on hiatus on SPD until January 4 (with a new Asshat of the Week award to kick off the new year).  Namely, it takes work to keep shit going.  And I have been filled with more of a desire to hack and slash my way through the world of Dungeons and Dragons Online rather than sit up at night and blog. 

I think this shit always happens as the winter cold settles in.  Then, once January hits, I've been cold long enough that I get my fire going. 

But this being Christmas eve, there's no time for fucking around.

I started this morning relatively (8 o'clock hour) late (as the kids didn't get up until after me (and they were due to open gifts this morning!!!)), having time to fill stockings as the kids struggled to come out to see what they had gotten for Christmas.   It was such a lackadaisical response that I had time to get the NORAD Santa tracker (damn, I love the Internet) up before they tore into present one. Then I got them hosed down and shipped off with the Succubus, not to be picked up until I leave work on the way to Christmas lunch at my family's house tomorrow. 

Of course, when I got to work, up went the Santa tracker (as I write this line, he's in Egypt).  It's one of those quirky things that is only possible now due to the fact that we have assloads of information (and porn) at our fingertips.  So I keep tracking him until I conk out tonight.  Naked.

If Santa were real and liked man ass, I'd be a prime target, you know.

But before I take the rectal risk with the invasive nature of Mr Kringle, I must try something that I have never done and which requires a precision that my "throw shit into other shit (but not literal shit)' style of cooking is not known for.  In fact, my baking experiences are generally mixed.  I have cookies (chocolate chip and sugar) down well enough, but my pie baking experiences have been mixed (my apple came out somewhat ok, but pumpkin is beyond my ken).  And I've never tacked anything as fussy as a yeast bread.  And as I don't have a mixer with dough hooks (I might have a dough hook from a broken mixer though), or a bread maker, or even a decent mixer ($5 POS hand mixer), I face a daunting task.  I don't even have a recipe figgered out yet.  And I have under an hour to come up with one (before I get off work and go to the store for ingredients), only tonight to do the mixing proofing and baking, and no backup if I fuck the dog in the process.

Thankfully, my sister does have some crescent rolls she can chuck in the oven and bring tomorrow if chaos ensues.

So I will attempt the otherwise improbable tonight, to bring to the feast tomorrow.

And oh what a feast.  I'm not sure of all the tasty shit that will be produced, but I know that the table will be graced with juicy, bloody, rare, delicious fucking prime fucking rib!!! 

Now I don't get to eat beef (other than burger) all that often as I'm both broke and cheap.  And of cuts of meat, prime rib is one of my favorites, as it is a big-assed piece of meat, cooked low and slow, sliced thick (I like it around the 2-inch mark), and served in juices galore.  Add to that something potato (au gratin, from what I understand), probably shrimp scampi, something green, something sweet, a selection of adult beverages, and my bread (if I don't fuck it up), and there is no chance in hell I'd miss this.

And I get to eat all this after work.  And before work.  Of course, when you make double time for Christmas in exchange for sitting in a call center and getting people to connect shit to shit to watch people squeeze out and eat shit (a rare example of fetish porn that does disgust me), a split shift isn't so bad. 

So I have to return to the daunting task of narrowing down  on a bread recipe, maybe answer another call on Christmas eve (from some irrational fuck that will want their Internet to work NOW!), before I get off, go home, fuck up some bread, and watch A Christmas Story the first time it comes on.  Because that's the only time I have to do so in the next 24 hours.

So let me get back to you when I get some Christmas pics....

...an illustration of the beginning of my day.

This is a continuation of yesterday's post, because my body decided to up the ante (and up last night's supper).  The great part is that I also have to go to work, and I seem to get worse as the day goes on.  So here's how I started my day:




And this when I had a small window in which to get two kids out the door for preschool....

...undefined maladies and hemorrhoid cream.

(Warning:  if you know the specific orifice the aforementioned cream is used on, you can guess how shitty (pun intended) a post this will be before the end.)

I'm used to my bitch headaches.  I get one every few weeks or so, and it makes the day suck.  I even have another drug to try to see if it will kill them, although that need has yet to arise.  What I can't stand are the undefined sicknesses that don't fall clearly into one category or another, but could be caused by any number of things.

Like my daughter's puke-a-thon the other night.  It started that day with her not wanting to really eat, then complaining her tummy hurt.  I managed to get her to eat some butter toast. That ended up coating my seat on the couch (more on the cleanup in a bit).  She ended up getting down to the dry heaves, and ended passing out on the floor in her panties, wrapped in a blanket.  No fever, no other symptom, just puke.  The next day she was fine.  On the plus, she's gotten the sour stomach before, so no worries.

And no trips to the emergency room to make up for a lack of parenting skill.  That was where I had to go after work on Thanksgiving night, because the boy was puking and fevering, and was fine the next day, all thanks to the ministrations (or lack thereof) of the Succubus.  But that was another post (that I failed to write).

So back to my couch, which is past threadbare.  My ass cushion is particularly worn, and the fact that it absorbed prechool hurl deep was a bad thing.  I tried scrubbing it.  I tried spray odor eliminators (the cheap shit, not the Febreze brand).  Sit on it and you smell vomit.  Finally, I went with the old reliable of baking soda on it overnight.  I think I bought the couch a little more time, because it's breathable again.

Unfortunately, the real challenge of being a single parent is being a sick single parent.  Because, very simply, you can't just curl up and sleep. You can entertain your kids with tales of ass blood (although it's gallows humor when wiping is an issue).  But you still have to manage the younglings while trying to curl up and die.  On the down side, there was no puke involved.  I say that it's the down side because if you puke it out, it gets out of your belly quickly.  At least it gets out of there more quickly than the other end.

I'm not sure if it was food poisoning (I made chili. Good chili) or some light flu bug (which makes no sense because I don't have much human contact), but I'm still feeling the effects 24 hours later.

Needless to say, the progression from chunky soft serve ( the source of ass blood and screaming while wiping) to ass soup (which is still haunting me), aided by the cream (a necessity when you have as  irregular movement-ravaged a sphincter as I), it ain't good.  Then came the fevering, which caught me late in the afternoon, which challenged my ability to make supper.  I even threw myself into a sick soak bath (which the kids enjoyed tormenting me during, constantly, necessitating the (wet) boot to the head) before almost passing out momentarily, then curling back up on the couch until the kids bedded, then sitting on the unpuked portion of the couch (the baking soda still doing its work) curled up until it was late enough to roll the boy out for the late night pee (it's either that or definitely change piss sheets in the morning).

And whatever it is, I can still hear the rumbling and gurgling in the intestinal tract.  So I'm not over it by a long shot.  But I'm hungry again (I wasn't last night), so I'm guessing I must be on the mend, just in time for a bacon deluxe burger.  But until then, here's a clip that has little to do with any of the post other than the title "Asses of Fire" just captured yesterday's rectal agony.



Look on the bright side: At least I didn't write this post while on the crapper....

...failed miserably in the upkeep of the blog.

Note: All pictures in this post  are from the weekend after Thanksgiving, when we put up all the shiny decorations and I was too damned lazy to post them then.  I finally downloaded them to the computer today, as I am so not a camera person.

I last posted on Thanksgiving or so.  And now, we're already to December 7.  I've taken in plenty of Christmas stuff already (Charlie Brown, The Santa Clause (1 and 2 (fucking Disney)), even the oldest movie version of A Christmas Carol (after watching the Muppet one on DVD)).  And I've streamed a little Christmas music, including a little Messiah work (I have the score as well as the whole thing on CD and can sing a good portion of it). 

As well, I finally got around to watching the classic Casablanca.  It never really rated high on my priorities list because it was an old-assed movie.  But I have spent more time checking out stuff on TCM, and I've been discovering lots of movies that I wouldn't have given a rats ass about a decade ago.  Ask me about the songs in the Christmas playlist, and I'll be able to tell you, when we reach the Judy Garland version of "Have yourself A Merry Little Christmas," that the song comes from the movie Meet Me in St Louis, which has, perversely, been added to my list of holiday movies (and they're running it late night both times this month). Interesting side note, the movie includes in the cast, besides Judy Garland of course, June Lockhart, who appeared in the aforementioned Christmas Carol (uncredited), and is still acting today (I even remember the B5 ep she was in).  Damned circular, my movie watching is...

But back to Casablanca.  I can see why it makes the list of the best movies ever made.  Even with its age, the dialogue still cracks along at what was back then a staggering pace, and today would be respectable of any good dialogue-driven movie.  Too often, the old movies rely on cliche or dated conventions that are humorous in today's jaded pop culture.  Not so here.

That, or I didn't have the energy after the Christmas decorations, on which we commenced on Saturday, continuing into Sunday to finish.  I went with all white lights, some pearl beads, snow garland, and varying pearly, blue and purple balls this year.  And I'm considering a silver and gold theme for next year. One thing I've learned is the value

Of course, the younglings were enthusiastic, but about as much trouble as they were help.  I figure a few more years of training and severe beatings with flaming tinsel will whip their spindly asses into shape.

Yes, I'm a sadistic bastard.  But then again, I have to do something to get the kids ready to walk six miles uphill both ways in blinding snowstorms (and global warming) (in September) to school.  Maybe it'll make them motivated or something.

Other things of note while I was not posting shit.   The Succubus has access to a computer (she sent me email concerning the kids).  I have evidence that that's a bad thing.  

There used to be a day when I could stay up to three AM and get up in the morning.  Not anymore.

I really hate nights in winter because it's one of the rare times I freeze my ass off even with the heat cranked.  Takes all the fun (and (picture-free) nakedness) out of kid-free weekends.

Except on Christmas, snow sucks.

On the computer front, I have a short in my power cord, right at the plug.  If I didn't have it taped, I could see it spark.  I can still hear it if I wiggle the cord.  And it did short the laptop out temporarily today (would be a shit myself situation if I wasn't as good as I am).  But seeing as though I'm typing this post on the laptop, the cord isn't too dead.  Yet.

And as I'm both too broke and too cheap to replace it....