This Happened

[Elle]

Sometimes things happen. For instance, I was laying on my kid's bed earlier waiting for him to finish brushing his teeth when I accidentally fell asleep. This is what happens when you don't sleep much. Next thing I know, I'm hearing this weird sound - kkkkkk kkkkkkkkk kkkk - and it turns out to be coming from a large rounded ball in the center of the bed that is covered with towels. I seriously don't know what it is because in my kid's room it could be a lot of weird random things. Turns out it was a giant bird hatching from an egg. Craaaaaack, said the bird, I have just hatched from my egg and am looking for my parents. I volunteered myself as such but was denied. No, the parents were off hunting for worms. At this moment, coincidentally, my eldest child came in, assessed the situation briefly, and dropped a "worm" into the baby bird's mouth. The bird was a robin.

Then I went downstairs and accidentally clicked on the wrong directory in my documents area on the computer. I saw all these filenames:
Baby Barbie
Fireboy
Frozen Face
Pet Recipes
Puppies are Loving
Speech Barbie Dresses
Spelling Words

It took me a really long time, due to the total lack of sleep, to figure out that I was looking at my middle child's folder and not my own. Incidents like all of the above are why people with kids have no reason to do drugs, particularly hallucinogens.

[Elle]

my kids dropped onto the floor in one 24 hour period of eating, which as you see involved Cheerios and Chinese food. Maybe this is why we need a dog. I merely have to disinfect after the dog, et voila!

Etiquette note: inviting people to a party where they are being sold things does not constitute inviting them to a party at all. The fact that you may sometimes choose to go in order to maintain tranquil relationships with the hostesses does not change this at all. Perhaps people choose to do this as a derivative of the idea that a Hostess can have a charity ball or benefit and the main reason people come is for the society and so that they might be seen and so forth, and somehow a charity somewhere benefits from the largesse of these folks even though it would have benefited a great deal more had they simply made a donation without going to all the trouble and expense associated with the ball or benefit, diverting that instead into actual money or hours volunteered. But presumably this sort of lavish reward encourages philanthropy. Perhaps some people enjoy trussing themselves up like a sausage and writing checks to charities they did not favor.

Once you have reduced it to a tacky party where nobody benefits except some company that pressures people into buying things so that the hostess can earn some sort of cheap free gift, you should be embarrassed to invite your friends and you should consider that you owe them the price of a cheap gift and a small piece of their dignity for having attended your party.

[Elle]

Based on the evidence of other "leavings", my eldest offspring breakfasted today on cherry tomatoes, ramen noodles, and a small bag of Doritos. This is what happens if I try to catch that extra hour of sleep.

[Elle]

So we decided not to run but instead to walk very fast, and we went walking for an hour. For some reason this plus lengthy sleep has meant I have no hangover at all, when by rights I probably should. What does it mean? What magic is this? Now I must away to shopping. My husband was sitting here screaming expletives for reasons that made no sense; it turns out he was communicating with strangers on the internet as they conspired to destroy something, on the internet game. I have lost my sense of smell thanks to Spring and Pollen, which is most disorienting. That is all.

[Tahlvin]

[Elle]

I don't know how you continue on day to day. Seriously though, HOW?! How do you cook? Eat? Btw I obtained some lavender-fennel soap and it is one of the most wonderful smells in the world. Also: eucalyptus. I looooooove the smell of Eucalyptus. And Hypnotic Poison, the perfume, even though I cannot wear it.

[Ronster]

[Tahlvin]

I really should get the deviated septum fixed; that was a side effect of the broken nose as a kid, and being one of 5 kids with a nurse for a mother who refused to take us to the doctor except for true emergencies, so the broken nose was never "set" to heal. So I have been stuck with a crooked nose all my life. Heck, I once split my head open (stood up on a pile of snow on the school playground and smacked my head into the rim of a basketball hoop, on one of the hooks that holds the net to the hoop), and mom just cut away a bit of the hair around the open wound and butterfly-taped it closed (I still feel a bump on my scalp where the scar is from that episode).

[Elle]

Whoa, you were toughened up for life! Your nose looks normal though, at least via Roll20!

[Tahlvin]

You have to look closely, or closely compare the two semi-profile views of my head, in order to tell.

[Elle]

Saw former BFFs husband. Got strong impression he was intimating that I had not called them, like it was my turn. I will be sitting here on my couch now and enjoying the plush companionship of inanimate objects, so easy to comprehend.

[Tahlvin]

I read a Dear Abby or Dear Amy article recently that reminded me of you, Elle, and your former BFF. Inanimate objects with no emotional baggage are good for you.

[Elle]

[Elle]

You people who play your war game with the internet strangers: do you realize that your crazy voices are being broadcast into my house? You have used the F word at least two dozen times since I began typing this post. Impressive. You guys probably need to be studying for your Chemistry exam.

[Elle]

My kids and Dad are all doing well health wise. We live a life of comfort and relative luxury especially compared to the rest of the globe and human history. However, in the more trivial respects, shit is at a very bad pass right now. I cannot sleep a wink due to what sounds like fifty raccoons scrabbling around in my attic. I can't tell if they are literally breaking in through the ceiling soon, or if it is burglars in the basement. I am scared a raccoon is about to bust into the ceiling of my kid's room as she sleeps. It sounds like they are attempting it for real. I am standing here in the dead of night armed with a maglite and tennis racket. W T F. If I could somehow describe to you the amount of work I have to do in 36 hours you would faint. Is it possible? Not if I stand here all night trying to scare the raccoons out of their plan to kill me in my sleep. And then I have to go to my least favorite spot in the U.S. and sleep on a mattress on the floor with God knows what vermin. I'm not adequate to cope with it anymore. My job is incompatible with my husband having a job. We need another wife who just deals with crap. Oh yeah, like the stomach virus now in the house. Taking kid to doctor tomorrow after I don't sleep. That raccoon is smart and looking for an escape that isn't set up with a trap, and her life is way worse than mine right now. Her babies are going to starve if she doesnt carve out a safe egress from my house. This is why I fear her. You guys, I can't do this sort of thing much longer. If I make it thru to Friday without everything going wrong... I don't know. I am legit scared I will have a heart attack due to stress, as we all used to joke about but now it's not funny at this age. My life is exhausting, I can't even begin to tell you. This makes me feel like an asshole because I am so well fed and such. Kids healthy and mostly OK. Even spoiled princesses get to be worn down I guess. People with OCD shouldnt have to face raccoons alone when overwhelmed with other issues. Can I even go to sleep or will it come thru ceiling?

[Cazmonster]

[Elle]

On this day I have played a Steinway and Sons antique grand piano. Yeah. Other good things happened. Meanwhile, there are SEVERAL raccoons still living in my attic and just think about what that's going to cost, someday, to fix. But hey, someone else's problem now, out of my hands. It is impossible to get them out, apparently. Isn't that great?

I was watching the worst movie and then out of nowhere Jack Black appeared and now I have to keep watching to see what that means.

[Cazmonster]

If there's a big Gorilla in the show, it's a tragedy.

[Elle]

There was no gorilla; there wasn't enough Jack.

Today and yesterday I enjoyed being sexually harassed in a variety of ways. At my age it seems truly ridiculous. The first incident involved a man person attempting to play footsie with me under the table with a group of people in a bar. Footsie, yes, I know of none other than this horrid word to describe it. In what bizarro universe does this strike anyone as a good plan? Does this work on anyone, anywhere, at any time? I am SO far removed from this mode of existence that I seriously thought the dude had long legs he was too tipsy to manage properly or something. I was getting annoyed and wondering how to broach the delicate issue of "sorry, I think your foot is on my leg" when suddenly he began Looking Significantly at my eyeballs and discussing how nice it had been to meet me and finally the lightning bolt of comprehension entered my skull. W. T. F. The phrase of the past month, really. It's a FOOT. So even if we could look past the conversation we just had about our respective spouses, the foot is The Last thing of someone's I want to encounter. UGH.

Then I was trapped for a day in the intestines of the transportation system. This led to incidents two and three. In two, the man I had to sit right next to for three hours kept touching me in ways that began like unavoidable close quarters accidents but escalated gradually. Halfway through I'm asking myself, is it possible he has some kind of neurological disorder that prevents him from realizing what he's doing? Like maybe he is unaware that our bodies are in fact in contact? Because how else to explain it? But the grossest thing about it was, he was a nice sort of toucher - like none of the touching itself was bad. Had it been my spouse I would have liked it. So you know, that's a gruesome sensation, and I was really mad by the end because I realized at that point, it had to be intentional. When you're not sure, then you hesitate to say anything for fear of being rude or making the close quarters of public transportation even less comfortable. But eventually it's like, dude, you have to know what your elbow is doing, and I can't determine if I'm old enough to be your mother or what. Are some just that hard up as to be caressing strangers who have no escape hatch?

The answer turns out to be yes. I was on a bus later. A man got on With His Wife. He proceeded to sit so close to me that he ended up literally ON my leg. And he was a gross old dude. I tried to twist my body around so my back was to him, but I couldn't move my leg. I scooted away until i was at the edge of the seat and that dirty old coot followed me - leaving this big gap between himself and his wife, I might add! My leg was unprotectable. I would have bitten him in self defense but he was too gross. UGH. So WTF. Is there ANY age or corpulence-level when this ends? Guess not.

[Cazmonster]

...

This is why ladies used to have big-assed pins holding their hats on, so you could shank people like this.

Sorry that happened to you.