The Gurly Life

Slow as molasses on a cold winter's day

Actually, a better metaphor is a very large, very sticky bandaid being ripped veeery veeery slowly off the inside of your upper arm, you know, where the skin is all delicate.

I refer to the way I'm doing traffic school. A few weeks ago I got a ticket. It was a righteous ticket, and the officer was lovely, you can relax I was not oppressed. I decided to do traffic school. Online. From the comfort of my own home.

One giant drawback: you can log out and sign back in later. Ok, maybe not a drawback, it does make it easier to do this in pieces if you have a busy napping schedule. However, I have been doing it in pieces because I have been procrastinating (such as right now, for example). I started last weekend, and the thing isn't due until May 9.

So, the albatross around my neck, the ball and chain, the flesh-eating bacteria that is traffic school will most likely not be finished this weekend, either.

I haven't been this procrastinaty creative in months.

Oh fine, text then

Occasionally, I comment on the ads that Facebook posts on the side panel in the hope of getting me to click through. Since I'm single, one of the most persistent type of ads is dating sites. Recently I found ads for meetseniorpeople.com, (senior people? who you callin' senior people?), with the enticing tag line, Good faithful women wanted. As an aside, at the time I remarked that, duh, who doesn't want good, faithful women? Someone helpfully pointed out that there is a website for married people who want to cheat. I kid you not. In other words, no, not everyone is looking for good, faithful women. I stand corrected.

Anyway.

Having had absolutely zero success with its ads, Facebook is trying a different tactic:

It Started With a Texting
[INSERT GENERIC WOMAN PHOTO]
Turn any MAN into a "Romance Addict"
with just a few text messages -
No 'sexting' Required!

Several things intrigue me about this ad, not the least of which is the weird grammatical mishap in the first sentence. Then I spent a little time contemplating the capitalization, as well as the inconsistent and inexplicable quotations. Are they used for emphasis or for irony? Who knows?

But the best part is the cynicism. Facebook is all, ok, fine, you won't sign up for this panoply of singles services we so generously provide, I guess it's because you're lazy (or stupid, your pick) and don't want to be bothered with dating and human contact, so we're gonna give you one more shot, and really if you blow this you're just a loser because all you have to do is "a texting," not even sexting for heaven's sake, just texting how hard is that?

There isn't just one of these ads, there are at least two at any given time. One had this condescending gem:

How to Turn Even the Biggest Romantic Numbskull into “Prince Charming” Just by Pushing a Few Buttons on Your Cell Phone.

I guess it's never too late to learn a new skill, whether you're me, or a Romantic Numbskull.

The dentist is pure entertainment

Today I went to the dentist. I have some grooves on the side of some molars that make my teeth sensitive, so the dentist suggested filling them in with that white bonding composite or whatever that stuff is. It's a very simple procedure, but she does have to drill a tiny bit, just to remove the top layer of the groove. Literally a matter of a few seconds, but I still demanded the anesthetic.

First shot of anesthetic: I go blissfully numb, and about 3 minutes later it wears off. I'm not exaggerating, it was really weird. I'm all, eh-hem. More, please.

Second shot works, and by the time I leave the dentist 20 minutes later it has worn off my teeth and gums. However, the softer, fleshier part of my mouth is still working through it, 2 hours later. Result: anything I try to chew and/or swallow sloshes around in my mouth and then falls out my left side. I had to change my top.

The only problem with this is that I'm hungry.

I don't have a brain tumor

That's right, no brain tumor, no seizure. I know you are much relieved.

But I do have a chain smoking downstairs neighbor. I told him his cigarette stench is pervading my place and giving me sinus issues. He said he would cut back and smoke by the hood in the kitchen, hopefully that will help. But will the good neighbor win over the addict? Will the addict be able to not smoke in bed? I'm skeptical.

But at least it's not a brain tumor, and I do not have acute nose-itis (well, ok, I am a little disappointed about the lack of nose-itis). Now we shall see if this is easily resolved or if the HOA has to go a little more heavy handed.

Meanwhile, my bedroom smells like a dirty ashtray. Lovely.

The Vomit Comet

Is what I called my car today. Pixie is her name, but today she got a special moniker. Fortunately, it's an exaggeration, or rather, a worst-case-scenario name.

Oh, and heads up people, this post has a "gross" tag. Don't you be reading it and then complaining about it being gross. Cos it's gross.

Last night, courtesy of Missy the old kitty, I was woken up at 1:49 a.m. to deal with another pee incident. Once that had been handled, I started stressing about something else altogether, which (a) prevented me from falling asleep and (b) gave me a headache. My headaches are sneaky bastards - if I don't catch them right away, the next step is throwing up, and that is exactly what happened at approximately 3:35 a.m. Just as I was winding down from the pee incident and the needless but uncontrollable stressing (night is not a good time for me to think), I noticed that I was beginning to feel nauseated.

What followed was a bunch of useless regurgitations on my part. Useless because there was nothing to regurgitate. This continued until 7:15 a.m., at which time I left for court. Headache and Nausea came along for the ride.

I rode all the way to Santa Ana with a plastic bag on my lap, and tissues at hand, afraid of a repeat projectile vomiting of nothing more than spit, but projectile nonetheless. Lovely. As luck would have it, there was no further vomiting.

After court I ran a couple of errands and drove home. I was so exhausted that I had to sing loudly the entire way to avoid falling asleep on the freeway. But frankly, I could barely get anything above a whisper out until getting close to home, when my headache backed down a little, giving me a fresh burst of energy.

I slept a bit and I feel better, but still jarred by the experience. Oh and I haven't had anything to eat yet, and it's almost 5 p.m. Let's see if I can find something harmless...

Oh no you dinnt!

It's 4:15am on a Thursday morning and what am I doing? Sleeping? Obviously not. I woke up at 2:35 because of some random rubber smell (which I'm beginning to suspect was not even a real smell, but at o'darkhundred hours I really couldn't say for sure), and as I was falling asleep again 15 minutes later, my drunken first floor neighbors started their drunken loud conversation on their patios. If the smell hadn't woken me up, they would have. It took me a while to figure out it was them because they kept going in and out so at first I thought they were random people out on the street.

Finally they gave in to their drunkenness, and came outside to have a loud conversation. At that point, I went outside and told them to be quiet. That's right, I didn't ask, I told. I was not rude, I used the words please and thank you, but I was slightly testy. This is not the first time this happens, and while some people don't have to get up any particular time, I do. I planned to get up at 5 this morning to go work out. Except now I'm exhausted, just starting to fade again, and have only had 4 hours of sleep.

While I could easily go work out, getting less than 6 hours of sleep does not work well when I have to be present and awake all day at my job. I'll probably go back to sleep and forego exercise. Crap.

And by the way, they're inside now, but I can still hear them. But they're not loud enough to bother me, at least.