good lord.

I just spoke with a woman, and her friend had the most god awful stain on her shirt. 

 

It looked like a big gray nipple.
 
This was not a gray shirt, and it was NOT like her shirt was wet. 

 

This was an old, dried stain like a giant grey nipple on a shirt that was, quite frankly, already too tight.

 

It was staring at me. 

 

I had trouble finishing my sentences. 

 

I wanted to hand her my Tide stick.

 

Ah, life in customer service...

The Blue Light Special

On my BIG list, of things I envision in our life as the Cleavers, has always been a ping pong table. Why? Damned if I know.

Pool table? Nice, but honestly, you have to have an epic room to have a pool table set up (because no, it will NOT be the centerpiece of the living room). A ping pong table is good clean fun (and pool can be so very dirty...) and would also get Big O and the Honey something that is neither sport NOR Video game.

At our old house a ping pong table was never an option, but this house has a porch that is crying out for a folding green table. With small rubberized paddles (stop that) and featherweight balls that wouldn't damage anything if they got away.

So it seemed like destiny when KMART had a one day special on Friday. Eighty bucks for my slice of the american dream. Now, friends, eighty bucks is nothing--Except for the ever hovering spectre of abject poverty that flashes at the sides of my vision like some evil ghost of christmas future. But Kmart, my friends, specializes in abject poverty. They gots them the lay away. Sheeee-it.

So off I went to squander the extra hour I had, because work let us off early to prepare for the Christmas party. An hour should be long enough to put one item on the lay away, no?

Aw, HELLS NO, y'all.

This is the Central Valley, and I was goin' to the Southside. Unlike the northside Kmart, which they tore down to build a lovely Eddie Bauer/J Jill/ REI complex more in keeping with the Northside's yuppie ideal, southside has their lay away in the same hallway as the bathrooms. Because really, who doesn't want to stand in line as the great unwashed brush much too close to you on their way to and from the facilities?

For the entertainment of the masses, let me present the family Crack. Mama crack needs a bath. A toothbrush. Some basic hygeine. She's waiting for the clerk to fetch her christmas goods from the lay away. I know how to say it now. It's The Lay Away. Daddy Crack is there to move the basket around in random patterns while waiting for the clerk to fill it up. Uncle Crack is bitching about the injuries he got in Iraq--they all think that's hilarious. Oh, he was also in Vietnam and Korea. Uncle Crack looks maybe forty--which means he is probably twenty five in human years, and fifty in crack years. Look! Here comes grandma Crack, who drops off crack baby, because he needs to go. Mama Crack think it's hilarious to shove him into the men's room and kick him in the ass on his way in. She could have been punting a football. Bitch. He's maybe five or six. The clerk has come back with their stuff (finally) and they are poring over their stuff (and props to Crack Parents, they have made sure their kids are getting Christmas). As the clerk disappears to find the next pile of stuff, the sounds of crying come from the bathroom.

"Moooommmaaa.... Moooooommmmmaaaaaa!"

Mama Crack is joking with uncle Crack, and ignores the cries.

"Momma, help meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

"WHAAT?"

"IT'S stuuuuck!"

"AAAAAAAIIIIIIII!!!!!!!"

Now he's really screaming.


AAAAIIIIII!!!! IT's Stuck in my butt! MAMA!!!! THE DOOKIE IS STUCK IN MY BUUUUTT!!!!!

MAAAAAAMMAAAAAAAA...The dookie is stuck in my buuuuuuuuuutttt!


I was trapped for almost my entire bonus hour with the family Crack, and the dookie was stuck in his butt.

But my freaking ping pong table is on The Lay Away. I'm so sending the Honey to pick it up.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig

I went home for my vacation. It was interesting.

Everyone has a religion up there. That religion may be traditional steeple and stained glass, it may be ecology, it may be meth.


You know what, I am teetering on the razor's edge of the poverty line, so I should not judge. But even at my lowest, my kids were clean and dressed. I cannot get over how many babies were clothed in diapers and dirt. The crappy cars also had drivers with ciggies dangling, men without their shirts, women in the least amount of clothes possible. It's HOT there-- one hundred and twenty is not at all unusual, and there is no gentle delta breeze to counter balance it. We were driving around without A/C--but EEEEW, our sh*t was covered up!!!



I miss my parents, I miss the hills and I miss the river.



Redneck/White Trash/Crank fiends? Not so much.

**************************
Editorial postscript here: I'm not sayin' don't let your babies run around in nothin' but their nappies--that's a joy you really only get below four and after eighty four. But if you are clearly GOING somewhere, knowing full well the kids will be getting out of the car or going IN somewhere, put some clothes on them.

That is all.

YOU STUPID BITCH

Hang up your cell phone.

I can't be any clearer.

If you would like customer service, stop talking on your cell phone. It's hard enough hearing you through my plexiglass spit shield, without you mumbling asides to me throughout your animated cell phone conversation.

Learn some fucking manners.

...and brush your teeth. That was nasty.

That is all.

Today the part of Jen will be played by a moody, whiny little bitch.

I am blue.

I think it's a combination of things, several having to do with money and housing, but I also would like to blame my co-worker(s).

Work: I think my base line personality is pretty happy and pretty mellow. I can roll with your verbal punches, and if you throw one too many at me, I'll smack you back.

What stresses me out to no end, is having to listen to you throw them at someone else. Someone who is too classy (and bound by certain labor laws and working conditions) to slap the ever-loving shit out of you, even in a verbal sense. Even though she could make you cry and you would deserve every bit of it. I know it's not worth the drama to stir shit up. It will all be over soon. But you ruin every goddamned day that I have to sit and listen to you spew your bile. Have you EVER focused on the positive things in your life? EVER?

ahem.

I would like my man, my partner, my one and only, to help me around the house. I am tired of being the only one who does dishes. That's why they aren't done. Because I am tired. Not sleepy, TIRED.

I adore babies. I could eat them with a spoon. I loved every single second of being pregnant. I would LOVE to have another one. But we cannot afford it. Can.Not.Afford. We are a couple of bounced checks away from being on the Government dole, and I can't do it. If I won the lottery I'd be pregnant yesterday. Sigh.

I want the TWO books I have started to POOF! appear in front of me. I don't WANT to start a third. I want my very good books to come back to me. Where in the hell did I put them? Why don't I have any clue here?

Um , crazy ass recycle man? SHUUUT UP. It's FREE, asshat. Stop talking to me.

Sensitive new age guy ex husband who cannot earn a living because you insist on chasing your dream? Grow the fuck up.

Crappy mothers who have bred and then mistreated girls who turned into amazing women without any help from your sorry asses? Shut up and leave them alone--you do not deserve your incredible daughters.

Here is my list of demands:

Be nice. Even to the person helping you at wally world, even if they seem to have a family tree with only one branch. Be nice.

Be considerate. Think about the other person. Whether that's me or someody else.

Be patient. Are you really so important that you can't wait three seconds more?

Less is more. You don't need more stuff, you need to pay more attention to what's in front of you.

Shut up. Listen. No, REALLY listen.

bleah. This has been bitchy moments with Jennifer. Your usual psychotically chipper (hmm, that's probably more real life Jen than Blog Jen) girl will be back shortly.


*********

On a completely unrelated note?
My throbbing blog-crush on Greg Beck is only deepened by his confession about poetry. He needs (other)Jen's Tuesday Work Sucks Haikus.

Mayberry we're not.

This is the biggest town I've ever lived in.

It was once a very scary place, with shootings in the mall, and crazy drive-bys. It has settled down in the last fifteen years or so, and I appreciate that, since I have lived here for the last ten. We are still consistently in top five cities nationwide for car theft, but hey, it's almost a point of pride that we can beat Oakland.

My initial wild eyed terror and twitchy hyper-awareness of my surroundings has been replaced by a common-sense based resignation/fatalism. If they REALLY want it, I'll probably fork it over but as long as I stay out of the truly BAD areas, I'll be okay until Murphy's law calls my name--and really, at that point, I'll be screwed either way.

It can really be a lovely town to live in, but it's gentle veneer can wear thin at any time. This weekend, after Tee-ball, I took Little O to the Flea Market held at the local Community College. We wandered the aisles looking at craptastic wares manufactured in Mexico, or China, and almost bought a bitchin' pair of fake Vans for my Tee ball superstar (always out of the size I need, Damn you, Murphy!).

Then we came upon my favorite vendor in the place. I wish I'd had my camera, but it's probably better that I didn't. Two guys in their early twenties had a couple of rubbermaid tubs full of dirty wires bundled together, and a table full of car stereos.

Oh, you mean the fake Kenwoo and JBC manufactured in Korea? no no. Just a banquet table filled with the stereos that had been ripped out of dashboards all over town. Wires still hangin' from 'em. It was such a Stockton moment.

The only thing that topped it was reading the crime report in the newspaper today. Two guys tried to rob an ice cream vendor pushing a cart in one of the parks nestled in a residential neighborhood in north Stockton. They pulled a knife on him, and must have been dreaming of the cold hard cash they'd be getting from him. Instead the crazy bastard chased them away with a machete. Rock on, Crazy Ice Cream Man.

Note to self: Don't bitch about the incorrect change any more when we go to the park.

I went back to work today.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.


the scandal of the starving baby
Originally uploaded by Djuliet.

Had a customer complain to my manager about my bad attitude before I even got my first cup of coffee.

Pay yer freaking BILL, and the late notices will stop. It's a pretty straightforward system.

Silly me, I forgot that diplomacy is more important than truth. A glorious week of saying the FIRST thing that popped into my head was obviously NOT conducive to dealing with the great unwashed.

Get.me.out.of.here.

I sit behind a plexiglass window at work.
Customers laugh and ask me if the trash is a dangerous business. In my head, I generally think that while trash isn't dangerous, our part of town IS, and oh, look, there go your rims in that shopping cart.
What I usually SAY is that it's kind of like the spit shield at the salad bar--and through the wonders of plexiglass, they can usually, literlally, see my point. ugh.

Yesterday I actually had a man tap on the plexiglass and tell me to try and keep up.

I thought I was going to go straight through the window. Un-freaking-believable. One of us wasn't getting it, but it sure as hell wasn't me.

Helpful hint? When demanding extra help from a Customer Service Rep? Try not to piss them off.

wow. this has been a remarkably restrained post about yet another booger-eating-moron.

You're welcome.

Booger.Eating.Morons.

Why isn't there some kind of a test you have to pass before they give you a checkbook, or a visa check card?

I can see if you are eighteen and just got your checkbook, you might need to ask how to change the cents on the check and have it still be legal. But when you are WELL into your forties, if not beyond them, you should pretty much have the change it and initial it thing down.

The same thing goes for the Visa check cards. IF you don't get that I'm processing it as a credit card, because that's all that we take, but it is still coming out of your Checking, so could you please NOT have kittens, well I'm afraid I'll have to cut up your card.

I want a big REVOKED stamp and some indelible red ink. I'm just gonna stamp your forehead, riiiight here, above your eyebrows. I have revoked your checking rights, I have revoked your visa check card. Pay in Cash.