humor Archive

Wrecking Ball is this week’s theme song for our household. It is so suitable because the house is trashed and it does indeed look as though Miley Cyrus (bless her heart) flew on through on her wrecking ball overnight. I regret the state of the house and will spend most of today in atonement wandering around with no particular motivation to put things to rights. I will fold some linen here and sweep a floor there. It is Sunday after all. And if nothing else, one thing most of the major religions and some of the Hollywood based ones, agree on, is that you shouldn’t work very hard on a Sunday.

Which is why church should really be on a Monday. Cram it all in before work. Then we’d really have something to blame Mondayitis on instead of the 36 hour rebound effect of over-serving oneself on a Saturday night.

We can all come together in our collective misery on a Monday morning, then head off to Starbucks, slapping ourselves on the backs before going to work! It would be so very American. I’m sure productivity would increase!

Four children are currently singing the lyrics of Miley Cyrus’s unforgettable ballad. While playing Minecraft. And eating breakfast. I don’t know how they manage this ultimate feat in multi-tasking. I’ve concluded the hemispheres of children’s brains must have evolved over the last generation. Not enough to cope with simple household chores and there are the predictable emotional trade-offs. If one of the xbox controllers goes missing, everything falls apart.

And despite the fact that they can all play simultaneously, I still have to step in to solve disagreements.

“Mom!” “Buzz hit me,” complains Cosmo (6).

“Did he hit you in real life or did he hit you in #Minecraft, ” I ask.

“He hit me in real life,” he replies.

I explain to Cosmo that his actions in Minecraft might have repercussions in real life. And marvel at my words. “What have I become?” I wonder. Cosmo apologises for knocking over a sign and building a bed in Buzz’s house. Buzz (3) apologises for clocking Cosmo on the head with an xbox controller.

Back to the housework. It’s kind of unavoidable. Like the San Francisco fog that’s moodily hanging around outside. It must be really bored to come this far across the bay.  Or annoyed because they shut the Golden Gate Bridge to traffic last weekend while a new high tech safety barrier was installed. Which perversely made me really, really want to drive across it! About Karl the Fog from Huffington Post:

Like most of us, I don’t want to give the impression that our house spends all it’s time in a state of disarray. And it doesn’t. We’ve had plenty of dinner parties and friends over to attest that it’s quite often immaculate. Because we spend the previous 48 hours scrambling madly to put it to rights!

I know some of you do this too. If you come over it’s going to gleam. Just please, please, please don’t look in my laundry or ask why the guest bedroom door won’t open! Is this the American Way or just my way?

And if it’s a little shabby, I have the ultimate excuse. We have a large family. People are both surprised by this and supportive. Probably the consensus is that it’s my thing. Like scrap booking. Or like, some people have a bad back, or get gout. Or raccoons. That I got myself into this situation and eventually I’ll get myself out. I just may be some time.

Enlightened Housewife. Keeping House since 2001. Before that I was more bohemian than houseproud. Just a little. It was the fashion back then.

It’s just as well I’ve never pursued a corporate career. I just wouldn’t have the Lady Melons to deal with workplace dramas.

Due to being afflicted with the remnants of social anxiety, I have three settings when confronted both with normal conflicting agendas between individuals and also when dealing with rampant arseholery.

These settings are:

1. Doormat.

2. People Pleaser. (Lets just all get along)!

3. Postal!!

I’ve known the following individual and business person for eight months. We contracted her to choose furniture for our living room. We were sick of making bad decisions on our own so we rang in a professional designer. But she wasn’t very professional. It’s been a case of over promise and under deliver.

I realised our designer was overcharging us every opportunity she could get. All the the while smiling and making out like we were best friends. This afternoon I was left with no choice but to drop the rope:

Way to fire your designer via email:

“Dear Designer.”

1. “I am sorry you weren’t professional enough to resolve the freight issues with Hubby.”

(She invoiced us $3,000 for furniture that we could have had freighted for free from the internet. We wanted to ask her to reduce her delivery charge but she escalated quickly)

2. “Threatening us with Court has bought an end to this working relationship.” (Hubby was trying to find a middle ground. Designer tried to bully him by saying  she’d take him to court if he didn’t pay the full amount. He asked her to leave. Then I followed up with an email. See Point 1 above.

3. “Oh stop it. That’s Alligator tears.” (Every time I’d pull her up on something she’d play innocent then hurt. Then GPOTY. (Grandparent of the year with my children. )

Me: “Furthermore:”

“I disbelieve that you have ordered the linen and the lamps.  You tried to bullshit my husband about me taking a while to choose the linen. I paid a deposit on the original six months ago and YOU advised me it wasn’t available any more so we had to re select another fabric.” (She tried to gaslight me. Manipulate facts to insinuate my judgment was off)

Me: “I appreciated we followed the Method designing practice of climbing in bed together to  channel the correct choice of fabrics and the right down weighting for our climate.
It was lovely chanting OM and holding hands. Especially since I lack a Mommy Figure since emigrating to America.”

“I am also sure your design credentials are impeccable.” (She went to a Scandinavian design school. She may have graduated with a diploma in Muppetry)

Me: “However:”

“At every turn there has been delay after delay. The lack of follow up caused multiple delivery trips and this resulted in the freight blow out. 3000!”

“The lack of professionalism was not limited to bad project management. At one stage you tried to double invoice us.” You shocker.

She did. I got two $10,000 invoices and she tried to tell me I was wrong until I presented her with the cold hard evidence from our bank account.

I finished with:

“We are reasonable people so we will settle on the following compromise:

Keep the deposit on the lamps and the linen to offset your excessive freight costs. We have no proof or faith that you have ordered the aforesaid items and no wish to re litigate matters any further.”

“However if you wish to revisit these issues in any other forum we will be more than happy to present our side. As long as it’s in the People’s Court.”

Boss Lady

“Furthermore. Keep the shonky table. We’ll replace it from Bed Bath and Beyond at half the price.”

Best

Enlightened Housewife.

Enlightened Housewife.
Ladling out the advice and speaking my mind since 2012. When I emigrated to America and had to fit in.
Before that I was just a pussy.

Social Anxiety. A have a sister who I swear doesn’t suffer from it. I know lots of politicians and journalists who lack it.

Sarah Palin doesn’t have a smidgen:

She outrages us because she lacks social anxiety. Bless her boots. Don’t be standing on the dogs Sarah.

But most of the rest of us have experienced this condition at one time or another.

I’m relieved I’m over it for the most part.

I’m told as a young child I was shy. At elementary school I had lots of friends. The first time I experienced social anxiety was when moving schools during my middle school years. We relocated and that entire car journey I spent my time thinking:

“Will they like me will they like me will they like me”?

Ah. Middle School Anxiety. Think how many friends I made at my new school radiating that low level paranoia!

One! She ditched me after three weeks when her best friend came back from vay cay. She was kind enough to inform me why she was dropping me:

“So and so is back from Australia now. So we’re not going to hang out any more, kay”?

What choice did I have? I took refuge in the entire works of Daphne Du Maurier and Jane Austin and it was fine, really.
I was always kind of a Breakfast Club type of student right through my High School years. Whether we were geeks, jocks or cheerleaders, we all ended up matey in year 13. We all suffered and looking back it was a necessary process to navigate the politics of adult life.

Then I met my husband in college and everything was awesome from then on right? 

No! Fuck no! Shortly after I met future hubby we dropped out of college. We spent some months couch surfing at our respective parents houses. Then we decided to haul our raggedy asses back to college for a second attempt. My 16 year old brother moved in with us and we all underwent a collective angst.

This was Dunedin, New Zealand in the 1990’s. It was settled by the Scottish.

The Glasgow of the Southern Hemisphere.

An awesome place to be unless you’re in a dark place, right? We moved into a condominium sandwiched in between a halfway house and a guy dealing smack. We kept away from both. We knew not to get too experimental. We were having enough trouble keeping a grip on reality as it was.

The 20 year old brain is extremely plastic. Unless you’re distracted by work or are intensely involved in your studies, it can be a perpetual state of Manic Depression. When we were up we were up. When we were down we would sit around in a group rocking; wondering when it would all stop, please. With someone in the condo below us playing Alanis Morrisette at full volume.

We moved out, we moved on. We grew up. We got jobs.

Hang in there it gets better!

Enlightened Housewife. Asking the hard questions since 2001. Except when I was pregnant and my brain was mush.

One of my resolutions is to eat well in the New Year. I’ve done a thorough investigation and I can attest to the following. The right way to start your day is a big plate of cooked oats. Add almond milk and heap with fresh fruit:

Safeway one minute oats with almond milk and fruit.

The following is not the right way to start the day:

A way to start the day. Rumchata rolled out it’s millionth case in 2014

I’d never heard of Rumchata until recently. So I did some investigation. What is this beverage, the virtues of which are currently and widely being touted around the Mommy Blogosphere?

From the website of Liquor.com:

“RumChata was launched with a soft rollout in the fall of 2009. RumChata is bottled from a made-from scratch cream liqueur recipe that uses five times distilled Caribbean rum and the freshest real dairy cream with a touch of natural cinnamon, vanilla, sugar and other secret flavors. In April of 2014, the award winning RumChata sold its millionth case.”

Hmm..2009 I think. The world was going through the final throes of the global financial crisis. Shops are emptying out and businesses are going under everywhere. There is no innovation and all looks bleak.

Then some GENIUS develops a brand new liqueur! And lo and behold the economy rights itself!

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research The U.S. recession that began in December 2007 ended in June 2009

Mere coincidence or the life preserver that got us all out of the shtick?

Friends attest that it reminds them of Cinnabon. I wonder if there was a correlating drop in sales at Cinnabon when Rumchata was rolled out? I mean, who would eat your cinnamon when you can have it as a liquor? At 13.75%.

Cinnabon might have to get inventive to restore profits here and step it up the next time the world needs a bailout.  I know Cinnabon is a family brand but you know there’ll be a market at least in Oregon following the legalisation of marijuana in 2014. They’d have to have a separate menu for Oregon. Instead of the Cinnabon Classic Roll it would become the Cinnabon Cannabis Classic Roll.

Can you imagine? All the stoners would be standing around outside Cinnabon scratching their heads and going:

“Wow man. That’s CLASSIC”…

The Oregon way to start the day.

Enlightened Housewife. Making you laugh since 2011. 🙂 Before then I wasn’t very funny. I tried. You know.

Shoes are a girls best friend. After a man with lots of money.