Nebulous Mooch

So I found two sites recently that I think are funny. The first one is a blog called Stuff White People Like. The second is a website called Black People Love Us! Check them out.

The Price is Right always seems to be on in the laundromat. I don’t know what the connection is between not owning your own washer and drier and loving The Price is Right. I just know that the phrase “A new car!” is like nails scraping a chalkboard to me.

There are two televisions in the laundromat we use. Yesterday, someone turned on the second television. My husband was excited because when they first turned the television on Sport’s Center was on, but the person promptly turned to The Price is Right. Now The Price is Right was on both televisions.

When our clothes were done drying we folded them on a table near the second television. A woman in her late twenties sat on a footstool near the table watching the television. She was enthralled by the emotional roller coaster that is The Price is Right. “Aw, come on,” she’d say when she disagreed with a contestant’s guess at the actual retail price of a dumb bell set.

“I’ve always wanted to be on this show,” she said to me.

At first I didn’t know who she was talking to but she seemed to be looking at me. “Really?” I said in disbelief.

“I really miss Bob Barker though,” she said turning her attention back to the television.

I was hoping that when Bob retired the show would end. I couldn’t say that to her though. I just continued folding my clothes.

She cheered quietly when a bald man on the television started barking spontaneously because he won a random household item.

Have you ever been given a meaningless time wasting task at work? I’ve been given tons of them. That’s one of the reasons I hate working so much.

I could hear the motor of a leaf blower going for what seemed like forever right outside my window. Finally fed up with all the racket, I decided to look outside to see what was going on. One of the grounds keepers was randomly blowing leaves off the sidewalk around our building. I say randomly because he would blow the leaves off the sidewalk in one section, then he’d move to the grass next to the sidewalk and blow the leaves from the grass onto the sidewalk that he’d just cleared. When he finally finished, I think there were just as many leaves on the sidewalk as there were when he started.

Whether or not he’d successfully cleared the sidewalk, it was a meaningless task. There are a lot of leaves around. If no one picks them up, they’ll blow right back onto the sidewalk again. I wonder how long it took him to do this around all of the buildings in the complex. This is a big complex so it’ll probably take all day.

Making a music video is a serious affair. It involves a lot of thought and planning. I thought you’d appreciate the effort put into the filming of I Brush My Filthy Teeth.

Click To Play

I went to the dentist today for the normal poking and prodding. During my check-up the hygienist asked me if I wanted an oral cancer screening. I said no, because it costs fifty dollars extra and I don’t think I have oral cancer. Maybe that’s not the best choice but it’s the choice I made today.

When I went to the counter to pay after my appointment, the receptionist, who I’ve never saw before, examined my paperwork. “I see you didn’t get the oral cancer screening,” she said. She typed in some things on her keyboard. “Patrick got the oral cancer screening last time he was here.”

“Really?” I said. Did she think that telling me that my husband got the oral cancer screening was going to make me change my mind? Did she expect me to say, Patrick got it. Then I better get it too?

I have to admit that we have a bit of a mold problem in the master bathroom. It’s been plaguing me ever since we’ve moved into this place. I’ve tried everything I can think of. It taunts me from beneath the caulking along the edge of the tub. Every time I take a shower, I think about how wrecked it is. Why must it live in my bathroom? Is it doing me harm? Why doesn’t it pack its little moldy suitcases and move out?

The other day I decided to use the bleach we had under the bathroom sink to get rid of it. We never use bleach. Recently, I’ve been trying to use natural cleaning products, but I was desperate. So I mixed some bleach and water in a spray bottle and sprayed it all around the tub. I sprayed so much my hand cramped up.

Did the mold go away? No, but I got a big headache and felt like I was going to throw up. So I learned that the bleach isn’t worth the environmental and physical harm it causes. I also learned that I should probably open the windows when I ‘m cleaning.

I suffer from cold feet. Not the kind of cold feet you hear about people getting before a wedding, just plain old cold feet. My feet get so cold that in the winter if my bare foot touches my leg while I’m sleeping, I wake up from the shock of it. It’s like someone just stuck an ice cube on my leg.

I once heard someone say that if you have cold hands and feet you have a warm heart. Well my heart must be really warm. My heart must be burning up. Maybe I should try to stick my feet over my heart to warm them up.

So the other day I went to the biometrics appointment for my UK visa. First of all, who came up with this name biometrics. It sounds so Sci-Fi and silly. It’s just a fancy way of saying that they’re going to take your photo and fingerprints. Now that I’m officially in the “system” what will “they” do with that information. (Don’t you love my use of quotation marks?)

When I first walked into the Biometrics Center everything was roped off and I had to wait in a line at the door to speak to the security guard. We weren’t allowed to bring cell phones or cameras into the building. I don’t know why this would be. Are they afraid you’d take a picture of one of the cracked plastic chairs in the large drab room that looked like any other drab government waiting room. It could have been the DMV, if the people in the DMV were required to dress like Target workers. Everyone in the Biometrics Center had on red polo shirts and khaki pants.

When I filled out my online application there was a problem with my name. The computer kept combining my maiden name and current name into one crazy long name. When I tried to correct it it would always revert back to the original mistake. Finally I decided to forget it because I thought that anyone with common sense could look at the application and clearly see what the mistake was. Why did I think that the people in the Biometric Center would have common sense?

When I showed the security guard my passport and appointment form he shook his head at me and said the name didn’t match. I explained the problem to him and showed him my old passport with my maiden name on it. After much explaining he sent me to stand in another line.

The woman behind the counter there scrutinized my passport and appointment form, turning the pages in my passport book like she’d find an answer to the problem somewhere in there. “I have to talk to the supervisor,” she finally said. She disappeared into an office behind the counter. After a few minutes she came back and handed my passport and appointment form back to me along with a slip of paper with a number on it. I guess the supervisor gave her the go ahead to let me get photographed and fingerprinted.

Before I could sit down my number was called and a technician took my forms and furrowed his brow at them. “Your name is wrong. I have to talk to the supervisor,” he said. He disappeared into the office behind the counter. When he came out a few minutes later he started trying to enter my name into the computer and he kept saying that my name was too long to enter into the computer. Then the screen with black and he had to switch computers. It didn’t take long for him to fingerprint and photograph me. “I have to get the supervisor to check my work,” he said. He disappeared into the back office again and came out a moment later with the supervisor.

Apparently, if you’re the supervisor you are not required to dress like a Target employee but maybe you should be. The supervisor wore an over sized gray polo shirt and super tight black jeans, kind of 1985 style. She was the same complexion as me but her hair was dyed a harsh brassy blonde. She wore large heart shaped earrings and a heart necklace and several heart rings.

This is who everyone in this place is deferring to instead of using there own common sense? I thought. I mean really, if she doesn’t know that that’s a really bad hair color and that you shouldn’t outline your lips in dark brown and fill in the middle with frosty pink lipstick, how does she know what to do about my messed up name on my appointment form.

She clicked through the computer screens quickly her acrylic nails tapping on the keys. “Okay,” she said. Then she disappeared back into her office.

I love getting rid of stuff. Now that our moving date is closer we’re getting rid of all kinds of stuff. It’s crazy how many things we have that we don’t use and don’t plan on using in the foreseeable future.

It’s fun to take things to the trash–strange things that you don’t want that most other people wouldn’t want either. Here are some things we’ve taken to the trash so far: a humidifier that never worked very well but made a ton of noise, a very rusty child’s bicycle, a razor scooter (someone probably wanted that). We don’t throw these things into the dumpster. We leave them leaning against it just in case someone else who collects junk wants ours.

Selling things on Craig’s list is even better than throwing them away. Who would have thought that someone wants our old junk? And we get to meet some interesting people. They all want to stay and talk to us for about an hour. The guy who bought my massage table farted incredibly loudly and didn’t acknowledge that anything happened at all. Then he stayed and talked to us about his love for Acoustic Alchemy for a little over an hour. The guy who bought my husband’s synthesizer stayed and talked to my husband for about an hour, did some research on our internet, and shared a story about his bout with Bell’s Palsy. And let’s not forget Mrs. Cole. She bought our stove and talked and talked in the most interesting manner to me.

People are so strange. I wonder who we’ll meet next.

Not so long ago we went for a walk in the park and saw the most amazing fly. I don’t know what kind of fly it was, maybe a horsefly. Are they really big ones that buzz loudly? If they are then it was definitely a horsefly.

Anyway this fly was hovering right in the middle of the path about the height of my head. I almost walked into it. That’s how we discovered it. It was just sitting there in midair. This was a very talented fly.

My husband wanted to get a picture of it, but every time he got the camera to focus on it the fly would quickly zoom around behind my husband’s head and then resume hovering there. It was a very talented fly indeed. It did this many times and my husband couldn’t get a good picture of it. He finally gave up.

We didn’t get a good picture of the fly so here’s another picture instead.