Nebulous Mooch

Have you ever seen a show called Extreme Couponing? In case you haven’t, I’ll explain the premise. The show follows a coupon obsessed family as they plan a grocery store trip. Sounds like exciting stuff, right? I don’t know about how your shopping trips go, but you could make a whole reality show about my trips to the grocery store. It could be called How Did I Spend So Much.

These shopping trips are no normal shopping trips though. They involve hundreds of coupons, maps of the grocery store, and days of preparation. Their shopping takes hours and hours and most of those hours are spent being rung up by the cashier. Afterwards when everyone realizes that their savvy coupon clipping has just saved them $493.87 the entire store breaks into applause. How could you not applaud that kind of savings, even if you were the one stuck in line behind them for an hour?

My mother is no stranger to a coupon book. Reports say, that my sister has also taken to clipping coupons. I, on the other hand, do not even look at coupons.

If they had coupons for things I actually bought, I’d use them. But, coupons always seem to be things like cereal bars or sanitizing wipes. We don’t eat cereal, especially not in the bar form, and while I like sanitizing things as much as the next person, I don’t like the idea of buying anything that is called a wipe.

The extreme couponers can have their show, their epic shopping trips and their dancing at the cash register because they saved so much. I’ll continue to wonder aimlessly around the grocery store with no list and look shocked by the final bill at the register.

In the UK, when you apply for your first adult passport you have to have an interview. I think this is funny because I was able to get through the entire naturalization process without any kind of interview. They didn’t even give me a spelling test and maybe they should’ve before granting me citizenship.

My passport interview was yesterday and I think I might have failed. It all started when the traffic was particularly bad getting to the interview office. Our car is on its last legs and overheats in traffic. My husband deals with this by turning it off when we’re not moving. I deal with it by stressing out and having an anxiety attack.

By the time I got to the interview, I was in such a state that I looked the wrong way when crossing the street and almost got killed. I can’t believe I still don’t know which way to look when crossing the street here. I was glad that wasn’t one of the interview questions.

When I got to the building the interview would be in, I couldn’t figure out how to open the door. The front door was locked and I dealt with this problem by pulling on the door as hard as I could and saying, “I can’t open it.” I guess I thought I could use brute force to yank it open. If I’d taken a minute to calm down, I would’ve noticed the button I needed to push to get buzzed in. Why do I always have such a problem with doors?

By the time I got to the interview office, I was all panic on the inside, but  I managed to keep a calm exterior. I sat down at the desk across from my interviewer, Dawn, who gave me a little speech about the importance of preventing identity theft and then told me that the interview was to be casual, and that she would just ask me some questions from my passport application. No problem right? That’s what you would think.

After she established that I had filled in my application form myself, she started asking the questions, and everything I had ever known in my life rushed out of my brain. The interview went something like this.

Dawn: When was your mother born?

Me: I really should know that, but I don’t.

Dawn: Do you know how old your mother is?

Me: I’m sorry, but I don’t. I know she’s older than me.

Dawn: When did your parents get married?

Me: Nobody knows that. I had to call them  to find out.

Dawn: Okay, when is your husband’s birthday?

Me: I’m drawing a blank. Please don’t tell my husband I don’t’ know when his birthday is.

Dawn: When was your naturalization ceremony?

Me: I think it was in July. I brought me certificate with me I’ll check.

Dawn: You can’t check just tell me when it was.

After getting out of the office I checked. It was in August. About midway through, I told Dawn that I thought I was failing the interview and she just laughed. When I got outside and told my husband about all the questions I didn’t know the answers to and he said, “I can’t believe it. How do you fail your own identity test?”

He can’t complain though because when he pulled out of the parking garage he failed the which-side-of-the-road-do-you-drive-on-in-this-country test. Luckily, there was no one else on the road at the time.

Now I just have to wait to see if my passport arrives in the mail.

Children always cry when they get their first haircut. I know this, not because I’ve cut a young child’s hair, but because I’ve seen it on television. Or maybe my mother told me. Or maybe I saw it on Facebook. It doesn’t matter where I got this information from, I’m going to assume it’s true because the television, my mother and Facebook never lie.

Since hair has no nerves I think the crying has something to do with having sharp objects waving around their heads. It could also have to do with seeing parts of themselves falling to the floor and not knowing what might fall off next–ears, eyelids or possibly a finger.

Though I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to lose an ear, I nearly cried when I cut my hair the other day. Some of the hair in the back was a bit shorter than the rest. This always happens because my hair grows at different rates. The hair in the back is like the tortoise and the hair on the sides is like the hare. (Ha,ha see how I did that. I’m so clever.) I decided it was time to even all of my hair up. Since I haven’t been to a hairdresser since 1987, I pulled out the shears and got to work. The good thing about having super curly hair is that if it’s cut unevenly no one notices or at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Let’s just say that disaster struck. Somehow my hair just kept getting shorter and shorter. It’s gone from shoulder length to ear length. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but now I look like some kind of cotton suave. It looks like I’m wearing a powder puff as a hat. I can’t even hide it by pulling it back into a ponytail.

My husband doesn’t look at my face any more when he talks to me. He looks at my hair!! “Stop looking at it,” I say.

“I can’t it’s on you head. Where do you want me to look?” he asks.

I managed to braid it tightly to my head today, but that was a challenge. It’ll grow. That’s what I keep telling myself as I look for a guided hair growth meditation mp3 online.

Photo by Josep Ma. Rosell

For about two years now, my husband has been doing these South Indian rhythm exercises called Konnakol. They involve some unusual clapping and repeating of various syllables. This post is named after a few Konnakol syllables.

He loves to tell me about how much Konnakol exercises have helped him develop his sense of time. He’s not talking about time of day. He doesn’t wear a watch and is never late so I guess he does have a good sense of that too, but for this purpose we are referring to musical time. This is a really important sense for a bass player to have and apparently he used to worry about his quite a bit…but then came Konnakol.

The other day at dinner, my husband told me that Konnakol has also helped him in other aspects of thought–I’m not sure what that means–and he thinks I would benefit from learning it. Konnakol hasn’t helped his thinking process very much because he knows that I can’t even clap and sing at the same time. How could I possibly learn some complicated rhythm exercise.

I think he wants us to start having Konnakol conversations like these guys.

The other day I was reading a book, minding my own business when a spider repelled himself Mission-Impossible style on me. “What do you think this is?” I yelled at the spider as I jumped to my feet. We were overrun by these hairy house spiders when we first moved into this flat. I have absolutely no patience for them.

I ran to the kitchen and grabbed a plastic food container to catch him in. We’ve stopped using these containers to store food long ago opting instead for glass, but they come in handy when there is a bug on the loose. Are spiders classified as bug? Probably not.

I got him into the container, put the lid on and left him on the windowsill for my husband to deal with when he got home from his gig. The spider ended up staying in the container fro about a day and a half. I was so annoyed with him that I didn’t even give him a name and I name everything.

He kept moving his hairy, little, spider legs really fast trying to climb up the side of the container. I though he might die of exhaustion before my husband got around to releasing him into the Watford wilderness.

Before my husband finally got around to setting the spider free, he held up the container and said, “Poor little spider. You’ve been locked in this prison for about 10 years spider time and what was your crime?”

I’ll tell you what his crime was. It was being the wrong kind of spider in my house. I think he got off pretty easy too. In most houses he would’ve gotten the death penalty.

Photo by me’thedogs.

Our washing machine broke down last week or maybe it was the week before. Anyway the landlord only just replaced it the other day.  Not having a washing machine for as long as we did helped shed a new perspective on  life and laundry.

The good thing about not having a working washing machine is watching the dirty clothes pile up and knowing that as long as no one runs out of underwear I don’t have to do anything about it.

The bad thing about not having a working washing machine is watching the dirty clothes pile up and knowing that eventually I’ll have to wash them.

I was going to write a list of good and bad things, but that’s all I’ve got. I guess I didn’t gain as much perspective as I originally thought.

Our landlord bought us a slightly used washing machine to replace the old one. He got it from the same place where he got our dodgy fridge. When the delivery men hooked it up one of them noticed that the drainage hose on the machine was cut. “Someone’s gone and cut the end off this,” he said holding the hose up to my husband. Then he rammed the hose onto the pipe coming out of the sink and said, “That’ll do. Pop a jubilee clip on that one and it’s good as new.”

I don’t know what a jubilee clip is but it sure sounds great. If it will make an old, dirty, cut hose as good as new I’m sure I could find a lot of uses for it around this place. I wonder if putting a jubilee clip around my wrist would make me 25 again.

The night before my citizenship ceremony, I decided to read the paper they sent me that told me what to expect on the day. Much to my horror I realized that we would sing the national anthem at the ceremony.

“You better memorize it. There’s nothing more embarrassing than being the only one who doesn’t know the national anthem at your citizenship ceremony,” my husband said. He would know since when he became an Australian citizen he only knew the first line of the Australian national anthem. In my opinion, all you need to know are the first and last lines. You can just move your lips for everything in the middle and no one ill know the difference.

I practiced the song until my vocal cords hurt. I was ready to belt it out the next day at the ceremony.

We got to the courthouse early. It was full of people wearing their nicest clothes, except for the one guy in a T-shirt and denim shorts. The woman in front of me in the registration line thought that she was going to have to sing God Save the Queen alone in front of all those people upon receiving her naturalisation certificate. She breathed a sigh of relief when she was told she didn’t.

Darn, I thought. I was hoping they’d arrange us into little quartets and we could bust out some impomptu harmonies Boyz to Men style. I’m dating myself, aren’t I?

The end of the ceremony finally came and they asked us to stand for the national anthem. The music started. I cleared my throat ready to sing and nothing happened. The music continued to play and everyone continued to stand there silently. Then the music ended and everyone sat down–everyone expect for me. I stomped my foot and said, “What the heck!!! I wasted two hours of my time memorizing all three verses of this song and we’re not even going to sing it.” Okay, I didn’t really do say that, but that’s what I was thinking.

Now I know God Saves the Queen. The next first time I’m at an event where they sing it, I’ll be ready.

Just One More Thing: 

As I was learning the words to the song I started wondering what it must be like to be the Queen and have everyone sing to you. Talk about awkward. It would like when the waiters all sing Happy Birthday to you in a restaurant only with less happy and more God save.

I found this video and thought it was funny. Even her husband has to sing the song. He doesn’t look like he really knows the words though. I’ll post the lyrics below the video so you can sing along. I know you want to.

God save our gracious Queen,
Long live our noble Queen,
God save the Queen:
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us:
God save the Queen.

O Lord, our God, arise,
Scatter her enemies,
And make them fall.
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On Thee our hopes we fix,
God save us all.

Thy choicest gifts in store,
On her be pleased to pour;
Long may she reign:
May she defend our laws,
And ever give us cause
To sing with heart and voice
God save the Queen.

I finally got my pet fox. Her name is Penny and she’s taken up residence in our upstairs neighbor’s neglected garden. She likes to sit in the sun on the patio.

I was convinced that Penny was rabid. Foxes are nocturnal and though she was doing a lot of lounging,  she was still active during the day. After doing a lot of worrying about it, I decided to send my husband out to find out. My theory was that if Penny was indeed a normal fox she would run away as he approached the back gate. If she was rabid she would run toward him, knocking him to the ground, and tearing the flesh from his neck. I thought this experiment was best done during the day when the doctor’s office up the street was open.

Penny passed the test. She ran away just like a normal fox should. The only problem is that she hasn’t come back since. Too bad, I was looking forward to having a pet. I’ll just have to make due with the fat willowy legged spider under the bathroom sink. I named her Pumpkin and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t have rabies.

If you’ve never had the pleasure of knowing a hypochondriac live and in person you can now say that you know one online.  Usually I would never admit to this, but let’s just say that the insanity of the last few days has brought some things to light. In the space of about a week I’ve thought I had a brain tumor, kidney failure, a brain aneurysm, and meningitis. In reality, I probably just have a head cold and should get some rest.

Let’s just say that I’m a more ridiculous version of my father. He has high blood pressure so he sits around worrying about it. Then he takes his blood pressure sees that it’s high and worries some more. Then he checks his blood pressure an hour later sees that it’s even higher and worries some more. This can go on all day on bad days.

At least his health worries are based in some sort of reality though. I, on the other hand, notice a slight pain in my low back while I’m trying to sleep. This starts a cascade of events.

I can’t sleep because I’m worried about my back. As the night wears on I construct a scenario of complete renal failure in my mind and worry about the possibility of dialysis. The next day I’m exhausted and when I’m too tired I usually get a headache. Instead of napping I convince myself that I must have a brain tumor and agonize about the possibility of surgery.

That night my back still hurts slightly and so does my head. I lay awake most of the night worried about my kidneys and my brain. Maybe worrying about my brain was not without reason. That night I get slightly feverish and wake up with a stiff neck. I think what any logical person would think, MENINGITIS.

I spend the day exhausted looking up everything I can online about brain cancer, kidney failure and meningitis. That night I have difficulty sleeping again. My back pain has gone away and I don’t have a fever or headache but my neck is still sore, and I’m so sure it’s meningitis. The next day I have another fatigue headache. I go to the grocery store and suddenly feel dizzy in the rice and beans aisle.

“I must be having a brain aneurysm,” I tell my husband.

“If you were you wouldn’t be telling me that you were having a brain aneurysm,” he says.

Then I realize that I haven’t eaten since breakfast and it is  four in the afternoon. After wolfing down a salad and a can of sardines I feel much better. I never knew that canned sardines could cure a brain aneurysm.

We get mail that was intended for someone else all the time here. When a letter for Sharon Pain or Mike Jones or some other such strange person comes through our mail slot, we write wrong address return to sender on it and pop it in the mailbox when we’re out for a walk. Even though I am tempted at times, I never open the envelop to find out what’s inside.

When emails come to the wrong address it’s a different story though. I kind of have to open it. I got this email not too long ago.

To Whom It May Concern,

I’m Denise Yeung representative of Vroyal Pte.Ltd. We are considering the purchase of the following product

Product Name : Garmin GPSMAP 696
Manufacturer Part Number: 010-00667-40
Quantity : 5 units

Please refer to this order as “Purchase Order #CH/06/11″. If this order cannot be processed as requested, please contact me at this email at your earliest convenience.

Please send the quotation by email with complete details of specification, terms & condition, warranty/guarantee.
May feel free to contact on E-mail.

Best regards,
Denise Yeung

I would love to be able to fill Denise’s order for the Garmin GPSMAP 696, but I’m not a warehouse and I have no idea what she is talking about. I emailed her to let her know that she contacted the wrong person and I got this email in return.

I’m Sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you but I’ve been on
holiday and just returned to the office today. I would like to change
my orders with 20 units
of Garmin zumo® 660 (Part Number: 010-00727-00). Please let me know
the grand total includes freight via Fedex International priority. I
already to arrange
the payment today after you give quote for 20 gps units. I’m waiting
your reply soon.

With best regards,
Denise Yeung

Wow, the order has gone up from 5 units to 20. I wonder how much I could make from this transaction. Too bad I’m not selling GPS systems (that’s sat navs for my British friends). I do have a stepson who likes maps and is pretty good at giving directions though. I wonder if she would accept one of 17 year old boy instead of 20 GPS systems. As an added bonus he could name all of the world’s state leaders for her. Hmm…maybe I should write her back to find out how much she’s willing to pay.