Bitchy McBitcherson's Blog

Tag: being me

  • Things which are driving me completely batshit crazy today.

    The Dogs
    The Printer
    My To Do List
    Me

    I resent the last one the most.

  • How do you spell pretzel?

    A couple of weeks ago a friend sent an IM that read:

    Do you want to do couples with me?

    She did not lead in with anything, it was my first message of the day from her.

    Having absolutely zero idea what she was talking about, I wrote back:

    Umm, I don’t know, are they attractive?

    She didn’t reply and amongst the many messages that followed she never explained, I had mostly forgotten about it, until a couple of days ago when we were in the middle of messaging about her yoga class.

    ME: I might look for a class
    HER: You could do couples with me
    HER: Saturdays at 8:30 am
    HER: It would be free for you
    ME: oh?
    ME: why?
    ME: what makes it couples?
    HER: They do poses where you lean against the other person
    ME: but you can just bring somebody and it is covered in your normal cost?
    HER: Yup, but only for couples
    ME: how long is the class?
    HER: An hour
    ME: do we have to pretend we are a lesbian couple?
    HER: Only if you want to

    That is how I ended up at a couples yoga class at 8:30 in the morning. I am NOT a flexible person. We’re talking mind body and spirit here, so yoga is a long road trip from my home state. Also, I am seriously NOT a morning person. What I AM, is cheap. I was willing to go, at least check out, what could be a free twice a week yoga class. I am able to embrace the fact that I suck at yoga.

    Before the class starts the instructor explains how couples yoga was about providing support, improving communication, and building trust. I give my friend *the look*. Then class began. It was mostly similar to a regular yoga class. – An adorable woman stands at the front of the class and tells us what she wants us to do, using terms that mean nothing to me, to describe positions that I could not get myself into after eating a bottle of muscle relaxants. For some things the couples are back to back, for some feet to feet. We are helping to push or pull each other and achieve an extra half inch of stretching.

    Then things take a yoga bend for the ridiculous. I find myself on my back, instructed to bend my knees and lift my legs, placing the bottom of my feet on my partner’s thighs. She is then instructed to lean all her weight forward and try to place her hands on the floor next to my head. This pushes my legs back into my chest and aims my knees for my ears and rolls my butt and lower back up off the ground. It is supposed to stretch my spine. If you are not laughing right this minute, I am not describing it correctly. Her face ends up about 2 inches from mine. Her mouth twitches as she fights back the desire to laugh and she gazes soulfully into my eyes and says, “Hello”.

    At this point, you might be tempted to imagine your favorite scene from an adult film, or Paris Hilton’s weekly internet accident. Stop. Replace the porn star chicks with two fat housewives in sweatpants. It is a comedy, and I am the star, but somebody forgot the camera (I hope).

    On the next couples pose I opt to let my partner go first, which turned out to be the wrong choice because she got the easy part. She is told to get into child’s pose . While I watch my partner do that, the instructor finishes going through the steps, and I glance back to find the instructor lying on her back on top of her partner, with her head slanted down toward the ground.

    I blink. Twice.

    “Umm, how am I supposed to get there?”
    “Just sit down on her, so your hips line up with each other.”

    Hips line up. Yeah, so what she is saying is that I should sit my ass on her ass. Dancing cheek to cheek. Visions of squashing her to death flash through my head, and I know if it happens, it is going to make the news. I manage to convince myself to sit and somehow lie back. I am not really enjoying it, so I ask how we are supposed to get off and am told to use goddess rising (this very slow graceful “sit-up” using your abdominals and really pushing your hips toward earth). I realize there is no way that is going to happen, so I roll off to one side.

    As we switch off, the instructor tells us to hold the pose as long as the partner on the bottom wants. We are helping them to stretch. I go into child pose and since that involves being face to the floor I cannot watch my friend try to figure out what to do, but I am sure she looked almost as awkward as I did. Soon we are back to back with hips up and heads down, and she says, “Tell me when you are done.” “Oh, I think I’m done,” I reply. She shifts her weight a bit trying to figure out what to do and awkwardly rolls off to the side onto her hands and knees. “You were supposed to get up with goddess rising,” I tease her. “What?! No way!” I guess she hadn’t heard what the instructor said, she was no doubt too busy worrying that I was going to squash her to death and we’d end up in the news. Few people want to waste their 15 minutes with a yoga incident.

    We make our way through the rest of the class and at the end as we are in our final relaxation the instructor comes by and picks up my legs and gently swings them and pulls loosening the hips and stretching the spine a bit. Then she gives a quick massage to my feet! I guess she is trying to get voted “most popular yoga instructor e-var”.

    As we leave my friend asks if I want to do it again. I tell her that I will think about it.

  • Seriously?

    I obviously do not have the proper female level of affection for clothing.

    I’m usually irritated when I need to buy new clothes. I have no idea what my “favorite article of clothing” might be. Invariably, if I like an item of clothing I spill something on it that won’t come out.

    I don’t want an outfit, chocolate or flowers for Valentine’s Day. I certainly don’t want to go out for dinner at a freakishly crowded restaurant. The whole Valentine’s Day concept pretty much gives me a rash, I guess the initials VD are fitting. I do admit that this is kind of cool.

  • I’m Welcome

    We went out to dinner the other night, and I ordered roasted chicken with steamed vegetables, and to start, a wedge salad (wedge of iceberg, with crumbled bleu cheese, bacon, and tomatoes) with the dressing on the side. The waiter repeated back the fact the dressing was supposed to be on the side. He also named the wrong type of dressing. I told him the correct type and reiterated “on the side”. He named the correct type and parroted back “on the side”.

    I freely admit it. I am high maintenance. At a really amazing restaurant with an excellent chef, I will eat whatever the hell they want to serve me, but at a marginal restaurant with marginal food I need to make some adjustments so that it becomes tolerable. Dressing on the side is one of those adjustments. I am picky about dressing and I think most of them are, at the very least, not worth the calories and the sodium that I would far rather wolf down in some other fashion, and a good many of them are downright disgusting.

    Most interesting salads (like those with real bacon on them, which is a great way to consume calories and sodium) have enough stuff going on that they taste good without any dressing. Boring salads are fine with pepper and some lemon on them. Some places have good dressing and then I pour it on.

    The kid ordered a kids meal, which comes with a drink, but the menu did not specify what the drink options were. She asked the waiter if she could get a hot tea with her kids meal. I wouldn’t have been shocked if he had said no, but at the same time the hot tea is the same price as the sodas which I know they offer, and cheaper than the lemonade which I also know they offer with the kid’s meal. He said that would be fine.

    We waited and waited. Our salads arrived. Mine had dressing on it. It was drowning in the stuff. We told the waiter that I had ordered it with the dressing on the side. He stood there looking at me blankly. I repeated myself and he looked at the salad. I explained that I don’t like very much dressing, so I get it on the side so that I can control the amount. He kept staring at me. We had to detail out that I wanted a new salad, with the dressing on the side. He agreed and wandered off.

    Thirty seconds later our dinners arrived. By our, I mean not the kid’s, because surely we wouldn’t all want to be served at the same time. Also, we of course don’t want our salads to arrive early enough to actually consume them prior to our meal arriving.

    I sat and waited for my salad. It arrived, with the dressing on the side. It was a much smaller wedge than before, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that it was missing the bleu cheese crumbles. I didn’t ask for no bleu cheese crumbles. Those help to make it taste good. I requested that they bring me the cheese. I tasted the dressing. It was some of the most disgusting dressing I have sampled in quite a while. I pushed it far aside so it couldn’t infect my salad through osmosis.

    The kid’s food finally arrived.

    The bleu cheese crumbles showed up and I ate my salad, and then my meal.

    When the bill came, they have charged us for her hot tea. I point out to the waiter that the drink was to be included with her meal. He looks at me blankly and then asks “Do you want a drink now?”

    “Umm, no, she had the tea with her meal, but you charged for it.”

    “Oh, the tea.”

    “Yes, she asked if she could get that with her kids meal…”

    “Do you want me to take it off the bill?”

    “That would be great. Thank you very much.”

    Cheerfully, “You’re welcome!”

    I smiled.

  • How Many Fits of Cursing Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb?

    I am tired. I have grease smudges on my face. My hands hurt and two nails are broken. Not in that “eek I broke my nails” way, that isn’t really my style, but in that ripped down “fuck THAT hurts” way. However there are now two working headlights on the car. Unfortunately I didn’t finish the work early enough this morning, so my car is gone for the day again. Not a huge deal, but it is in need of an oil change so I’d rather it not make the longer commute. My commute down the hallway in my jammies is much easier on the car.

    The manual said to remove six clips, which I did. This allowed me to remove the “engine cover” some dumbass plastic piece of limited use. This I also did. The instructions up to that point were clear and things were okay. Next it points out that on the “right side” by which they mean the passenger side there are some extra steps. I was working on the driver’s side, so I skipped those steps. I removed the connector. Then came time to move the bulb cover, an annoying rubber thing. I tried and tried, but there was no way that I could. There was not enough room for my hand, and my hands are not huge.

    So I removed the fuse box cover, not a suggested step, but it gave me a little extra room to maneuver and messed with it and messed with it and messed with it until I got the outside ring of bulb cover. Yay? No. The cover refuses to come off. The rubber is still firmly attached to the bulb and it is putting pressure on the bulb and moving it instead of coming off.

    The manual just says to turn the cover counterclockwise and remove it and goes on to the next step. It makes it sound pie easy.

    I turn to the internet and discover other people complaining that the driver’s side is a real PITA. Okay, little manual writing monkeys. Here is an idea. Do not reserve your extra instructions for the side that is easier. While I found plenty of people complaining about it, they were complaining about the step before where they were trying to get the outside ring to detach. I resorted to posting on a forum requesting more details. Nobody responded. I could post a photo of a naked tit and get 100 comments in the first 5 minutes, but getting a useful response to a problem is a whole different story.

    Eventually I go back outside and channel my father and just decide I do not need to be careful about the fragile glass bulb and instead I should go ahead and force it. I force it, and it eventually gives. The rubber has threading on it to help it grip very tight. It is never going to come off breezily. I still have not won because there is a clip shown in the manual, except I cannot see the fucking thing, and it is difficult to feel and they just say to remove it and don’t give any more detail on how. I fiddle and fiddle and finally get it undone. It is at the clip stage that I rip the two nails.

    I replace the burnt out bulb with the new one. I reassemble the headlamp portion and test it out. It works.

    Next it is time to put the engine cover back on. This goes smoothly except for dropping one of the clips. Of course I cannot drop it in an area where it will fall easily through to the ground. I drop it where it is caught in something out of site and out of reach. The cover is now secured by five clips instead of six.

    I hope the neighbors enjoyed all the swearing.

    In other news, the move to the other computer has gone more poorly than I was even expecting and I am very slowed down on all my projects because of it. I am typing this as I try to get some other things copied that I did not expect to need to move in this particular fashion.

    Oh yeah, and the worst thing about doing car crap first thing in the morning, is that I have to put on pants.

  • Is it time for bed?

    Done

    • uploaded website
    • troubleshot wireless network, bought parts and repaired it
    • went to work on HE system, found problems, fixed things as best I could but they may need to get some warranty repair
    • bought a new bulb to replace the burnt out headlight, but cannot replace it in the dark
    • paid bills, many of them ones that made me angry
    • completed computer back up, on new computer, not settled on it yet
    • cleared a stuffed full small recycling bin worth of papers off my desk
    • fixed a problem on a website, even though somebody else made the error
    • drafted a “code of conduct” for a martial arts school
    • carved out some family time
    • carved out some couple time

    Failed

    • cleaning the kitchen
    • picking up fused glass project
    • installing headlamp
    • website design outline
    • getting the HE system done and off the plate
    • getting to bed at a reasonable time

    To Do Tuesday

    I don’t want to think about it right now.

  • Morning Assessment

    Kid – sick, refuses to get out of bed
    Husband – sick, refuses to stay home and rest
    Self – up and working, some sort of sinus unpleasantness which I will not describe in detail (but think gross)

    To Do Today
    Already forced to push several things to later in the week and cancel others completely due to illness annoyances.

    • upload website
    • do website design outline
    • go troubleshoot a wireless network for somebody (then likely go buy new bits and redo setup)
    • go tweak a home entertainment system setup for somebody
    • get new headlamp for car and replace it
    • clean kitchen
    • pay bills
    • complete computer backup and migration
    • try to pick up fused glass project

  • bored now

    Today I am migrating to my new computer. Overall this is a good thing. My current desktop is woefully underpowered for the workload I put on it.

    In the short term it means there will be a lot of swearing and fit throwing in my near to mid future as things on the new computer are “not right” yet and I won’t realize that something isn’t installed or that some default that I hate has been left in place until I am under deadline and completely behind.

    At the moment it means I have a lot of backing up to do. Which is what I am doing right now, and I am killing burn time by typing this. The computer I am leaving is a mirrored RAID setup, as is the one I am moving too. In theory I do not need to be burning these files to CD, nor backing them to an external drive. The plan is that these two drives will be yanked out of this machine and one will be stored away with all the data that is on it currently, and the other will be stuck in an external enclosure and connected to the new computer so that I can move my files onto it.

    However there is stuff on here that it would really really suck to lose, so I feel the need to play it safer and have quadruple copies of things. Unfortunately my computer is really not much better organized than my brain is, so it is a fair amount of effort to find all the important items that I want to make sure are saved.

    “69% Writing to disc” Nice display of the English language.

    Ooh, “100% Writing to disc” I believe that is my cue to do something. No, I was wrong. “9% Verifying the compilation”

    Xander is sitting next to the monitor taking turns between cleaning himself and knocking stuff off of my desk.

  • Who wants to go to the mall?

    Not me.

    Okay, I just sent off pdf number 20 of the day, so they can all be approved by the client. I am pretty sure they will be, actually the one I have been fighting with the longest, he already approved but I was unhappy with how something was working out, so I have been fighting with it for the past week as I continued to work on the other items. Next will be getting them to the printer and getting proofs.

    This should be a relief, but instead it means it is time to take my MIL to the mall. She wants to buy me an outfit, which is a very nice thing. It is just I am very bad at traditional clothes shopping. At this point I mainly order things online and just suck up the postage fees if it turns out I hate it or it doesn’t fit. The crowds, the noise, the cramped dressing rooms that are always way too warm for me, and all the muzak.

    Alright, enough stalling. Off to shop I go.

    First I have to move our outdoor bird into the garage because they are predicting record lows for the next two nights. Look at that, found another way to stall.

  • unfortunately


    unfortunately
    Originally uploaded by mstori.

    My first fortune cookie of 2007, and it is making fun of me.