Post #2667. Happy Thanksgiving to you too! Did you ever wonder if people who bitch basically all of the time ever get tired and just run out of it? Well, we do. At times like this, we take a deep breath and try to take in the flowers and little critters scampering about and stuff like that there. And then write about them.
Eleven minutes go by.
The truth is, something awful happened in Seattle, and while I can't get it out of my mind because it makes me so mad, I don't want to write about it either. Oh, I will eventually, you know that.
In the meantime, the sister-in-law has a little ... issue. She and her S.O. travel a great deal and stay with new friends. They never say, "Oh, no. Thanks anyway, but that would be too much of an imposition." No, they would typically go with, "Which room is ours?" This weekend it has roosted, and a couple of their former new friends are in town. Seattle is lovely in November, so the new friends are comfortably set up in the sister-in-law and brother-in-other's spare bedroom. Is it truly evil to be enjoying a wee bit of secret pleasure while tsk-tsking and oh-mying over the phone at the complaints? Probably.
The guys who come to your house to fix and install things are all exactly alike. Is this part of some curriculum? We just finished day three of a one-day project, and Guy #4 has driven off in his truck. He had the least amount of personality of the group if you can envision gradations of zero emotion. I can't imagine what it would be like to go through a career, say, standing next to a blazing inferno of some sort and never having any interest in it at all. I asked Guy #4 as he was leaving what was next for him today. Blank stare. I pressed, "I mean, what job are you going to next?" I don't know," he says, "Wherever they send me." Anyway, I hope the danged thing works this time, because the little lady on the phone, the one who sends The Men to their various appointments and who was born and raised on this planet, left on vacation today.
BREAKING NEWS. The television is flashing red urgently with some report of an incident at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Frankly, the winds today are northerly, so I don't care. The spokeswoman is on the phone. She doesn't have that information, unfortunately. That's why she is the spokeswoman. Can you even imagine how many Guy #4 zombies there are in a place like that?
Something uplifting for a Monday, huh? Let's see ... Back when I used to work, for pay, that is, my Mondays were worst than most. Working Sundays will do that to you. Mondays are when all the fattened-up sunburned perkies stroll back in, oblivious to the chaos of the previous two days of drunks, fights, fire alarms, hookers and other assorted weirdoes. And ours was a nice hotel. I wonder who decided that weirdo is pluralized that way.
Hotels have "front of the house" and "back of the house" people, and the former have utter contempt for the latter. The latter think the former are generally psychological misfits. With that in place, Mondays begin. Paper is very important to the Backs, and they are impatient with coffee spills, rabid dog marks and mistakes. As for the Fronts, all they want is to get the hell out.
Fronts don't clockwatch. Time is irrelevant in their universe (except for 08:00:00.) They know work is over when the door opens and a chattery bundle of fur (winter version) bowls in, carrying bags of who-knows-what and starts emptying ashtrays with a disapproving air. The Backs never arrive on time, a calculated technique to send off the unwholesome Fronts with just a pinch of anger to get them through what is left of the day.
Fronts aren't blameless. Yes, we're messy. Yes, we're vindictive. That ten minutes of lateness from last Monday is remembered and rewarded with a subtle pickup error on an impossibly long tape.
Yes, I was a Front, a Warrior in a field of fat grazing bovines. And years later when I became a Back and then later an Up, may the Good Lord forgive me for giving in to the filthy lucre, I did remember. (Us pensioners try to throw in an occasional Good Lord, just in case, y'know.) True, I never was a very good Back or Up, just an old trooper in the home, a bit wistful for the grit and gusto.
So, take a look around you, Mondayites. Every first day will be exactly like this one until the end of time. Rebel! Join us in our senseless mayhem. You'll feel better, really.
Do you think you have a bad memory or two from high school? Consider this. State football championship game. Your team is leading. You're the punter on 4th down. All you have to do is retain possession for a few more seconds to win. So, the play is for you to run about 55 yards backwards after the snap and take a safety. So, you do just that, and when you get to the end zone, you drop the ball, pop up the We're Number One finger and begin jumping for joy. Hold on. Did you say, "Drop the ball?" Yes, indeed, whereupon an alert opposing player leaps on it. Touchdown. Poor kid, he is only 17, with at least sixty more years to live with it. Unless he can move to Pluto.
There was a bank robbery today in the suburbs. They caught the guy. Well, they caught him after they shot him. Afterward, a television crew came and interviewed the usual observers. This always interests me, since I try and imagine the goings-on in the newsroom which result in some things getting to air and others not. Obviously, since it was in the later afternoon, the news director said something like, "How many people did you get? Three? OK, go with it." Without checking. The first one was the hip chick who observed it was pretty stupid to hold up a bank in a strip mall which also has a Police Substation in it. Good point. The old man was the de rigueur, "This kind of thing doesn't happen around here". Then, there was the last one. Her funny hat and those eyes gave her away to me at once but evidently not to the news crew. She started going on about how brave one must be to be a bank robber and how it was too bad this particular bank had to get robbed because she always thought it was such a pretty bank what with the flowers out front and the colors and the nice people and how they always ...... [fadeout] Oh, God love 'em all.
A mention about the Post Office. They are running this ad (one might ask why the post office advertises in the first place, but that's one for Andy Rooney) where grandma packs up her huge annual gift shipment and mails it off to the grandkids. Full of those white peanut abominations. Then, on the receiving end, they show the kids throwing the things in the air and playing like snowflakes, just having a ball. All with this sweet seasonal music. I've been trying to re-gift those blasted things for years and still can't get rid of them. I think Aint J sends the same ones back. I just wanted to get that one off my chest since there is nothing any of us can do about it.
Men from the "other side" of our family have this habit of naming their firstborn sons in honor of their oldest brother. Furthermore, they are all Jim's and Bob's. The girls are named something with a "K," Kristan, Kathleen, etc. Maybe they can keep it straight, but I sure as hell can't. So, one of the wives calls, Bob died, she tells me. Oh, I'm so sorry. Did he linger? I sympathize, wondering who she is and who she is talking about. I'll have to wait until it hits their paper and go online to read the obit to see which generation he was. Then send a card or something.
I wrote an e-mail to my little nephew about the birth which, according to the sister-in-law's 93rd phone call today, is going on right now. Now, see if you can follow this. My brother has had three wives and children with two of them (the exception was the frequently aforementioned sister-in-law.) My little nephew's mother was #2 for my brother, but she had had children with a previous husband and has subsequently had more with two more, total of 4 husbands and I don't know how many children. Incidentally, my little nephew isn't all that little really. He's 6'4" and skinny and looks almost exactly like I did at age twenty-nine. My brother is uncomfortable with this. With me so far?
The sister-in-law has had three husbands, and the little lady giving birth tonight is from the one after my brother. Here's the question: was I correct in telling my little nephew that he is about to have a new nephew of his own?
Finally, regarding
Punishment by ladies in raincoats. Dear searching friend: I believe you may be the only person on earth who has this particular fetish (nothing wrong with that, of course.) You are not going to find anyone through
Yahoo,
Google or
In the Day. My advice would be for you to start your own blog and put all those dodads on so it gets found. Then, type whatever you want, free as a bird. There's a good chance you'll hook up with a lady who is into raincoats and punishment, not together, yet, and the two of you can take it from there. Caution: some nasty boys will leave unkind and misspelled comments. Delete them and never reply. Good luck!!
You seem to know about this. Wouldn't happen to have a perv blog somewhere else, would you? Of course not. All of me is here at In the Day. Just about.
Rick Macherat Rick M. In the day. RMacherat
posted by Rick at 11:09 PM
