Diary of an Asshole

Well this was a surprize!

2010-03-29T13:53:00.002-05:00

A few days ago, I made the decision to stop ignoring my inbox (which I'd been doing for just over a year) and get stuff cleaned out and such. A sort of "Getting my electronic life in order" sort of thing.
During the course of the ensuing slash-and-burn operation, I had opened a new tab in Internet Explored and accidental clicking on the blogger link there. I decided, since I was already here, I would go ahead and login. I cannot begin to relate the terror I felt when I completed the login and found a blog entries from 4 years ago relatively intact.
So.
Here I am.
Again.
This post is really just a tester. I'll explain where I've been hiding at a later date.

Shutdown

2006-06-19T17:56:00.000-05:00

Ok, folks... this is the "official" shutdown notice for The Diary of an Asshole. I will still be maintaining a blog... just not here. Since I, along with 99.99% of the world is on myspace, I will being keeping my blog exclusively there from here on out. The address is http://blog.myspace.com/mace_nephilim...

See you around, fuckers.

2006-04-12T03:47:00.000-05:00

Long overdue update...

2006-03-10T00:36:00.000-06:00

Whoa... Busy month. I won't bore you with all the details, just gonna hit the highlights.

I spent most of my medical furlough generally having as good a time as I could. I had drinks with a few people. Drank more coffee than a small third-world country. During the course of this time, I also fell deeply, madly in love with The Dancer, and we have been spending the vast majority of our free time together. I wish all the people I know who read this regularly could meet her. You'd see why I fell in love. She is absolutely awesome. Drop dead gorgeous. Wonderful sense of humor. One of the smartest women I've ever met. She really is the whole package. What she sees in me I have no idea, but there it is.

But I digress.

All of this brings me to the Tuesday, March 7, 2006.

Dancer came by here at about 10:30am or so to spend some time with me before I had to turn myself in and spend the next 3 months behind bars. (Though I never saw a single bar in jail... Lots of metal. No bars) After spending some seriously emotional quality time together, it was time to go. Dancer dropped me off and we said our goodbyes. I watched her drive away. I lit up my last cigarette, smoked it, and went in to get booked and processed.

Or so I thought.

Upon my entrance into the jail, the cock-biting fucktard that runs the show there met me at the door. Upon finding out that my foot wasn't completely healed yet, he decided that they were going to give me another month to get all healed up before they made me do the rest of my time. Needless to say, I was pretty excited about this prospect. As soon as they got my paperwork ready, I borrowed a phone, called The Imp, and had her run me out to Dancer's place so I could surprise her. Scared the hell out of her, actually. Pretty funny stuff.

Anyway, that was 2 days ago or so. In the intervening time, righteous indignation has begun to settle in. I talked to my lawyer today and he gave me the go-ahead to start looking for work with the plan of getting me on a work-release program when I go back.

Good.

Thank God!

I am so fucking sick of being out of work and broke as a joke that I could fucking scream!!!! Don't get me wrong. I'm not a greedy man by nature. I'm really not. In fact, as far as personal possessions go, I'm a bit of a minimalist. But, my God, I feel lower than whale-shit not being able to pay my own way. Not being able to buy my daughter the things she wants. Not being able to even so much as take The Dancer and her boys out to dinner, much less offer to help her out financially. I fucking hate it. So. That's gonna change.

Now.

In addition to finding a job, any job, my old pal Ford and I are now brainstorming to find a way to make TerriblyWrongOnline.com pay a bit. So far, we've come up with the idea of putting some banner ads up and we are expanding our merchandise line. This means the return of the "Mace Thong", among other things. Yes, ladies. Now you too can sit on my face. *Big stupid grin* Seriously though... We did have these things before. Oddly enough, that thong was the only item that we ever sold more than one of at our online store.

Now, I know what you are thinking. "Mace is finally selling out." Well guess what. You're damn right I am. I'm ever bit the idealist I was in my youth... But I have had to grow up. My material needs are minor. But if I can't take care of the people I love, I am nothing. Period.

And as the Stiff Little Fingers said in their song "Straw Dogs"...

Fight for Freedom
But not for free!

The break-neck pace of freedom

2006-02-06T02:05:00.000-06:00

Hard to believe I've only been out for 5 days. Between spending Friday at the DMV and Social Security, and the weekend I am just now wrapping up, it seems like a lot longer.

Saturday was just plain awesome! Most fun I've had with my cloths on in ages. The day itself was pretty boring, and more than a little depressing considering I had just found out that Nikkita will be unable to come up here to see me on her vacation. I was sitting around doing basically nothing and suddenly I had plans! A friend of mine from Myspace.com, who, for the purposes of this blog, I will refer to henceforth as The Dancer, got ahold of me and we went to this little bar down in St. Charles called "The Corner Bar" to see her friend's band play. This band had the most brilliant name I've ever heard. Honky Tonk G-Spot. They were a country/blues/rockabilly band. The crowd at the bar way the crowd you would expect for a band of this type.

I wore my kilt.

Needless to say, it was an interesting night. I drank. I danced. I got groped by a couple of random women, which was cool... first time in months I've had a hand on my ass that wasn't mine. The Dancer is an absolute hoot to hang out with, as are her friends. We went out for food after the show, though I didn't actually eat.

I rolled into the house at about 3:30am or so. Talked to Ford for a bit and went to sleep.

At about 1:45pm, I was woken from a DEEP sleep by a phone call. After saying hello to my hangover, I talked to Nikkita for a little while, which is always a good thing.
After that, I spent some time online chatting with various folks, Including The Dancer, Bible-girl and the Earth-mother. Then, of course, I watched to Superbowl with my mom and Dad. Sharky stopped by to bring my dad some "Half-time snacks", consisting of Bean dip and some of the smallest steamed shrimp I've ever seen. Damn land-locked state.

After the game, I talked to Nikkita for a bit online, then went to Denny's for coffee with Sugar and Bible-girl. We had a pretty good time, but it ended up being much more interesting than I expected...

The Imp was our waitress.

The bad news on this is it dredged up a lot of bad feelings and such. The good news is that the coffee ended up being free and the service was good... though she ended up sitting down and talking to us for quite a while.

Geez that was uncomfortable.

Exercises in the Unexpected

2006-02-02T11:58:00.000-06:00

Ok. Check this out. Near the end of January, I was getting pretty dispondant. I'd recieved very little mail from friends and family. The food in jail was driving me nuts, and no matter how much I was reading, it never seemed to sufficiantly take my mind off of my situation.

On January 30th, at about 1:00pm or so, I was listening to Shortshit, a career criminal who's been in lock-up in various states on and off for 12 years, give a little lecture to the Scarecrow, 187, and The Living Ham about the differences between jail and prison. He was going on and on about how prison is so much better than jail. We were all humoring him right up until he said the most assinine thing I could think of for him to say...

"Warren County, of all the places I've been, is the hardest time I've ever done."

At that point I stood up, told him he was full of shit and stalked off. I spent the rest of the afternoon finishing up reading State of Fear by Micheal Crichton and starting on Life Expectancy by Dean Kotntz. (Two VERY good bbooks, by the way). At 5:00pm, dinner was served and was actually not TOO bad, for jail food. It came and went without incident. At 6:00pm, mail-call happened...

And my name was called.

Foreskin, a C.O. with a shaved head and a taste for turtle-neck shirts, was holding aloft a very large envelope. I took it... and saw it was from Nikkita.

I ran over two drug dealers and a murderer in the process of running back to my cell to read it. They we a bit cranky about that when it happened.

Anyway, I plop down on my bunk and emptied the envelope. Fifteen type-written pages, plus a bunch of photographs... I was absolutely ecstatic! Almost an hour later, I immerged from my cell with a big, stupiud grin on my face, and showed off the pictures to 187 and a couple of other guys. They all agreed with me that Nikkita was really hot and several of them commented on my improved mood. Quirk (my celly) said that this was much bebtter than having the biggest guy in the C-pod stalking around looking like he was gonna eat somebody. After that, I went back to my cell and immediately started writing my responce...

Which took the better part of the night.

The next day was uneventful appart from me kicking the crap out of Bitch-tits and Pops (an 82 year old inmate) at Scrabble, and another visit from the doctor about my foot.

This brings me to Febuary 1.

The day started normally. I got up, ate my and Quirk's breakfast (Quirk can't stand the stuff... gotta love that in a celly), watched Charmed on TNT with Digger and Otis, read the rest of 1 Corinthians, and got my commisary order in. After that, I was laying in my bunk writing a letter to Nikkita when I heard a call for Bunk-and-junk (Which means that you are getting released) in the common room. I didn't catch the name, but figured that they were letting Pops go, finally.

That was when Spider, Quirk, 187 and the Living Ham suddenly appeard in my cell.

"Hey, Holyman! They called for you to bunk-n-junk!"

Needless to say, I didn't believe them. So I hopped on the intercom and asked the Co.O if they had called for me. Nicole (the C.O. who was in the bubble at the time), said, "Yeah. Gabel. Bunk-and-junk."

"Riiiiiiiight!!!!" I said, rather loudly, figuring that they were fucking with me. I laid back down on my bunk and continued writing. My first out-date wasn't until March 10, 2006.

A few miunutes later, Nicole called for me again. At that point, I was more than a bit confused, but packed up my shit anyway and headed for the door. I got as far as booking and asked what the fuck was going on. It turns out that when the doctor saw me on January 31st, he was so pissed about the poor medical care I was getting there, he wrote a recommendation to the judge that I be given a 5 week medical furlough.

The judge signed it.

And I was rather unceremoniously, and without warned, kicked out of jail.

So. There I am. Standing on the street with all of my earthly possession in a clear plastic bag and no idea how I'm getting home. I stopped in at Phillygirl's office (Who was abbsolutely stunned to see me) and made a few calls bbut had no luck finding a ride. After visiting for a bit, I began the 5 mile walk home...

About half way there, a converstion van stopped and the drive leaned out the window and said "You just get out?" (The bag is a BIG clue to a fellow ex-con). I said yeah and he asked were I was going. I told him I lived out on Highway W, and he told me to hop in and gave me a lift home.

I walked thru the door to my parents house, gave mom the details on what was going on, and immediately called Nikkita, who was almost as happy to hear my voice as I was to hear her's.

The afternoon was spent calling friends and messaging people to let them know I was out. When my little girl got off school, she was so excited to see me that she squealed and tried to climb into the van thru the window. As soon as she hugged me I burst into tears and had to hang on to her for a minute until I had collected myself.

Last night I talked to Meesh on the phone.... his monitor blew up, but he's hoping to be back online tonight. I also commended Ford on the job he did on the site while I was gone and talked to Nikkita for a long time...

And slept in a comfortable bed.

So.

Yeah.

I'm back.

Miss me?

A Study In Tedium

2006-02-01T18:39:00.000-06:00

Day 16

Jail really isn’t that bad, except for the being almost completely incommunicado is driving me fucking bananas. It kills me that snail-mail is really the only way I have to communicate with my friends and loved ones. So far, I’ve received exactly two pieces of mail… One from Phillygirl, which I believe may have been put in the mail within hours of my arrival here, and one from my Mom, which I requested (pictures of my daughter).

As far as my activities here go… well, there is seriously not much to tell other than that I finished reading the Old Testament of the Bible in two weeks. I decided when I did that, that I was going to take my time with the New Testament and only read one book of it per day.

Oh, I did have something interesting happen last week. Some of you (a few anyway) may remember Foxglove from the old site. Well, I was sitting in C-Pod’s common area last week and I saw her daughter walk by our window in an orange jumpsuit (sigh). Oh well, She was only here for a three day shock, but that’s really not the fucking point. It still bothered the piss out of me.

Aside from that, little man, and two visits from my Mom, I haven’t had any contact from anybody I knew out in the world.

I miss Nikita something awful.

As a point of interest, I made a friend and did a good deed yesterday. Just after dinner, The Cuban walked up to me and asked if I could help him with something. When I asked what it was he explained to me that while he spoke reasonably good english, he could not read or write it. He then asked me if I could help him write a letter to his wife, so I did. He’s a federal and will not be here a whole lot longer, but still… good to have friends.

Besides, it’s little shit like that that’s gonna keep me from completely losing my mind when I feel like I’ve just been forgotten.

Today was commissary day, which meant that all the crap we ordered this week has come in. Commissary day is always pretty entertaining, watching the inmates settle up their debts with one another. Warren Co. Jail is a non-smoking facility. This means that there are no cigarettes to use as currency like you see in the movies. The currency of choice in this place?

Ramen noodles.

Yes, fucking Ramen noodles.

Watching all this shit getting traded back & forth once a week is filppin’ hilarious.

My only real beef with the commissary is the expense… And they call us criminals! Imagine, if you will, having to do 100% of your grocery shopping at 7-11. Yes, it’s that expensive. Oh well. At least I’ve got my envelopes, Ramen noodles, and coffee.

John Gabel
Warren County Detention Facility
104 West Main St. Suite A
Warrenton, MO 63383

Life In An Orange Jumpsuit

2006-01-23T16:35:00.000-06:00

At the time that I write this, I have been in jail for twelve days. To state the obvious, jail SUCKS.

My first night, the cell I was assigned to had two other people in it already. I would like to mention here the cells are only designed to hold two people. Needless to say, things were a bit cramped. Also, as it turned out, one of my cellmates is the father of a little girl whose mother I spent a month banging a few years ago. They have since gotten back together, and since I am the only other man she has ever been with, it has become kind of a running joke between us.

I had arrived late enough on my first day to have missed breakfast, which was a good thing. Lunch consisted of a bologna & cheese sandwich (and has every day since), and dinner was mystery meat. The food here is enough to turn a rodent sick, but I am slowly getting used to it. By the time I get out of here, Waffle House will be looking pretty good.

The worst thing about jail, other than the food, and missing your loved ones, is boredom. My God, I have been bored! But really other than that it’s not been too bad. I’ve been passing the time by reading the Bible (which I’ve read about 2/3 of in the last 12 days) and playing Scrabble with a couple of druggies, an accused murderer, and a guy who had a shoot-out with the cops.

The people in jail seem to fall into four classifications. There’s the guys awaiting trial (my scrabble buddies), they are, for the most part, nice fellows, but really stressed. There’s the federals… guys awaiting transport to other facilities. They can get a bit loud at times, but who can blame ‘em? There’s the misdemeanors… guys who, for the most part, wouldn’t be here if they had lawyers. And there’s shock-time… people like me who are in for short sentences, but have much longer ones hanging over their heads.

People make jail out to be horrifying, but it serriously ain’t THAT bad. My biggest complaint about this particular jail is the same complaint everybody else in this place has. They haven’t passed out razors in fourteen days. Everybody is furry, itchy, and cranky. Shit, I’ve got a full beard for the first time since I went bald, and I’m rapidly developing a Captain Picard rim.

Anybody who wants to drop me a line in here, please do so…

John Gabel
Warren County Detention Facility
104 West Main St. Suite A
Warrenton, MO 63383

The 25th Hour

2006-01-05T19:55:00.000-06:00

It is almost time to embrace the horror!!! This will in all probability be the last blog entry that I do personally for a long time. The next few will be done by me, via snail-mail via Ford Maverick.

Anyway, I went to court yesterday morning, fully expecting to go to jail right then and there. But before I get to that, Let's start from the night before.

I decided the night before my court date that there was no way I was going to court without at least a hang-over, if not still drunk. Enter the Dragonlady. She was kind enough to run me up to Wal-mart (Fuckyousamwaltonyouantichristpieceofshit!!!) to get a bottle of tequila. I also decided that there was no way I was going to sleep thru what would probably be my last night of freedom. So. I spent ALL night chasing tequila with cold coffee.

I am the human ulcer.

Cookie (Short for "Fortune Cookie, aka Nikkita) stayed up online almost all night with me... Would have BEEN all night, but I sent her to bed around 6:00am EST. This woman is amazing.

Anyway, I left for court early, stopped by Phillygirl's office to say goodbye, and went into "The Warren County Justice Center" (my ass). Upon arriving on the second floor, I was surprised and disturbed to discover that I was on BOTH dockets, Divisions 1 and 2, for the exact same time. After talking to Bigman (my attorney, we went into Division 1... Where I ran into a few old friends. After waiting for about an hour, I was sentenced to:

7 Years in a State Correctional Facility. (Suspended)
5 Years probation.
120 days "Shock Time" in County lock-up.
1 set of anger management classes.
And a partridge in a pear tree.
All to go into effect on Monday, the 9th.

Anyway, after this, I hustle my ass over to Division 2 where I am going to deal with my driving while suspend thingamabob. The PA knocked the charge down to a fine and 2 points on my record, as long an my license was re-instated.

It wasn't.

I told the judge that I would take care of that today, and they continued my case out until the 18th and took my money and I was free to go. For the next 5 days, anyway.

Spent the rest of the day calling people, saying my goodbyes, napping, and talking to Cookie. Did I mention she's amazing? Yes? Ok.

Anyway, this brings me to this morning. Today. Sucked.

I started my day by going back to The Pit in an attempt to find my wallet (and other items). I was joined by Littleman about 5 minutes into my search and we were BOTH unsuccessful. This means no Social Security Card to show to the DMV. Mom comes up with the idea that I could show them the stub. Good enough. Let's try it.

So, I get to the DMV and the woman I talk to there seems really nice and helpful, right up until I tell her that I need to take the driving test again because I've been without a license for more than 6 months (6 years, actually).

"Oh, we don't do that here. You have to go to City Hall."

*sighs* I head to City Hall.

Upon arriving at City Hall, this She-male of a State Trooper asks if it can help me. I very calmly tell her that I need to take the exam, and she says that fine, but she needs an ID. I tell her I don't have one, but I have the stub from my SSC and my birth certificate. I hand both to her and she says "This isn't a Birth Certificate. It's a Birth Registration. We can't take this." I look at the document in question, and sure enough, it says State Of Maryland Birth Registration right on the top... I've been using this for everything since I was a kid.

"What do I do?" I ask

She looks me straight in the eye and asks, "What state were you born in?"

I looked at her.

And looked at the top of the document she was holding where it said State Of Maryland Birth Registration.

And looked at her.

And looked at the document.

And looked at her and said, "Infancy, sweetheart."

Her eyes kind of glazed over at this point, and I pointed to where it said "State of Maryland". She told me that I would just have to send away for a birth certificate. I explained to her, as calmly as I could, that I was going to jail on Monday and had to have this taken care of before then. She said "I'm sorry, I can't help you."

Crap.

I go back out to the van and tell my mom what's going on, and she suggests that we go to the DMV in St. Charles, because they took the Birth Registration 12 years ago when I moved her, and we could also hit the Social Security office while we were in town. This seemed like a reasonably good idea at the time.

Upon arriving at the DMV in St. Charles... well, I dealt with almost exactly the same exchange as I had at City Hall, just not quite as gracefully. I return to the van again, tell mom what happened, and we head for Social Security.

It was there that I lost my temper.

Now. Before I tell you exactly what happened, let me explain something. On the stub I had from my SSC, it says, right on the stub, that if you loose your card, you can give the SS people the stub and they will give you a new card.

Ok. So I get into this massively overcrowded office, take a number, and have a seat for another hour. After my ass finally went numb, my number get's called. I walk up to the woman who called my number, sit down in front of her, and had her my stub.

"What is this?" She asks.

"My stub. I need a new card." I said.

She picks up an application and points to the list of IDs they will accept. Drivers License, passport, immigration card, Military ID, Dead relative, etc.

So I lied to her... "My wallet got stolen."

"Then I need a birth certificate." She says.

I stand up, getting aggitated.

"Since when?" I asked in a loud voice.

Since 9/11." She says with a smug smile on her face.

"Do I look like a fuckin' sand-nigger to you, Lady?!?!" I screamed and stormed out of the office.

(First of all, I'd like to apologize. I'm only repeating what I said in the heat of the moment. What can I say? I was pissed. But then, it isn't like I've never been called a Cracker before.)

I storm out of the building, get in the van and tell my mother that I'm thinking about not turning myself in on Monday since apparently, the state thinks I don't exist. We head back to Warrenton, discussing the problem and decide to call Bigman in the morning and see what he suggests.

We arrive in Warrenton, pick up my daughter, and head to McDeath's to get some "food". While we are in the drive thru line, the window-lady tells us that we have a flat tire.

Perfect.

We call Sharky, since it's her van, and let her know, and I ask her if the van has a spare. She tells me yes, but there is no way that I'll be able to get to it, so she sends Dennis the Builder out to help us. He comes, fixes us up and we head for home, where I immediately called Cookie at work to let her know what the hell was going on and comiserate a bit.

And now, the severe beating of my self-esteem.

2006-01-01T03:55:00.000-06:00

I was informed by Nikkita tonight that I hadn't updated my blog in a long time... I knew this already, but her prompting is what got this done. Thanks, meine leibe.

Anyway, It's been both busy and boring here since Christmas. Sharky and Dennis the Builder had their baby on December 27th. The boy-child was 6 pounds, 15 ounces at birth and was 19 and 1/2 inches long. The following day, he was given a weird name and sent home with his mother. I saw the little guy a couple of nights ago. He's cute. Looks much less like Winston Churchill than I was expecting.

January 4th is getting closer by the second and the time is moving swiftly. I've been doing everything in my power to prepare Ford for taking the reigns of Terribly Wrong Online... I can only pray that it's enough. A big part of the problem is that I wrote the code in such a way that I could understand it. I never dreamed that someone else would have to do this job.

How's my dating/social life going? Well, it seems like the list of people who I'd like to see dragged out into the street and shot gets a little longer every day. Been having a good time going out for coffee with Dragonlady. Went out for coffee once with a 21 year old woman who, for the purposes of this blog, we will call Pinnacle. Had a very good time there too... though it was a pretty easy call that I was out of my depth. Other than that, getting cancelled on quite a bit, and having a few near misses with a woman we will call The Ghost, there's not a whole hell of a lot going on in my life in Warrenton... Well, other than the fact that I'm about ready to shoot The Imp myself. Man, I couldn't have chosen a better name for her if I'd planned it like this.

One piece of good news before I get to the really juicy bit of this post... It turns out, I've been ellegable to get my driver's license back for quite some time. The snag has been that St. Charles County never bothered to send me my letter of compliance. I went and picked that up on Friday and will be, hopefully, getting legal again on Monday. Hooray for the good guys.

Now, for the juicy bit. Well, sappy really. Throughout my exile to the woodlands outside of Warrenton, I have had two constant companions, both of them online. One is Nikkita, who I will get to in a moment. The other is Ford.

To Ford, I would like to say the following: Brother, you have kept me reasonably close to sane through a lot of really bizarre shit, and I just want to thank you for that... even if you do strongly suspect that I am the devil himself. I thank you for your support in trying times and for taking over the site in my absence. I'm sure you will make me proud... or at the very least, get me sued by somebody.

Now, I'd like to talk to you all a little bit about Nikkita... but I don't know where to begin. I guess I'll start from the beginning. I first encountered her online over the summer. She found me online, I believe thru TerriblyWrong.com, and we started chatting on Yahoo. In the time since then, Nikki has talked me thru so much bizarre bullshit, she probably aught to be sainted for listening to it all. She is truly the sweetest human being I've ever encountered, and she's cute as a damn button to boot. During my exile here, I have grown closer and closer to her and I told her just recently that, despite the fact that we've never actually met, I love her very much. I'm currently way too far away from her to do anything about these feelings, and I'm about to be locked away in a dark place, but there it is. What amazed me was that when I told her, it didn't frighten her off. if anything it made us even closer.

Anyway, to Nikkita, meine leibe, I would just like to say this. I love you dearly. I wish you all the happiness in the world. You deserve it. Jail is going to seem like that much colder of a place not being able to talk to you nightly as I have been.

Christmas is over at last!!!

2005-12-25T18:36:00.000-06:00

And that really is the best thing I can say about Christmas this year.

Christmas Eve saw me doing prep-work for Mom for her annual Christmas Breakfast (trash detail, mostly) and plugged into this infernal machine. How cool is that. A time for togetherness and brotherly love and I'm plugged into the damn computer until 4:00am. Anyway, at 4:00, I finally unplugged, showered, changed and dozed off watching Ben-Hur on HBO.

I aoke at about 9:30am or so... Mom was up cooking and Dad was on the computer. I was a bit surprised that I wasn't woken by my nephews. I asked Mom about it and she said that Sharky thought she was in labor.

Around 11:00am, the Imp showed up. Foloowed shortly by Sharky and her brood, who were followed shortly by Switch, the kids, and Littleman (a guy Switch has been seeing). The kids all loved their gifts. Breakfast went ok. Sharky gave me a copy of Bill Cosby's "Revenge" on CD, which I haven't heard since I was a kid. Around 1:00pm, as suddenly at it has begun, it was over and I was able to go back to sleep.

Bah Humbug.

A 50 foot drop straight back to ugliness.

2005-12-21T19:09:00.000-06:00

Hmmm... been a few days. Where to begin.

Ok. Let's start with this. My weekend was uber-boring. Nothing going on execpt for running a 102.7 fever on Saturday and waking up with a severe pain in my left leg on Sunday. I ended up going out for Coffee with the Dragonlady that night, which was fun, but nothing to write about, really. (Though I did finally get a good look at her figure... and WOW!!!)

Monday was one of the ugliest days I've had in a while.

I woke up to discover that my left leg was swollen from the knee down and I had a rather angry-looking purple/red area on my shin about the size of my hand. That was before I even got out of bed. Upon getting out of bed, I discovered I couldn't put much weight on said leg initially.

Crap.

Anyway, I managed to limp thru my morning routine and got as far as the computer when my mother walked up and informed me that she needed to go to the doctor. When I asked her why, she smiled... with one half of her face. The other didn't so much as twitch. "Well, that's not good." I said. She had woken up with half of her face paralized. Anyway, she informed me that Switch would be picking my daughter up after school and bringing her here. Not the greatest news in the world, but not bad.

After an hour or so of sitting at the computer, doing my various little jobs, I checked my Myspace account and found a note in my inbox from the Littlegothgirl I was supposed to go out with that night...

Hey,
I won't be able to go to the movies tonight. Saturday after I left the party I ended up at my ex's house and we are trying to make things work. Love can be a terrible thing. I'm at his house now but he is in the shower. I'm sorry, it was nice to meet you and we can still chat on yahoo but I don't think he would appreciate me going to the movies with another guy right now. (he's a jealous person) Talk to you later

Well, crap. So much for that idea.

I called the Imp a little while after recieving that note, and she informed me that Switch had been in a car accident in St. Peters while leaving work, and she was going to be bringing my daughter to me. Both Switch and the Car were ok, but she was a little shaken up. This I'm not looking foreward to because seeing the Imp is always a little on the painful side.

And it was. She decided upon getting here that she wanted to hang out and talk. During the course of conversation, she noticed I was limping and wanted to look at my leg. Upon seeing it, she started bitching that I needed to go to the hospital. I told her that I had no way to get there and she said that she would come back later to take me...

Great.

She left shortly thereafter, and I talked to Sharky online about my symptoms. She was a bit concerned, but assured me that it wasn't life threatening.

An hour after that, Imp called me back to say that she couldn't take me to the hospital that night. I must admit, I was somewhat releived.

The rest of the evening was pretty slow until about midnight when the Littlegothgirl logged onto Yahoo. We talked for quite a while and she apologized repeatedly for the e-mail and breaking our "date" and whatnot. By way of "making it up to me" she said she was going to take me out for drinks Tuesaday night. That sounded like an extremely good idea at the time...

Tuesday morning.

My leg was absolutely screaming at me. The swelling and redness were both worse. I called the Imp and told her that I needed to go to the hospital as soon as possible. She said that she would be here at 1:00pm, and was true to her word. By 3:30pm, I was diagnosed, released, and limping back thru my door. The answering machine was going off, which was odd. Upon playing the messages, I found one from my lawyer telling me that I had missed a court-date and there was a warrant for my arrest.

Fuck!

I called him back, but he wasn't available. I left a message with his sercetary, but he never called me back. Needless to say, I was freaking the fuck out! After I finally calmed down, I called the Littlegothgirl to find out what time she was going to pick me up. She said between 9:30pm and 10:00pm. Cool.

My lawyer didn't call me back before the office closed. I spent the evening sweating bullets. At about 7:00pm, Switch showed up to bring my daughter home, and I talked to her new beau, who's a state trooper. He told me that I should definately NOT turn myself in before talking with my attorney.

Good legal advice from a cop. Go figure.

Anyway, 10:00pm comes and goes. I call the Littlegothgirl. No Answer. I hop online and discover THIS in my myspace inbox...

Yet again something came up. Some friends from college are here from out of state and I just found out that they are all getting to gether tonight in St. Louis. So, I'll be in St. Louis for a few days. By the way my little neice had my phone and she dropped it in the dogs water and now I'm phoneless for a while, untherwise I would have called. Lost all my numbers! So I'm not promising anything to anyone again because it feels like I can't keep my promises anymore. I'm a jerk!

This being apparently my last night of freedom, I'm inclined to agree with her.

So I spent the night in pain, lonely, and angry.

This morning, the very first thing I did was try to get ahold of my lawyer. He was in court. I left a message with his secretary AND his wife for him to call me as soon as he gets in. At this point, I also realize that I'm out of smokes and have no way to get into town as my mom is at my sister's place. I called the Imp. She was in town at a gas station waiting on a job interview, so she sent a buddy of her's, Bigman, to come get me and take me to get smokes, which was kinda weird. I don't know this guy real well, but damned if he didn't bare his soul while he had me stuck in the car with him. Turns out everybody's got problems this week. Go figure.

Anyway, shortly after getting back, My lawyer calls and asks why I wasn't in court. I told him that he had told me that I didn't have to be there. Upon realizing that this was indeed his fuck-up and not mine, he got things straighten out with the judge and the warrants were recalled. Other than that, my day was spent on here, talking to various folks on YIM and helping a new friend with her myspace layouts.

That's it up to speed.

Living in interesting times.

2005-12-16T12:14:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was a strange one from the get-go... but it a good way. But let me start with the night before. The last thing I did on Wednesday night was make arrangments to get together for coffee with a girl I met on Myspace.com, whom we will call Lilith for the purposes of this entry (Haven't seen The Dragonlady since that one night we went out for coffee... she's apparently a very busy individual). This was slated to happen on Thursday night after she got off of work at like 11:00pm.

So, Thursday morning... I wake up at the computer. I went to sleep in my bed, and "woke up" there too, but the autopilot got me online before I reached full consciousness. Weird, but it does happen to me with alarming frequency. Anyway, I noted that I had a message from Pippin, the guy who ran the server TerriblyWrong.com. The message stated that he had purchased the URL TerriblyWrongOnline.com and the DNS entry was pointed at the space on his server where TerriblyWrong.com had been. This is a very cool thing. I fiugured that I had a few days to get things together and get the site up.

And I was wrong.

Turns out, it no longer takes several days to get a DNS entry to go thru. Now it happens in a matter of hours. In fact, by the time I read the e-mail, the damn thing was already active.

The afternoon was spent gathering the necessary files to put a working site up... resurrected on the bones of the old site.

By the time I had the files ready to be worked on, my dad got home from work, and I was summarily kicked off the computer. I wasn't worried about this too much. I know dad. He'll sit there and play poker online until 8:00pm, at which point, I will be able to alter said files and get the site working again.

But I only have from 8:00pm to 11:30pm (approximatly) to do this.

Crap.

I settled on the fact that the update wasn't getting done until this morning, but I'd be damned if I was going to leave the site as a pile of broken links until today.

The evening was spent writing HTML at a breakneck pace... but I got the job done with a few minutes to spare. Even had time to chat a little with Meesh and Ford, who are going to be running the site while I'm in jail.

Ok. So check this out. All the work is finished. 11:30 comes, and EarthFink boots me.

FUCK!!!

I managed to get back online in the nick of time. Lilith had just logged on. Anyway, long story short, we made arrangements for her to come pick me up and go out for coffee. We hooked up at about 12:30pm or so. I hoped in this tiny little Ford Escort of her's and we were off. Small talk on the way to Denny's was a bit forced, but that's mostly because I'm always a bit nervous meeting new people.

Anyway, We get to Denny's and I finally get to see her in the light.

What a cutie!

Anyway, we sat and chatted for quite a while and had a pretty good time. She's really nice... Oh, and it turns out I know both of her sisters, which is kinda comical. You'd never know it by looking at them. Still it was pretty funny doing the "Do you know suchandsuch" thing. We know a fair amount of the same people. This town is small.

Anway, I could tell she was starting to get tired, so I suggested that she go ahead and take me home so she can get some sleep. I could tell she was relieved. The ride home was uneventful, but still, I had a great time.

It's amazing what good company can do for my mood.

Best night in recent memory...

2005-12-12T01:05:00.000-06:00

Today started out kinda crappy. I didn't sleep well last night, as usual. This morning, I mostly sat and read until about 3:00pm or so, at which point I hopped online and started prowling around Myspace.com looking to see how many loicals had accounts there.

Turns out, there's a whole shitload of them.

I added a fair amount of people to my list and sent a fair amount of messages back and forth and generally had a blast. Then, about 7:00pm or so, One of the people I'd been messaging with during the day logged into Yahoo. Her and I had been e-mailing back and forth throughout the course of the day, and we had a lot of things in common... including slightly out of the ordinary taste in movies and music.

Anyway, we talked on Yahoo for quite a while and decided to meet for Coffee at Denny's. We have a lot in common and she's a really good conversationalist, which is wonderful because she managed to keep my mind occupied with something other than how fucking miserable I've been for the past month.

She really good looking, too.

We talked for a couple of hours and I told her that I'm about to loose my freedom. She told me she's not looking for dating or anything like that, which is fine by me. But we really enjoy one another's company and are planning on getting together again on Tuesday.

And he got up, brushed himself off, and got on with his life...

2005-12-11T14:21:00.000-06:00

Last couple of days have been both interesting and yet, profoundly uneventful at the same time. Figure that one out.

Friday night, I went with the Imp to see The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe (We'd been planning it for weeks). The time spent with the Imp was good... gave me the closure that I needed. Big deal. No, the big deal of the night was the movie. It fucking ROCKED!!! My only complaint about the film was that they added two scenes for suspence purposes. The dialogue was brilliant. The casting was wonderful. And they left NOTHING out from the book as far as I could tell.

Anyway, enough about that. I've spent the weekend bouncing back and forth between reading and immerceing myself in the online world. I opened up a Myspace account, re-did my Yahoo360 account and have been chattering away with various people I am meeting on these two sites. It turns out that there are a lot of interesting people from this area who have an online life. This is a huge surprise to me because, well, this is Middle-America. Met some nice folks and have been keeping my mind occupied.

I still feel rejected and alone... but maybe that's not so bad, eh?

Cold Hard Ignorance

2005-12-08T10:42:00.000-06:00

I was gonna post this last night, but I was still way too pissed to do so.

Yesterday was eventful, to say the least. My winter outerwear has been replaced, finally. I'm not real fond of the new look (baby-shit brown), but at least it's warm, even if it is dirt-colored.

Went down to St. Peter's yesterday with mom to run some errands, which was ok. We stopped in Wentzville for lunch at moim's favorite chinesse food resturant. I'm personally not crazy about the place, but I'd also never turn my nose up at a free meal, so there you go.

The rest of the day was uneventful until about 7:00pm when Switch and The Imp showed up to bring me some of my clothing that had been left in a laundry basket at Switches mom's place.

With the Imp's new boyfriend.

Now, they didn't come right out and say he was her new boyfriend, but the body language made it extremely obvious... and put me in a pretty homocidial mood, to say the least.

I shooed them out the door as quickly as I could without raising my daughter and mother's suspicious about how I was feeling. Shortly there after, I text-messaged The Imp.

Me: "So, I take it from his body language that you and *insert random dude's name here* are seeing one another now."

Imp: "Sorta, yeah."

The rest of the evening was kind of a red haze until about midnight when my friend Nikki logged on to Yahoo and I was able to talk to her at length about it. But I was still too pissed to type this out.

I ain't as good as I once was...

2005-12-07T01:11:00.000-06:00

Today wasn't exactly eventful, but it did have some interesting highlights.

First and foremost, I discovered this afternoon that TerriblyWrong.com will not be coming back as I originally thought. It turns out that one of the vulture companies in San Diego bought the rights to the name as soon as they became available. For those of you who are not familiar with this concept, these companies wait for a dotcom or whatever to expire, then buy the right to it in the hopes of selling it off later at a higher price to the poor schmuck that let it lapse in the first place. Well, I thought about asking about buying it back for exactly 0.0001 seconds.

WAY WRONG ANSWER, FUCK-OS!!!!

See, this happened before, back when I ran HorriblyAwry.net. HorriblyAwry.net lapsed, got bought, a few weeks later, TerriblyWrong.com was born.

In other words, we will rebuild without the name TerriblyWrong.com.

In other news, I talked to an old friend of mine from High School online today. I hadn't talked to Traci in years, though I have been keeping loosely updated on how she was doing. We chatted for a while about our lives and the kids and such. She had a child about the same time I was getting out of that pit we went to high school in. Said child is now 14 1/2 years old and has a goddamn blog on Myspace.com. Oh my fuckin' GOD do I feel old. Anyway, Tracy recently got married and is having another baby. Kinda weird, that. I had one heck of a crush on her when we were teenagers. Never acted on it though. Simple reasaon for it too. You guys think I'm ugly now, you shoulda seen me 15 years ago. Even back then I knew when I was outclassed.

Anyway, That was an interesting conversation.

I also discovered today that I somehow lost part of the sidebar to this blog. Still trying to figure that one out.

To sum up the rest of my day, which was spent online for the most part, I will say this:

Those who don't know me well seem to have great faith in me. Those who do know me well have less faith than those who don't. But those who know and love (loath) me by far have more faith in me that I do in myself.

Poor Mental State.

2005-12-06T00:53:00.000-06:00

To tell you the truth, I don't even feel like writing tonight, but I'm forcing myself to do it because I know that I should. Why? Cause this is my therapy. How sad is that?

It's been another uneventful day here at the homestead. Anybody sensing a patern here? I sure as hell am. I went out today to put an application in at the local Denny's as a cook. My lawyer seems to be under the impression that he can get me the job there and then get me work-release, which would be cool, except for the fact that I'll be getting searched nightly every time I return to jail from work. Oh well. At least it will provide me with some contact with the outside world.

The rest of today was spent as usual. Reading. Fixing this blog's template. Helping my daughter with homework. Generally getting blown off by everybody who knows me.

Did I mention that my mental state isn't the greatest today?

Boredom Central

2005-12-04T20:45:00.000-06:00

Very little has been happening today... at least, there's nothing happening here. I spoent part of yesterday and today trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with my blogger template. Still no luck figuring that out. I've turned the code inside out, and as far as I can tell, it should be working. Also, I spoke to the tech-folks back in Baltimore and we agreed to bring TerriblyWrong.com back online at some point in the very near future, and do it in such a way that it can be run by someone else when I take my 4 month, state sponcered vacation.

Switch brought my offspring back to me this evening. I got to spend a little time listening to her bitching about moving. Fun fun. I wonder if she realizes that I don't care if she's having a hard time with the move?

My daughter is doing well. Seems glad to be home with Daddy. She's getting ready for bed as I post this, so soon I will have to cut this post off and tuck my little girl in.

It amazes me how you can be in a house full of people and still feel so incredibly lonely. It seems that is all I feel these days. Lonely. Lonely and rejected. Soon, I'll start getting good at it.

Long silences and such.

2005-12-03T21:19:00.000-06:00

Well, I haven't posted in about 3 months or so. I had planned to put down in this post everything that has happened since my last post, but after writing it up, I realized that it looked like a bad work of fiction. Since I'm not a big fan of bad fiction, I decided to skip the explanation and just hit the high points like where I am now and such.

I've been back at my parent's place for a few days now. Not the greatest situation in the world, but it could be a lot worse. My belongings are slowly trickling in from the various places in which they and myself have been stored over the past few months. Not that I owned much to begin with, but it'll be nice to have a complete wardrobe again. Anyway To sum up, Here is my current status:
* Single.
* Temporarily Unemployed.
* Free until January.

In January, or perhaps shortly before, I will be serving 4 months in a state facility for reasons stated in previous posts. I'm not looking forward to it, but it could be a lot worse. My current plan is to mail posts for this blog to a friend and have them post them for me... so you'll be getting some "Doing Time" posts in the near future.

See I wasn't dead after all.

Chaos Theory in action...

2005-09-23T12:22:00.000-05:00

Anybody notice that these posts are getting fewer and further between? Well, I have. It's the curse of having a chaotic life, I suppose. Ok. Let's start with last Friday.

Went to Switch's house on Friday with my offspring, intending on having a quiet, boring weekend. No such luck. Our friend The Imp stayed the weekend as well. All things being equal, we had a pretty good time, though sleep was minimal. We all work different shifts so the visiting was awkward at best. The offspring loved it though. The Imp's been a good friend to both me and Switch and all the conversation was kept extremely lively.

Monday morning, The Imp's weekend started and as I was still out of work because of my foot, I ended up hanging out with her for the day. That night, Switch came over to The Imp's place as well to do laundry. More lively conversation, and less sleep. At this point, I was starting to get more than a little squirrelly due to sleep deprivation.... But apparently, that makes me even funny than I am on a good day. Ended up sleeping at The Imp's place that night and hooking up with Mom the next morning so she could run me to court.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005, at 9:00am was my court date for the Felony charge I have.... It ended up being a non-event. The judge asked me to stand up, and my lawyer talked to him in a hushed voice for a few minutes, then told me that I was free to go. It was kinda strange. I had an appointment with my lawyer afterward, and he seemed pretty confident about my chances. He said it helps that I have a list of people who are willing to testify to the fact that I am not a violent man by nature.

After all of my meetings were over, I went to my Mom's for a bit and got online briefly. That was when things got interesting. I finally got ahold of Ford and he started talking about the fact that my comments section of my blog was getting hit hard. I didn't know anything about it at the time, but I asked him to go into my template and remove my comments option, as I didn't have time to check it out myself. After briefing him on what's been going on here, I got picked up by the Imp and we hung out again. Switch hooked up with us later in the day... The three of us are starting to look like the Three Musketeers on acid.

Wednesday, I finally got into my Haloscan account and saw what had been written about me in my comments. I had to laugh when I read them. You would think that if people were going to be flaming me and claiming that they know me (though admittedly, some of them I have met but never conversed with) they would get their damn facts straight first. Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that the comments are going to stay off. I have too much going on in my real life to deal with people online who have something against me for whatever reason, whether it be jealousy, ideological differences, or some imagined slight. I apology to the people who have been sending me emotional support through everything I've been going thru, but most of you have my e-mail address, so if you want to talk to me, feel free to drop a line.

Anyway, went back to The Imp's place that night and hung out with her and Switch again for a while. The Imp had a date that night so Switch and I just sorta hung out and watched movies while we waited for her to get back. By the way, I HIGHLY recommend The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy and Paycheck.

Thursday was spent running all over God's Creation with The Imp and her friend Pandora. During the course of the day, We put over 120 miles on The Imp's car. But I got to go to Target, which I like so much better than Wal-mart (fuck you, Sam Walton), and it turned out that Pandora was fun to flirt with. After the mad dash was over, Imp went to pick up two new-born kitten's from Switch's mom's place and we spent part of the evening getting them all settled into their new home before The Imp dropped me off at my mom's on her way to work.

I really did intend to update TerriblyWrong.com and do this blog entry last night, but the fact that I haven't been resting as well as I should finally caught up with me and I crashed, big time. This morning, I went and got my foot check up on again. Then came back to Mom's to do the updates you see here.

All things being equal, it was a good week, and it looks to be a good weekend as well.

One final note to my detractors... You keep on coming, guys. You're providing me with plenty of traffic, and now, I don't even have to read your idiotic opinions of me. The only part that I don't get is why you keep coming back.

Of Meetings, appointments, and saved data...

2005-09-15T12:38:00.000-05:00

Ok, Tuesday morning, Mom took me down to Washington, MO to have my follow-up appointment for my foot. I get there, and low-and-behold, the wound is healing, but the jail-time had done it's harm. the wound needed more dead flesh cut from around it and the infection hadn't cleared up entirely. The cleaned the wound out and gave me 1000mg pills called Cipro... which are about the size of my head. The also prescribed me some vicodin for the pain cause the darvocet wasn't doing me any good... so pardon my spelling and if I ramble.

After all that was done, I hung around with Switch and the offspring after school was over and talked to one of my oldest friends, Fox, and mad \e arrangements to go and see her and her family on Wednesday afternoon, after my appointment with my PO.

Wednesday morning, I woke up to a phonecall from Fox. She was very sick and wanted to make arrangments for getting together on the weekend instead. I told her that was cool and got ready for my appointment with my PO, which I was dreading.

I get to the PO's office, and it went both better and worse than I expected. Better in that he was very friendly and listned to my report on the "incident" and told me that it sounded bad, but it was defensable. It was worse in that he told me that my probation is under suspension, and legally, I'm about as deep in the shit as I can get. He actually told me that probabtion for my "little misdemeanor offense" was the least of my problems.

After that appointment, I headed over to Kelly's. The Evil Leprechaun had taken what she said was the last of my stuff (though some of my DVDs are still missing)to Kelly's place, and Kelly was going to run me and it over to Mom's then take me to O'fallon to see Fox and company. Well, Since Fox had cancelled, there ws no rush. I ended up hanging out with Kelly until about 5:00pm at which point Switch came over to pick me up... and we ended up staying until 10:30pm just hanging out and doing laundry. Un-eventful, but still a very fun day. Sort of a cigarette break from my life. I needed that.

I got back to Mom's around 11:00pm and hooked Hal's monitor up to him. I plugged him in and turned him on for the first time since he was disassembled after the fire. I crossed me fingers and hit the power button...

IT'S ALIVE!!!

He's a little dirty, but other than that, Hal came out of the fire and such completely unscathed.The Evil LEprechaun attempted to delete some of the files on the hard drive that would have been embarressing to her, but she completely missed my back-up files so I lost no data at all!

Not much going on today so far. No appointments. Rainy day. Planning on doing the "weekly" update of TerriblyWrong.com tonight.

Think I'll call Sharky and see if she has any coffee made...

A life less ordinary...

2005-09-13T02:16:00.000-05:00

Ford told me this afternoon that it's ok for my life to be boring for a while... Indeed, that is what I'm hoping for.

So. I've been offline for a month. Miss me? No? Oh well.

I had planned on sitting down here and writing a detailed post on everything that has happened in the past month... Then I realized that it would take me about 12 to 14 hours to write a post like that, so for the moment, I'll just hit the highlights and I'll expand from there at a later time, if there IS a later time.

Ok, Let's start with this... You folks may have noticed in previous posts that I was talking less and less about the Mad Munchkin (Who will henceforth be referred to here as the Evil Leprechaun™), Well, the reason for that is that our relationship was disintegrating. Eventually, it came out that she was basically just using me to pay her bills (Yes, Truth, you were right... Ass.).

Shortly after my last post, The Evil Leprechaun™) informed me that she was getting her job back and that she wanted me to move out. I agreed, under the condition that I be given until I got my next paycheck. The following day, she found out that she was not getting said job as soon as she thought and then had the gall to ask me to stay longer to help her with her bills.

This went over like a fart in a space suit... But I agreed.

Cause I'm a sucker.

Anyway, we went on like that for a few more days, and then, on the night of the 14th of August, It all came to a head. I had been drink and we got into a huge fight. She started screaming at me to leave. I refused, mostly because it was about 1am or so and had nowhere I could go. She went to get the phone to call the cops to escort me out and I tried to get the phone from her... And all hell broke loose. She brought her heel down on top of my foot, breaking my toe and I proceeded to completely loose my temper and I ended up roughing her up. After the physical altercation, I called Sharky to ask her to pick up my belongings and The Evil Leprechaun™ called the cops and I was arrested and charged with 3rd degree Domestic assault. A misdemeanor.

That night, they let me go on my own recognesence. Sharky picked me up a little after 4:00am at a gas station, and drove me to our mom and dad's house where I got a few hours sleep. The following day, I went to the hospital to get my foot looked at and called my daughter's mother (who will henceforth be referred to as Switch™) and asked her if I could crash at her place for a while. Switch™ agreed without hesitation. That night, her and I worked out details of the financial situation, and all things being equal, I came out further ahead than I was at the trailer. The only real problem, other than sleeping on the couch, was that I would have no internet access.

A few days later, The Evil Leprechaun™'s trailer burned down.

I shit you not, I had nothing to do with it. She apparently fell asleep on the couch and one of the goombas was playing with matches and FOOM!!! I was at work when it happened. Unfortunately, Hal™ and much of my belongings was still in the trailer. As luck would have it, everybody got out ok and all of my stuff was on the end of it that didn't burn.

Ok. So. All of this going on and I still have the Violation of Probation charge and the Driving While Suspended hanging over my head. Court date was set for September 6th. Mom offered to get me a lawyer and I initially refused until I heard a rumor that the charges had been upped to 2nd degree domestic assault. A felony.

During the course of all of this, the cellulitis infection in my foot came back with a vengeance. I had Switch™ take me to the hospital and they informed me that I had to have surgery very very soon or I'd loose my foot. The following day I went to the doctor and got my foot cut up so it would heal finally. The set the follow-up appointment for September 7th.

On September 6, 2005, I went to court to ask the judge for another continuance until I could get ahold of my lawyer. As I was standing there in front of the judge, he pulled a small red post-it™ note off of my file, granted me my continuance and asked me to stay put while he checked something out. A moment later, The Honorable Judge Dalton informed me that since the charges against me had been upped to a felony, that I had the right to remain silent and wear an orange jump-suit.

Crap.

They took me into booking and asked me if I was gonna post bail. I figured that Mom might be able to pull it off if it was a reasonable amount.

It was $10,000.00, cash only.

Fuck.

They finished booking me and I called mom to tell her the news. She said she would call my lawyer immediately.

Needless to say, I didn't make my follow-up appointment at the doctor's office and my foot started to flare up again. I was in jail for 4 days. Eventually my attorney got them to make the bail a surety bond so that it was only a $1000.00 expenditure with a bail-bondsman. Mom got me out of jail. That was 4 days ago.

For the past four days, I've been spending as much time with my daughter as I can, getting appointments set up with lawyers, doctors and my probation officer, and basically trying to get my shit together.

Four days in jail doesn't sound like a long time, and in reality, it isn't, but talking to the guys who had been in the system for years and years for various reason scared the hell outta me. It also brought what is important into extremely sharp focus. My family has been incredibly supportive through all of this, as has Kelly, who finally got the vast majority of my stuff from The Evil Leprechaun™, and Switch, who has been providing me with a surprising amount of emotional support. Mom and Dad have been absolutely brilliant throughout the whole ordeal, and to tell you the truth, I feel horrible about it. I've been a rotten son to them. I want to tell them that I'm sorry for what I've been, but I know that they won't know how to take it, so the best I can do is just do the best I can for myself and thank them for what they've done.

Sharky's been really cool thru all of this too. She hasn't given me a hard time about it (I think she knows that I'm doing a bang-up job of that myself) and her and Dennis The Builder sent a Bible to me to read in jail... I read the book of Acts in it's entirety while I was in jail.

Anyway, I'm out now. I don't know for how long, or what's going to happen next, but I'll do my best to keep everybody posted.

I know that there are large parts of this narrative missing, but what can I say? It was a rough month and it's 3 o'clock in the damn morning. If you want to know anything about any specific holes in the plot, let me know.

Insert a joke of your choice here

2005-08-08T02:48:00.000-05:00

Not a whole hell of a lot to write about tonight, other than that I'm in the process of cleaning yet another massive adware infection off of my harddrive and that I've finally updated the "weekly" poll. The last one lasted for 2 months... Let's see what kind of longevity this one's got.

This was my weekend "off" from the EPSF. "Off" is in quotations because the DON talked me into working third shift on Saturday night and I may have to go in later this morning to finish out the shift for Becky and Angel as a favor to Courtney. NOT as a favor to Becky and Angel. If they were in hell, I wouldn't give those two a glass of ice-water. I know I need the money and all that, but to see those two suffer, I can skip a few meals.

Other than that, Not a lot going on. The goombas are home from their dad's house... all four of them, for a change. All this summer, Shithead's been able to talk at least one of them into staying the week with him most weeks. Been kind of a bummer, to tell the truth. Yeah, the goombas can be destructive little agents of chaos, but you gotta love 'em. I know that Munchkin is glad to have them all home, even if their fighting does stress her out at times. (That, in and of itself, can be pretty fun to watch.)

Anyway, should be a fun week at the EPSF. Of the next 7 days, I'm scheduled for 6 of them. No double shifts on my schedule... yet. But that's coming, I know it... they'll also probably try to talk me out of being off on Friday. Don't know yet if I'll let them or not. I like my job and the "extra" money is nice, but I'm starting to get burn-out already... I can feel it. In addition to the psychological effects of the job, it seems that a day doesn't go by that I don't come home with a sore back and a tension headache. But I do like the job, and I love some of the people I take care of. It's just a lot, that's all.

I've got the phone sitting next to my keyboard... like an ominous little sentinel just waiting to drag me into work. Third shift at the EPSF really bites the big one. You spend the first 6 hours doing barely enough to keep you awake, then the last two running at a break-neck pace to get everybody in the building up for breakfast. I much prefer secnd shift, which is exactly the opposite.

That's one other thing that I'm sure you will all back me up on... at least, I know Sharky will, because we've had this discussion a couple of times over the years. If I get put into one of these EPSFs when I get old, I am planning to beat the living shit outta the first asshole who tries to wake me up at 5:00am in the damn morning for breakfast. I'll knock 'em right the fuck out. It's rediculous to have to get these people up this early. Haven't they earned the right to sleep in? I fucking think so!

Results of the two-month-long weekly poll...

2005-08-08T02:30:00.000-05:00

The Asshole's Poll of the Week
Do you like The Asshole's Poll of the Week?

Oh. shit. Where am I?

44.4%

Hell Yeah! Keep it up!

25.9%

I don't give a crap either way.

14.8%

Hell no! Take it off!

11.1%

I think you should make it monthly.

3.7%

total votes: 27

Not in the mood...

2005-08-06T19:38:00.000-05:00

Sorry about the long silence, folks. I just haven't been in much of a mood to write.

The meeting with my P.O. was uneventful. He basically told me to get a lawyer (yeah... I can afford that).

I went before the judge on August 1st, and he told me to get a lawyer and gave me another month to do it.

Great.

Here's hoping that the public defenders office will take my case.

Anyway, very little else going on... hence my not being in the mood to write.

I work. I eat. I sleep. I wake up and do the whole thing over again. My off hours mostly consist of sitting in my room trying to find new and exciting way to keep from being bored to death. woo hoo.

Finances are still a wreck, which is a big part of the reason I volenteer for so many extra hours. Munchkin and the goombas are doing ok, I guess. Still nothing to report, really. No changes. No progress. Just keeping going on The March™ and trying to do it with a smile on my face.

One minor note... a question, really. Is it bad that I'm developing my own internal vocabulary?

Skip this post!

2005-07-26T01:20:00.000-05:00

A wise man once said:

We, the Unwilling,
Lead by the Unknowing,
Are doing the Impossible
For the Ungrateful,
At an Incredbily low wage.

It's been one of those night all around. Soem days, I simply don't know what's worst. The disconnected folks I work for, the ungrateful people I work on, the freaks I work with, the hoolagins I live with, of the demons in my head.

Jail might not be so bad.

... Ignore everything I just typed. I'm cranky.

Psychosis on a stick

2005-07-24T03:46:00.000-05:00

Well, for reasons I'm about to go into, though not in great detail, bloging has not been the foremost thing on my mind recently, as is obvious from my long silence.

During my absense from the blogosphere (God, I hate that term, but it applies), I've been pulling a bunch of extra hours at the EPSF... we can thank Sharky for getting that particular ball rolling.She got called into work to help the overnight charge nurse, and in turn, called me in to help with the remainder of the shift... which started me on 3 days of double shifts. She called after I'd been home from work for about an hour and a half or so, and when I answered the phone, instead of saying "hello", she simply said "Get your sorry ass back in here and help these girls!" I am now up to my ass in overtime. Cool, huh?

Anyway, the rest of the work-week was pretty hectic. Overtime. Minor crisises. Etc.

Things on the homefront are... nevermind, it would take too long to explain and I simply don't feel like typing it all out. The finances are fucked because Child Support Enforcement screwed up and lost a check for over $300.00. No small change there. And that is ALL I'm going to say about what's going on here.

Concerning TerriblyWrong.com, things are kinda screwed up there. I bounced a payment to cbox so I've lost my subscribtion. The upshot of that is that all of the IP addresses I'd banned have been reinstated. Needless to say, without that control, things are beginning to run amok and I'm going to have to shut down the comments box now. Some voices I simply do not wish to be heard on a site that I run. I also received a notice that we need to pay for another year of dotcom service... too bad there's no money to pay for it.

I spent part of the night attempting to simplify the code on TerriblyWrong.com, so that when I suddenly go missing, Ford can run the show in my absense. "Absense?" You ask? There's the real kicker...

A while back, Tammy suggested that I "need a vacation. Well, it looks like I'm might be getting one, whether I want it or not. I mentioned a while back that I got nailed for driving while suspended (click the link to see the post). Well, I have a court date of August 1st for that... or so I thought. A few days ago, I recieved a letter in the mail that I am also to appear in court that same day for a motion to revoke my probation. I have no money for a lawyer, so all I can really do is throw myself on the mercy of the court... and we all know how well THAT works. Phillygirl did some research for me tonight, and it looks like I could do about 6 months or so for the previous charge for the court grants the petition to revoke my probation.

There's a word for this situation, I'm sure of it, I just can't think of it right now.

Oh yeah. I remember now.

Fucked.

Completely, totally and utterly FUCKED!!!!

Trudging along once again...

2005-07-15T05:01:00.000-05:00

Very little to write about today. Thursday was my one day off this week, and I ended up pretty much sleeping thru it. Of course, now it's 5:00am and I can't get to sleep. Oh well. I guess you have to take the good with the bad.

Wednesday at work was nowhere near as bad as I thought it was going to be, though we did have our share of hectic and tense moments. We were doing the second round of treatments for that scabies outbreak we had... second round is a precaution more than anything else. One treatment is curative, the second is just in case we fucked up somewhere the first time. I treated myself again as well. Like I said, just in case.

I think that the worst part of it was having to strip and re-make every bed in the EPSF while the department heads were giving the treatments. I.E. trying to have everybody's bed ready when they were done, or at least reasonably close to when they were done. Guess what. Didn't happen. Hell, we weren't even close. In fact, one guy's bed got forgotten completely until he came and complained about it.

The guy in question is a career army retiree. He came up and started pitching a fit about his bed not being made at about 9:30pm. I very quickly went into his room (which wasn't in my section) and started making his bed. While I was doing so, he came in and started screaming at me about how the people who work at the EPSF were trying to piss him off to the point where he would just pick up and move out. I decided that the best course of action was to take the blame myself. This is something I've learned over the years about military-minded people... They will be plaicated much more quickly if you accept the blame for an error and explain how it happened than if you try to put the blame on someone else (and in this case, it was someone elses fault, but who gives a shit). Once I told him that I had simply forgotten to look into his room because the door was closed, he accepted my apology and apologiezed to me for "popping off".

Other than that, my night went fine. After work, I sat here for a bit then went and hung out with Kelly while she went up to Hell-mart to get more fish for her tank, giving me the opprotunity to jabber with a few old co-workers. Seems that very little has changed on Hell-mart's 3rd shift, except for the fact that my buddy Laura has transfered to it.

After that, I came home, watched some TV and went to sleep... and slept for a REALLY long time. Guess I needed it.

News from the EPSF front

2005-07-12T23:12:00.000-05:00

Damn...

The weekend went pretty well, all things being equal. I got some rest, loafed, and basically did next to nothing on Saturday. I did, however, end up staying up very late that night, and thus hadn't gotten much sleep by 7:15am on Sunday morning when those blithering idiots I work with called me to try to get me to work first shift for them.

First of all, I don't do day shift.

Ever.

Second, it was my weekend off.

Third, I have caller ID and voice-mail.

HA!!!

Anyway, Sunday was uneventful.

Now, come Monday when I got to work, expecting to find myself thoroughly immersed in the ninth ring of hell, I was not at all surprised to find myself there. The Charge nurse had called in, so our Assistant Director of Nursing (ADON), Nurse Lucifer, was in charge. Drag. Me and the ADON don't get along well, as I have said before. We're like oil and Satan, really. So While she was there, until 8:30pm, she was on my ass like a bad case of hemroids. This coupled with the fact that the crew consisted of myself, Beth (a new-hire), and two mediocre day shift workers who decided to stay over for a couple of hours, this made for such a good day.

By 7:00pm, when I was outside with 2 residents smoking a cigarette, when I saw the Admin come outy the door on her way home, I'd had quite enough of Nurse Lucifer's bullshit, and began complaining about her to the Admin, quite vocally and animatedly.

Once Nurse Lucifer and the Day-Shifters went home, it wasn't too bad a night. everybody was in bed and quiet.

Munchkin and goomba #2 picked me up at 11:00pm. I was home by 11:05pm. Munchkin was sleep by 11:07pm or so. I sat up for a while, but couldn't sleep once I'd gone to bed. Too hot and sticky and I had (have) one hell of a tension-headache.

Cut to Today's shift.

I arrived a bit early to assess the situation. There were 3 of us. Me, Jo and Beth. I asked Laura in the office if Joy (the charge nurse the Nurse Lucifer replaced yesterday) was there today. She was, but there was bad news. Courtney, the second-half charge had called in, so guess who was covering after 7:00pm... Yep, you guessed it. Nurse Lucifer. Crap.

Good news, Brandi interviewed and hired at least 1 new CNA for evening shift. YAY!!!! I talked with Brandi briefly and also complained to her about Nurse Lucifer's behavior... She is Brandi's asistant, after all. She said that she would Clarify things with her... Dunno how much good that would do, but ok. I asked Joy to assign me to the back hall, thus putting me as far away from the charge desk and Lucifer and Jo as possible. She had no problem doing that for me.

The night actually went pretty well, all things considered. I think someone must have said something to the ADON, cause when she came in, she was being nice as pie to me and everyone else. I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I'm not gonna examine it too closely, but I even had a rather pleasant conversation with Nurse Lucifer near the end of the night. Go figure.

Out of the frying pan and into the NINTH FUCKING RING OF HELL!!!!

2005-07-09T20:41:00.000-05:00

First of all, I'd like to apologize to all of the folks who have been checking back here regularly for updates and not finding any. As stated in my previous post, I've been working a whole shitload of overtime at the EPSF. I'll try to do better from now on.

Secondly, I'd like to thank all of the folks who've been commenting concerning my overtime and the job I do. Your sentiments have done me a world of good... especially after the week I've had.

Now, Here's an update.

You know all that overtime I was getting? Well, there's more coming. I worked yet another long shift this week... This time because there was an outbreak of scabbies in the building. *AAAAARRGGHH!!!!* I not only stayed late to help the department-head (who worked their ASSES off that night) treat everybody in the entire building, but then had to treat myself for it the following morning as a precaution. Needless to say, I took that day off.

And I wish I hadn't.

I returned to work on Friday to discover that not only was I working with a crew of only two other incredibly cranky nurses aids, but the reason for that it that we have actually lost 3 aid from my shift, as well as one a piece from 1st and 3rd shift.

HOLY FUCK!!!!

There is no end in sight to this madness. I'm off this weekend (and not answering my damned phone, so if you're trying to get me to cover your shift, you outta fuckin' luck, scooter). My next scheduled day is Monday... and there is a crew of only 2 scheduled. Myself and Beth. The following day there are two scheduled. Myself and Jo. Jo's talking about quiting. Sharon is making the same noises.

If this keeps up, I'm gonna be the only one left.

If that happens... well, they better damn well be prepared to pay me the wages of a full shift if I'm doing a full shift's job.

Oh! Speaking of Jo, I got into it with that useless sack of shit last night. She started grumbling about our Director of Nursing (DON), saying that she sucked at her job. I couldn't take it. Brandi is the best damn DON I've worked for, and there have been more than a few. Her only real problem is that she can't do the job with the crew she has left to work with and the constraints that our corperate heads have put on her. Give when she has to work with, God himself would have a tough time making it look like He was doing a good job. So, I told Jo this and that if it weren't for ignorant pigfuckers like her, having a shit attitude and not wanting to do any fucking work, maybe Brandi could do her job properly. I'd like to see that cum burping gutter whore do any better.

tee hee.

Anyway, I'm gonna try to get as much R&R in this weekend as I can... That's gonna be difficult since the goombas are acting like they've been possessed by the same demons that inspired Ed Edd & Eddie. Munchkin is doing what she can with them, but the poor woman is seriously at her wits end. Right now I'm just trying to ignore the shreeks. (Thank God I gave Hal headphones.)

72 hours

2005-07-04T21:22:00.000-05:00

During any given 3 day period, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, for example, there are 72 hours. I worked for 40 of them.

I had actually planned on working for 32 of them. I was scheduled for 2 13 hour shifts at the EPSF to be followed by a standard 8 hour shift on Sunday.

Well, on Sunday, all hell broke loose.

The way the schedule was set up, there were going to be 3 nurses aids for second shift (which makes the shift tough as nails) and 4 for third shift (which makes for a reasonably light night). Unfortunately, one of the second shift people called in, so we were down to two. That's not only rough, it's dangerous and illegal. Fortunately, the charge nurse convinced one of the first shift girls to work, which was cool.... still tough, but cool...

Until, 3 out of the 4 people who were scheduled to work third shift called in sick.

FUCK!!!

Countrey, the charge nurse, started eyeballing me and hinting that she wanted me to work yet another double shift. At first, I told her to go fuck herself. It took her over an hour of sucking up and bribing to convince me to stay until 5:00am. She got one of the first shift girls to come in early and take over for me so I wouldn't actually have to get anybody up for breakfast, but the shift still sucked.

We had 3 people fall and have to be picked up off the floor. 8 people couldn't sleep and were on their call lights all night. 2 were trying desperately to die. And 1 tried to escape... I caught him rolling down the sidewalk towards the grass between the EPSF and the Super 8 Motel.

God, I love my work!

The thing that kept me going thru this last shift was the knowledge that my administrator is gonna fucking cry when she sees my paycheck.

This weekend's worst kick in the teeth: After the Sunday shift (14 hours), I had to walk home.

Tales from the Elderly Processing and Storage Facility

2005-07-02T04:26:00.000-05:00

Actualy, the title is misleading. there isn't much to tell tonight, really.

I was off work on Thursday, and spent most of the day resting, updating TerriblyWrong.com, and generally preparing for Friday and Saturday. Why preparing, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. Long shifts.

I just returned home from a 13 hour shift at the EPSF. I'm doing another one tomorrow. 3:00pm til 4:00am. Crueling, I tell you.

Hell, the only reason I'm even posting right now is because I'm waiting for the caffiene from all the coffee I drank to stay awake to wear off.

I drank a lot of coffee.

This may take a while.

Crap.

(Semi)Nightly Report

2005-06-30T04:02:00.000-05:00

All's quiet on the western front, more or less. Work the last two nights has been ok, I suppose. I've been posted on the back hall two nights in a row. Most of the people back there take care of themselves, with a few notable exceptions who make pains-in-the-ass of themselves... I'm pretty sure on purpose. The only real problem at work, other than my aching back, is a couple of my co-workers... Lazy fuckers who do as little as possible (less than the job requires) and are under the mistaken impression that they are better than everybody else. Why people like this are able to work in nursing and actually keep their jobs is quite beyond my reckoning.

Very little happening on the home front. Munchkin and Nicole fell asleep in front of the TV in the livingroom tonight. I was bored out of my mind for a good portion of the evening and ended up going over to Kelly's and playing cards for an hour or so. Not exactly exciting, but it beats playing Freecell.

The parts for this weeks issue of TerriblyWrong.com are all in my inbox now. I'm off work tomorrow (unless I get called in for a shift) so I will probably do the assembly and coding tomorrow. This weeks comic strip is fucking huge, but at least Ford has finished with the Star Wars parody we've (he's) been working on the last few weeks. He tells me that he has a bunch of ideas for new strips. So do I, for that matter. As of next Friday, I get the feeling we will be seeing the long-awaited return to dick and fart jokes.

It's good to have something like that to fall back on.

Trashman sent in his best article to date, in my opinion, and I am very much looking forward to publishing it... Besides, every time he writes for us, TW's traffic jumps... How can that possibly be a bad thing. In the words of a few PR people I know, "There's no such thing as bad press."

I better cut this entry off now... If I don't, I'm gonna end up with my entire intro for TW blown cause I already typed it all out here.

Weird scenes inside the coffee-pot

2005-06-28T09:05:00.000-05:00

For a change, other than my inability to get back to sleep, I don't have much to complain about this morning. Yesterday morning, Sharky's mechanic pal, Mark came out and removed the locking-nut that I couldn't get off the car. I figured that this was going to set me back a bit more than I already was, being a service call and all, but much to my surprise, when I asked him how much it was going to cost, he simply said, "Don't worry about it."

Once that was done, I got the doughnut tire on and Munchkin took the Rust-bucket™ into town to air up the tire while I got ready for work.

Work wasn't bad last night. We had a crew of five nurse's aids, which is almost unheard of, so it ended up being a really easy night. Nobody died. Only two inmates... er, ummm, residents, were sick. Showers got done early. etc.

I got a good laugh out of one of my residents last night, as well. At about 7:30pm, a call light went on. Upon arriving in the room, I asked the resident what she needed. She said, "I'd like to have a Percocet."
I said, "Yeah... me too." and turned to walk out of the room. (poking my head back in just long enough to say I'd pass the word to the CMT).

Guess you had to be there.

Anyway, after I came home from work, I read for a while and went to sleep. I ended up being woken up early by Munchkin, but with good news for a change. Turns out that child support enforcement garnished a LOT of Shithead's wages this week... damn close to what we pay a month in rent. That should be arriving in our mailbox around the first of the month, so that will help a LOT.

Munchkin is out right now getting the tire (the real one, not the doughnut) put on the car. My only real complaint this morning, other than not being able to get back to sleep, is that I haven't changed the weekly poll in 2 months and can't think of what to put up there.

Any suggestions?

It's not the humidity...

2005-06-26T19:56:00.000-05:00

It's not the humidity. It's the HEAT! The sweltering, bone-melting, Heat!!! I'd been avoiding going outside all day, when I finally had to go out and attempt to put the doughnut tire we found in the truck on the Rust-bucket™. Within 10 minutes, my shirt was completely soaked. I hate the heat. I'd move to Alaska, but I don't like Moose.

Anyway, I said "Attempt" to change the tire because when I got to the 5th lug-nut, I discovered that I did not possess the technology to remove said nut. It's like no lug-nut I've ever seen in my entire life. Needless to say, I'm gonna have to call a mechanic tomorrow... here's hoping that they will take my dashing good looks as a payment. Har har har.

In other, unrelated, news Nicole went to a friend's birthday party at the local pool today... with no sun-screen. Nikky is very fair-complected. So... after spending 5 hours in the sun, She is quite burned. The goombas are now available in Original and Extra-crispy. I feel really sorry for the poor thing. Her skin is now pretty much the same color as her hair. It looks extremely painful.

Nothing else going on today, really, other than that I took the time to shave my head today. No direct sunlight for me for a while. Ever gotten you scalp sunburned? No? Let me assure you that it is the 3rd most painful place to get burned... 2nd being the bottoms of your feet, and the first being... well, you know.

Planning on doing as little as humanly possible for the rest of the evening. Since all attempts at being productive today have ended in disaster, I figure it's best just not to try. Maybe I'll take yet another shower.

If it Ain't one fuckin' thing, it's another! (again)

2005-06-25T17:18:00.000-05:00

Work went ok the last couple of days. Nothing to write about really until today. This is my weekend off. I slept late due to the fact that my back has been hurting me lately because of all the lifting I do at work. I woke up after 3:00pm (ok, so I slept REALLY late) and after a brief arguement with The Mad Munchkin, I got up to make myself some scrapple (if you don't know what that is, don't worry... it's a breakfast food made of cornmeal and the parts of the pig that weren't good enough to make it into the sausage).Munchkin and Nicole had gone over to Kelly's and I was alone at the stove when I hear a loud "POP! Hssssss..."

I glanced out the window and didn't see anything amiss. A few minutes later, Munchkin and Nicole walk in and tell me that we have a flat tire.

FUCK!!!

One more fucking thing. We simply do not have the money to fix this. We're barely going to make rent this month. So, when it comes down to it, we are once again, temporarily (I hope) immobilized.

One step forward and two steps back...

2005-06-22T21:13:00.000-05:00

You know, I thought everything was going to go extremely well today when I went to bed last night... unfortunately, As I found out when I was awakened at 10:30am by a call from Kelly, I was wrong.

Kelly's toilet had backed up and she needed me to come fix it. Apparently having a set of balls makes people think you know all about plumbing. This is wrong, but I do know how to operate a plunger, which I did.

A little later in the day, I had Kelly (in exchange for my plumbing services) drive me up to work so I could get my paycheck and attend an "in-service" meeting... which is basically where they dress you down for not doing your job properly whether you've been doing properly or not. Fun. After the meeting, my mom picked me up from work and took me to the bank to cash my tiny, little paycheck. I then proceeded out to the HBPU's place to pay them this month's loan payment and the first payment on the car (and to check it out and pick it up.)

Oddly enough, the car is the same make and model and year as the Buick that we blew up a few months back. Wierd, huh? Anyway, the battery on it was fucked, so Dennis the Builder gave me a jump, but once we got it started, it ran really well. When it started, the engine gave a nice, deep "thrummmm"... I like that.

Anyway, after visiting with my daughter and mother for a bit, I started for home with the intention of getting a battery installed at Hell-mart and putting gas in the tank. I managed to do the latter, but upon arriving at at Hell-mart, my buddies Josh and Kyle informed me that it would be at least a 2 hour wait, so I decided to chuck the idea and head for home... this is where things took a drastic turn for the worse...

I was coming up on the Discount Smoke Shop, and I see a Sheriff's car in the parking lot facing the exit. Now, I have no driver's license and this vehicle doesn't even have so much as temporary tags on it. If this guy sees me, I'm fucked, and I know that, so I quickly turn into my old neighborhood and decide to stop by and see Phillygirl... who it turns out wasn't home. Oh well. I waited a few minutes, then poked the nose of the car out of the neighborhood far enough to see if the cop was gone. He was... or so I thought, so I headed home.

As I am coming up the road approaching the trailer park, I notice a car behind me that looked like he was being tailgated. I pulled into the trailer park and the cop, who had been tailgating the Plymouth that was behind me, pulled in as well and turned on his lights.

FUCK!!!!

I pull over (No, I'm not stupid enough to try to evade him, despite the fact that there are no identifying markings on the vehicle other than the rust), grab the title to the car and the bill of sale I had Sharky write out for me, and wait. The cop get's out of his car and I am struck immediately by the fact that this man is about 5'0 and looks like he weighs about 100 pounds soaking wet. 'Oh fuck,' I thought. 'I'm betting this guy has a little-man's complex and here I am twice his size.' He walks up and sees that I have the paperwork ready and I quickly begin to explain to him that I had just purchased the vehicle. He looks like he's about to walk away, then asks the question that he has to ask and that I was dreading...

Cop: Do you have your License on you?
Me: Ummm, sir? Can I step out of the car please?
Cop: Sure thing.
Me: (Stepping out) Sir, I actually do not have a driver's license.
Cop: (looking up surprised at both my candor and my height) Really?
Me: (speaking quickly, obviously beginning to panic) Really sir. See, I lost my license for point a long time ago and my Fiance' drives me everywhere, but I had to go and get this car from my sister, and I was the one with the money for it so it had to be me. We didn't have a vehicle until 30 minutes ago, so we couldn't take the kids and do this together. It had to be me. I had to cash my paycheck to do it and I'm the only one working in the house. It was a stupid thing to do, but I didn't see any other way. I really wish there had been because if I go to jail I will loose my job and then the whole family is screwed. I really don't want to go to jail today, sir. I'm already on probabtion and my probabtion officer's name is Joe Peeoee. I haven't had any violations up until now. Feel free to check on that. Just pleasepleaseplease don't arrest me!
Cop: Whoah, relax! No need to panic. Let me get some information from you and I'll see what I can do.

The Cop in question takes all of the pertinent information and then get's in his car and radios in.

Leaving me standing beside the Buick in 90 degree weather smoking cigarette after cigarette for the next 20 minutes.

After that, The little fellow get's back out of the police car and I ask him...
Me: Do I need to place my hands on the car?
Cop: No, I'm not going to arrest you, but I am going to check out the vehicle and if there's nothing contraband in it, I'm going to let you walk home with a summons. You can have your fiance' come and get the car.
Me: Oh my God! Thankyouthankyouthankyou!!!

After a brief check of the car, the cop was true to his word and let me walk away with a summons set for August 1st. I got home, told Munchkin what happened and to go get the car, and sat down to rest for a bit. A little later, I had Kelly run me up to Wal-mart to go ahead and purchase the battery we needed so that I could install it myself...

... of course, once I got it home, I realized that the majority of my tools had been in The Voyager™ when it got repoed.

Crap.

I had Kelly run me back to Wal-mart for tools. I get 'em hom and I discover that I need an ratchet extention to get the battery off of it's bracket. At that point, I get exasperated and say fuck it. Munchkin tells me that she wants to go grocery shopping. I tell her to just take the battery with her and if the one that's in there dies, to jump it off of the new battery. Munchkin takes off and I sit down here for some mindless entertainment...

And that brings you all up to speed.

Think I'm gonna spend the night farting around with the site to see what kind of improvements I can make.

The Repo-man cometh...

2005-06-21T23:15:00.000-05:00

At 10:00am this morning, after a mere 4 hours or so of sleep, The Munchkin woke me up freaking the fuck out. It turns out that The Voyager™ was gone. We had gotten behind in the payments (which were due every two weeks) and we were trying to catch up... but it wasn't fast enough for the financing company's taste.

That's right, intrepid readers. The Voyager™ has been repossessed.

The Munchkin, of course, was panicing. I, being half asleep, was incapable of this course of action, so I did the only think I could do. I called Sharky and asked her if I could borrow her spare vehicle. (I dunno what kind it is. It's a white car and a long story how she came by it. I'm not gonna tell it here, but she can in the comments if she wants... HINT HINT, BIG SISTER!!!) Anyway, she told me the car wasn't tagged or titled, so she couldn't loan it to me... but she could sell it to me. I jumped on this and made quick payment arrangements with her.

So, once again, the HBPUs have pulled my ass out of the fire. Thanks guys. I love you. :-)

Anyway, once all that was done, I couldn't get back to sleep, so I farted around on the computer a bit, talked to our javascript guy, and made arrangements for a ride to work from Kelly.

Once I got to work... well, Let's just say "Welcome to day 2 of full-moon madness." It was a crappy night, literally. I won't go into details. I'll just say that I'm glad I'm off tomorrow.

I'm home now. Getting ready to do some work on the site. Bandman (the javascipt guy) gave me some very useful information that I need to put into place before I forget it.

Until next time...

Fear of a full moon

2005-06-21T00:05:00.000-05:00

One thing about working in an Elderly Processing and Storage Facility is that you learn to fear the nights of the full moon. The most fucked up shit happens during the full moon is EPSFs, hospitals, and luny-bins... and believe me when I tell you that today was no exception to the rule.

I started, actually, before I got there. One of the first shift girls attempted to tranfer a non-ambulatory resident almsot twice her size by herself. She dropped him. He broke his leg. She got fired. She deserved it. She's a moron.

So that was what I walked into. It didn't get a whole lot better from there. I walked in on one female resident masterbating, which was bad enough, but she's also incontinent and had a massive bowel momement before hand. Ewwww... that was a clean-up job to beat the band. We had a couple of residents howling like banshees, a few that were hitting their call lights every few minutes for stupid stuff. ("Could you get me a pen? I can't sleep without a pen with me.") And then we had a woman slip and fall in her bathroom and recieve a head-injury... Did you know that scalp wounds bleed like a sonofabitch? I did. And again, this was no exception.

Now, don't get me wrong about any of this. I still love my job. It takes a special kind of crazy to like this kind of work, but I do. However, there is also a special kind of complaining that goes along with working for an EPSF.. but at least I always have an interesting story when I get home from work.

The women that I work with... hell, I will just say it. They're even crazier then the people they take care of. And Even though I'm a guy, I'm no exception and I know it. A perfect example of this is what Jo, a CNA, and I did to Sharon, another CNA, as she walked between us. As she was walking towards us, she told us that a resident had just cussed her out for putting up a bed rail (we get cussed out all the time. This is no big deal). As Sharon walked between us, she said "I'm so sick of getting cussed out by people"... so me and Jo proceeded to tell her to go to hell and get fucked, in stereo.

Like I said... it's a special kind of crazy.

(note: I know, I didn't post on Father's day. I had to work. I'm a father, so I felt entitled to take the night off from blogging.)

And the beat(ing) goes on...

2005-06-19T11:51:00.000-05:00

I narrowly avoided a double shift last night.

At about 10:00am or so, the CMT at work called me, waking me up, and asked me to work a double... I was half asleep, so I agreed without thinking about it. However, I couldn't get back to sleep after that, so I ended up going out to the HBPU's place and then to mom and dad's. Mom ended up loaning me the gas card so I could get fuel and smokes, which was extremely cool of her. Eventually, I came home and got ready, then headed to work.

The charge nurse gave me top-hall when I got there, which is the toughest one, in my opinion. Needless to say, since I thought I was going to be there for 14 hours (I was insisting on leaving at 5am instead of 7am), I was decidedly unhappy about this. Fortunately, near the end of the first half, Rocky called and asked if she could pull the overnight shift... by this time, I had dealt with so much crap (literally) I wasn't about to argue with her about it.

Shortly before the shift ended, Larry the P.I.T.A. showed up and started bitching about his mother. (His mom is a resident, and he is a Pain In The Ass.) He followed me into his mom's room, all set to bitch about the condition she was in, and we very shocked (and looked to me to be a bit disappointed) when he couldn't find anything to bitch about. HA! Don't tell ME that I don't do my goddamn job, fucker.

Anyway, shortly after that, I came home and went to sleep... I may not have worked a double, but damnit, I deserved it.

heaves a heavy sigh

2005-06-17T19:27:00.000-05:00

Well, CenturySmell finally got out here this morning to put the new line in. The good news is we now have a separate line for Hal. The bad news is that we are still only logged in at 26.4 Kbps. The problem, it turns out, isn't the line, in the hub that all of the phones in this trailer park run off of.

ARGH!!!!

So, it looks like I won't be doing much in the way of downloading ANYTHING for quite a while... At least until one of my neighbors gets piss drunk and slams his primer-gray/bond-o colored pick-up truck into the hub, at which point, CenturySmell will be forced to replace their grossly outdated equipment.

But I'm not bitter. tee hee.

I finally updated TerriblyWrong.com today. So there is new comics and porn for everybody, as well as a good joke and a good article... But I have no illusions. I know you go there for the comics and porn. We got a nice little piece of JavaScript from one of the fans of the comic-strip that allows you to page thru the old strips using a "next" and "Previous" button. It works great, but let me tell ya that making the code fit into the existing JavaScript on the page was a genuine pain in the ass. It was not unlike doing a 500 piece puzzle with no picture to go by. It was the longest job in the coding this week...

But longer than that was the upload to the server. I'm stuck in nuetral in the information superhighway. It actually took over 14 minutes to upload all the changes. (Yes, I timed it.)

FUCKIN' ARGH!!!!

I went out to visit my family after I finished up the upload. Stopped by the HBPU's place for a cup of coffee and a chat. Sharky is doing yet another cake. a dump-truck this time. I swear to God we are gonna get pictures of all of these up on the web eventually. After that I went to see Mom and Dad... and beg for a few bucks to buy milk and bread for the goombas. Did I mention that the move has really wiped us out? Tomorrow, I'll run out of cigarettes. Food supplies are terribly thin. and we've already put everything but the pennies in the gas tank. bummer, huh?

Anyway, I'm home now. some of the goombas are going to their dad's this weekend, I think. Not sure which ones. Doesn't really make much difference. I'm gonna be working with a small crew all weekend. In other words, "Work, sleep, work, sleep, work, sleep."

I swear that the staffing at these EPSFs is fucking criminal.

The Cliffth of Inthanity!!!!

2005-06-16T01:16:00.000-05:00

(Let's see who get's THAT obscure.)

I know, I know, I know. I've been back online (sort of) for over a week, and I have still not updated TerriblyWrong.com or been posting here on a daily basis like I used to. What can I say? My real life is getting in the way of my online life. Sorry folks.

Work at the Elderly Processing and Storage Facility has been going on the same as it has for the past month. We have little help and the help we have doesn't show up for work half the time. Today it was me who missed a shift (Though not really my faut. I got sent to the hospital for my foot again). I don't forsee my co-works grousing about it too much, even though they are prone to doing just that. It's the only shift I've missed since I started and I usually spend most of my time taking up their slack anyway. Financially, I'm not too worried about the missed hours. I pulled a double last week so that will make up for what I missed today. Still we slowly getting further and further behind in our bills. I'll be testing to get my CNA license back soon, and that means an extra dollar and hour, so that will help.... and it can't come soon enough. I should never have let that certification lapse, even if I didn't think I'd ever be doing this work again. The EPSF has a tendancy towards sucking you back in once you've been gone for a while. Shit, this is the fourth time I've worked at this facility.

I'm slowly learning about the people in my new neighborhood. It turns out that I've worked with half of them at various shit-jobs, mostly at Wal-mart, and the other half are mexicans. *Shrugs* The drama of my neighbors (Kelly in particular) has been keeping me entertained for the last few weeks.

Little else to report. Munchkin is ok. The goombas are ok. I'm ok. You're all ok.

We're all fucking lunatics.

Still plugging along...

2005-06-12T12:20:00.000-05:00

I guess I've gotten spoiled by technology over the years. My very first modem was a 300 baud modem back in the 80s. It was incredibly slow, but that didn't matter back then. Everything was done via local bulletin board systems and there was no internet. There were several steps in between, but going from 56k to DSL, then suddenly being knocked back to 26.4k...

SUCKS ASS!!!

Oh well.

Things are going pretty much as they have been. I'm slowly, but surely, getting back into the swing of things. The next issue of TerriblyWrong.com will be out on Wednesday or Thursday of this coming week... complete with ALL of the comics that Ford has been faithfully writing like there was no break in service. I was off work for the weekend, but didn't get much done. Mostly slept and recuperated. Being a nursing aid is a rough job, and while you wouldn't think it would be, it is terribly rough on the body. Bits of me hurt these days that I didn't even know I had.

Financially, things are still rough. We're working on getting caught up, but it's pretty hard. Seems like every time we get close to paying Peter off, Paul comes up with a brand new expense that we weren't expecting. The fuckers. We're keeping the priorities straight though. Paying back the HBPUs is our top priority, followed by rent, then the utilities. Like I said, we're working on it.

Nothing entertaining or funny going on. Sorry folks. The only truly interesting thing that has happened in the past few days is that the Munchkin went out to Wal-mart the other days and came back with two kittens. They're cute, but anti-social.... kinda like me, in that respect. I went back up today and came home with a 3rd one. Mostly because when the woman who was giving them away handed it to me, it attached itself to my shirt and wouldn't let go. I ended up walking around Wal-mart with the damned hair-ball attached to my chest. I wasn't able to dislodge it until I was about half-way home.

Breaking the long silence

2005-06-09T21:54:00.000-05:00

I'm back! I'm not happy about the method, but I'm back. Let me see if I can explain the trails and tribulations of the past few weeks in a way that makes any fucking sense at all to anybody but me.

When we last left our intrepid hero (that being me), my internet had been shut off, we had found a place to move in to, but didn't have the money to do it, and the situation was generally grim.

Well, it came down to the wire, but we got the money together to move. This was in thanks to the faith of the HBPUs, and a couple of donations from sources that may or may not prefer to remain anonymous. The loan from Sharky and Dennis the Builder was totally unexpected. Given my history, I knew better than to even ask them for a loan. Let it never be said that my family are not good people. They are the best! And anybody that ever says otherwise is going to have to deal with walking around funny cause my boot is up their ass.

Anyway, once that financial hump was out of the was, it was all a mater of getting the stuff physically moved, which was a giant pain in the patooty. We moved almost the entire house in the Voyager™, which was interesting to say the least. The only items that got moved otherwise was the washer and dryer and one of the dressers, Courtesy of Dennis the builder and his brother, The Shapht (Sound out the word, then picture Weird Harold from Fat Albert, but white).

Since the actualy move, it's been a fight to get all of the utilities in place and trying to get caught back up. I've been working like a freakin' dog at the EPSF, to try and get some good size paychecks to get things caught up... Yesterday's shift was 16 hours long, to give you an example.

CenturySmell has been jerking the Munchkin and I around as far as the internet connection goes. FIrst they said we could get DSL, then they said no, then yes, now we're on dial-up, but the line we have won't let us connect at faster than 26.4kbps, which blows goats. They are supposed to eb installing a new, faster line on Monday, but these fuckers ahve been jerking me around for weeks, so I ain't gonna hold my breathe.

Anyway, The upshot is, we're back.

Miss me?

A short report... live from Sharky's place.

2005-05-21T11:13:00.000-05:00

I don't really have the time to do an entire entry here. I just wanted to let my intrepid readers know that thinks are going as they have been. I'm still working as many hours as I can at the EPSF. Munchkin and I are fine and have managed to nail a place down close to work. The rent is MUCH cheaper, but we still have to come up with $675.00 to move in... which we seriously don't have a prayer of pulling off on our own. Planning on going to church tomorrow to beg for a loan, so wish me luck.

On a brighter note, once we are moved at the end of the month (if we can do it), we'll be back online shortly thereafter.

More news from the EPSF...

2005-05-13T08:12:00.000-05:00

As I just explained to the Mad Munchkin, EPSF is what I am now referring to the nursing home as. That's Elderly Processing and Storage Facility. It's catchy... And it sounds better than "Meat-grinder".

Anyway, work was as rough as 3rd shift gets last night. Nobody died, thank God, but we did have a wave of insomnia going thru the building. Upshot of that is that all of the residents on the hall I was working last night were riding their call-lights all goddamn night last night. No rest for the weary. My back hurts. My head hurts. My feet hurt. I smell like old people. I need a shave. I am, decidedly, not a happy camper.

Oh well. At least I'm off work for the next two nights. That'll give me a chance to recuperate, I hope.

As far as housing goes, we have a good news/bad news situation on our hands. Well, scratch that. It's a good news/really fucking atrocious news situation.

The good news is that we found a place. Yay. Hooray for the good guys. We are still the good guys, right? Right. Ok.

The really fucking atrocious news is: #1 It's in Wright City; a town that sucks in ways towns have never sucked before. #2 It's in the worst possible section of Wright City. And #3 we have until the 22nd of May to come up with about $700.00 or so to move into this place... And we don't have a prayer of putting that kind of money together on this short a notice.

*sighs*

Oh! Hey! That reminds me! This week's poll results are in, and I must say, I was FUCKING SHOCKED!!!

The Asshole's Poll of the Week
How much do you make a year?

$80,000 to filth fucking rich

55.6%

$10,000 to $25,000

22.2%

$25,000 to $50,000

16.7%

$10,000 or less

5.6%

$50,000 to $80,000

total votes: 18

As it turns out, well over 50% of the people who are reading about our current plight are what is widely considered to be upper-middle class or above. I have to laugh at this, and at myself, because that means that the majority of readers are actually in a position to help the Mad Munchkin, the goombas and myself, and simply chose not to. That's extremely funny to me on many levels... Mostly because I watch Jerry Springer, too. We all, on some level, enjoy watching people less fortunate then ourselves suffer. God knows I've done it... Come to think of it, since He knows, that probably why we are getting shown very little in the way of mercy these days. *chuckles*

In other words, dear comfortably well-off reader, don't sweat that you're not donating. I'm not. I can totally dig your wave-length on this one. I like to think that one day "The Decline and Fall of an Asshole" will make an interesting book... Or at least a reasonably entertaining one. Enjoy the show!

Mortality, Inc.

2005-05-12T07:48:00.000-05:00

Well, that didn't take very long. Two days on the job and somebody's already dead.

I spent most of yesterday morning and afternoon attempting to catch up on sleep, much to the dismay of the Mad Munchkin. The evening was pretty uneventful right up until I went to work.

I arrived early, as is my custom for most jobs I've had. I like to get a bead on things before I enter the fray. No sooner did I arrive than one of the 2nd shift CNAs (that's Certified Nurses Aid for the uninitiated) walked up to me to tell me that one of the residents was about to pass on. The woman ended up dying about 5 minutes before my shift started, so I didn't get stuck with the actual cleaning of the corpse... however, when the meat-wagon showed up, I will give you three guesses who got picked to load the body onto the gurney and starp in and whatnot. That's right. The asshole himself.

God, I hate dealing with the dead.

Once that was done, the rest of the shift was pretty uneventful. I had my own hall last night, which kind of sucked since I was supposed to be working with someone, but on the other hand, at least the people in charge seem to have confinence in my abilities.

The only major hiccup happened at shift-change when none of the CNAs for 1st shift showed up for work on time. I ended up getting a half-hour of overtime in this morning.

I'm gonna try and sleep for a while before I have to get up and so the weekly. It has to be done, but I'm just too damned tired to do it now.

Just got off work.

2005-05-11T07:20:00.000-05:00

I have just returned from Warrenton Manor after my first shift as an Overnight Nurses Aid. And I must say...

Well, that sucked ass.

I remember now why I stopped working the overnight shift at nursing homes and went to evening shift way back when. It's cause 3rd shift is the worst! There's less staff, You spend all night doing rounds and cleaning up piss and shit, and if that wasn't bad enough, the last two hours, once you are already fatigued, you spend busting your fucking ass getting everybody in the building up for breakfast.

On top of all of that, I had to stay late this morning because apparently, the girls on first shift have a tardiness problem.

Story of my fucking life.

Oh well, I might as well get used to it. This is my life for the foreseeable future.

Still waiting for God...

2005-05-10T17:05:00.000-05:00

I start work tonight. Full time. Nursing Aid work. Overnights. Pay is good, but we still won't have the money we need to keep the utilities on and get moved. But the good news is that in my quest online, searching for a miracle, I found this and laughed my ass off. Enjoy.

Chauvinistic, I know. But still good for a laugh.

33.333333% of a miracle.

2005-05-09T21:43:00.000-05:00

Well, We're part way there... The easy part anyway. Allow me to explain.

I went to the nursing home this morning to fill out my new-hire paperwork, which was extensive to say the least. It was like filling in the blanks in a damn book. God as my witness, the new-hire packet for the nursing home gets a little bit bigger every time I go back there. Anyway, I get there, to fill out the paperwork for being PRN... Just an Brandi is filling out the termination paperwork on a full-time employee on the overnight shift.

Needless to say, I got that, position. The only full-time position I could have taken with The Mad Munchkin's work schedule.

Thank you, God. I appreciate the assist.

Anyway, That gets us part way to our miraculous, spectacular rescue.

All we need now is a place to live (which we sort of, but not really, have a line on) and the money to pay off our bills and actually get in to a place.

When you're living paycheck to paycheck, like we do, and suddenly the paychecks stop coming, it hurts like a motherfucker... Even if the pause is a brief one. My termination from Hell-mart screwed our budget (which was stretched razor-fucking-thin to start with) very, very badly. I seriously don't know how we are going to pull all of this off.

We need the rest of that miracle and we need it very soon. The utilities will start being shut off pretty soon.

This week's poll results, a quiz, and some more general ramblings... Oh, and Happy Mother's Day.

2005-05-08T11:14:00.000-05:00

The results from this weeks poll are in...

The Asshole's Poll of the Week
Which was more frightening?

Flying Monkeys

50%

Oompaloompas

50%

total votes: 20

And I took this quiz this morning. No great shock here, but I guess I shoulda been in church...

You scored as Christianity. Your views are most similar to those of Christianity. Do more research on Christianity and possibly consider being baptized and accepting Jesus, if you aren't already Christian.

Christianity is the second of the Abrahamic faiths; it follows Judaism and is followed by Islam. It differs in its belief of Jesus, as not a prophet nor historical figure, but as God in human form. The Holy Trinity is the concept that God takes three forms: the Father, the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Ghost (sometimes called Holy Spirit). Jesus taught the idea of instead of seeking revenge, one should love his or her neighbors and enemies. Christians believe that Jesus died on the cross to save humankind and forgive people's sins.

Christianity

96%

Judaism

58%

Buddhism

46%

Islam

25%

Hinduism

21%

Satanism

Paganism

agnosticism

atheism

Which religion is the right one for you? (new version)
created with QuizFarm.com

***************************************

Well, Happy Mother's Day to all you mother's out there... and Happy Birthday to my old friend and compatriot Meesh!!! Ol' Meesh turns 27 today, so go visit his LiveJournal and wish him a happy one... or just mail him some geritol. And me too, for that matter.

Yesterday was pretty uneventful. I didn't rain mayhem down on Wal-mart, despite the fact that I really wanted to. Basically all I did was take care of the goombas and watch a movie. I did end up going to Hell-mart to pick up a couple of small items, but nothing to write about...

Actually, there is something to write about as far as Hell-mart goes. The past three visits I've made to the place, I've run into the county coroner every time. I'm not sure of this is a bad omen or what, but I do find it a little disturbing. I don't even like the guy. (And does anybody else find it disturbing that our county coroner moonlights as an ambulance driver?)

No donations or anything like that today. Yesterday's was our largest to date (Thanks again, chief!). I'm thinking that today is going to be spent getting wired on coffee (Which Grandma Munchkin keeps sending us) and getting the house clean.

God, I hate being out of work.

A couple of small glimmers of hope...

2005-05-07T15:15:00.000-05:00

...And here's hoping that the light at the end of the tunnel isn't a freight train.

I finally rode Brandi enough that she gave me a job. Not the one I wanted, but a job nonetheless. I'll be working PRN at a nurses aid. PRN, for those of you who don't know it, means that I will be the "fill in" guy. Somebody calls in, they call me. It's complete and utter bullshit, but at least when a full-time position becomes available, I'll have a better chance than somebody walking in off the street.

Concerning The Voyager™: Well, we got PART of the problem fixed. We needed a new tire on the same side that the CV boot was ripped. The core of the old tire was busted and it's a fucking miracle that we didn't have a blow-out. The guy who changed the tire told me that the CV boot looked like it had been ripped since we bought The Voyager™, so I am a little less pressed about the repair. We just have to be careful.

As far as the house-hunting goes, well, still no luck. But at least I'm going to be getting a paycheck again, which helps. Still, I have no idea how we're gonna afford a security deposit and first and last month's rent. I must have faith that God will provide...

And speaking of which, We got a donation today!!! Woo Hoo! I will protect the anonymity of the donator, however, I will say this much. This individual bought himself a pretty high slot on the links list and may be getting an article written about his blog in next week's issue of TerriblyWrong.com. If He doesn't want anonymity, he can comment. In any case, I wanna say a HUGE thank you. So...

THANK YOU!

Now, on to today's entry.

Goombas #1 and #3 are here for the weekend. The other two are with their Shithead father. They've been behaving ok on and off, except for the meltdown goomba #1 had earlier today. Me on the other hand...

... Last night, I was really bad. The Mad Munchkin came home from work and crashed immediately. After I got the goombas to bed, I went up to Wal-mart. I went to see how everybody was doing, but I had an opportunity for vengeance most sweet. When I arrived, I saw The Bimbo helping a couple of customers at the jewelry counter. She had her back turned, and sitting on the counter, I saw Dawn's notes from the day shift as to what night-shift needed to do. Since she had her back turned, I took the notes. Later, when I'd talked to my buddies and left, while I was in the parking lot, I set the notes on fire.

Score one for the down-trodden working-class.

Where am I going, and why am I in this hand-basket?

2005-05-05T13:15:00.000-05:00

Hey, remember yesterday when I said that the bearings on The Voyager™ were bad, but it was a cheap and easy repair?

Well, I was wrong.

Wrong on so many levels.

I didn't publish an entry earlier today because of it.

The Weekly update of TerriblyWrong.com is late (has yet to be done) because of it.

We are fucked, yet again, because of it.

Ok, so check this out. Right after I did my entry yesterday morning, The Mad Munchkin goes out and takes a look at the driver's side wheel. She comes back in and tells me that the CV boot is ripped to shreds. Well, I don't know what teh fuck a VV boot is, so I ask. She tells me that it covers the CV joint. I don't know what that is eaither, but it sounds vaguely important. So I say, "That's bad. How do we fix it?"

Long story short, I have to go buy a new boot and put it on. Unfortunately, I didn't know it at the time, when I volunteered to fix the fucking thing, The Voyager™ is so damned old that they don't sell a split CV boot for it, and I had to get the solid one. This is a problem, because it means removing the drive-axis from the vehicle before I can replace it. That means removing the wheel.

And the brake.

And a number of other things I have NO FUCKING IDEA HOW TO FIX!!!

Anyway, since there is no way we can afford to get the Infernal Machine fixed professionally, I decided that no matter what, I have to at least attempt to do this "small" repair myself.

So, I go over to Mom's place to do the job in Dad's garage.

That was about 1:00pm yesterday.

So, At about 9:30am this morning, I get the fucking brake put back together, and the wheel back on, with no actualy repairs done. It tirns out that you need a special tool to get the hub-nut off. One that neither myself nor my father have. Fuck.

I get in The Voyager™, start the engine, and begin backing out of the garage, praying that the wheel doesn't fall the fuck off. It seems ound as I back out of the garage. I tap the brake...

...and nothing happens.

I step on it harder, and The Voyager™ comes to a stop. Fuck. I've somehow managed to FUBAR the brake system. Well, that's just fucking great. I knew I'd lost a little brake fluid, but not that much. Fuck.

I decided as I was rolling up the driveway to stop at the HBPU's place and have a cup of coffee before I make The Voyager™ limp home. Sharky seemed to be in reasonably good spirits, though the boys were being terrorist. We chatted for a bit, then I ran a spyware/adware scan on her PC for her. While I was doing that, Mom came in and we all sat and talked for a while.

I managed to get the car to Wal-mart to pick up my last check and some brake fluid. Then came home. I called Aunt Marriedamunchkin and Brandi before I started working on this entry. Aunt Marriedamunchkin informed me that her boss told her that she can't hire me because of my relationship with Munchkin. Fuck. Brandi wasn't at work today, but Lora informed me that my background check has been on her desk for several days at this point and Brandi hasn't asked her for it, which may or may not mean that Brandi is not planning on hiring me. Fuck.

So. Here is the situation as it stands right now.

We have 26 days to find a new place to live.
Our vehicle is fucked.
I still don't have a job (which, believe me, burns my ass like a 3 foot flame).
The odds are stacked against us, and getting greater by the minute.
The situation is grim.

That is all.

2005-05-04T09:18:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was extremely busy. After getting the goombas off to school, I came home to call my P.O. to find out what time my appointment was (I couldn't find the card I had the information written down on. It's in a box somewhere. We lost our lease, remember?). It was 7:55am.

P.O.: This is Joe Peeoh, who's this?
Me: This is Mace, Mr. Peeoh. I know I have an early appointment with you, but I don't remember what time.
P.O.: I have you written down for 8:00am, Mace.
Me: Five minutes? Shit. I'll be there. *click*

I grab The Mad Munchkin and Goomba #4 and head out the door... arriving exactly at 8:00am. Thank Go this town is so damned tiny.

The meeting with my P.O. actually went really well. I managed to catch him in a good mood yet again. I tld him what was going on, to which he commented that I had the worst luck he'd ever seen. I couldn't argue with that if I tried. He basically told me, in a very nice way, to get my shit together and get stabilized. Again, I can't argue with that. We joked around for a bit and talked about the kids, his and ours, and I set out for home again.

Once home, things were pretty uneventful until about noonish. Spent some time with Jon and Munchkin interspered with running spyware and adware scans on Hal. AT noon, I decided to bite the bullet and head up to Flying J Truck Stop to apply for work. One of the managers up there is Munchkins aunt... when you can't rely on your skills to get you work, rely on nepotism.

My arrivial was poorly timed. I found half of the traval plaza in a shambles and construction workers milling about. I located Aunt Marriedamunchkin in a cluster of management types having a meeting on the sales floor underneath a conspicuious pair of legs hanging out of the ceiling. I interupted their meeting and asked if they were hiring. Aunt Marriedamunchkin looked a bit wary, but one of the other managers immediately jumped on me, asking if I minded getting my hands dirty and working outside and such. I told her yes to all, and she then asked if I minded working long hours. I laughed and said, "As long as I'm not on salary, no."

They lead me over to this little computer terminal where I was to fill out my application. There was a line for it. This little old lady with a typing speed of 30 words per hour was on the terminal and there was a little squirrily guy who looked like he'd smoked WAY too much crack to be job hunting ahead of me. I waited patiently. Eventually, the crack-monkey lost patience and It was just me waiting on the stop-motion old lady. 20 minutes later, she finished up, and I started on my application.

This is were my days started to get truly aggrivating. The application process, if you can type, takes about 15 to 20 minutes. At minute 17, just as I was wrapping up, the terminal ate my application. It went completely fucking blank and back to square-one in the middle of me typing. I didn't know what to do, so I walked up to the counter and asked Aunt Marriedamunchkin, who told me to fill it out again.

Crap.

This time, I went through thw whole thing with lightning speed and actually got the thing to save. However, by the time I was done, all of the managers were in a meeting taht looked like it couldn't be easily interupted, so I let them know that I'd finished and left.

From there, I went and hung out with Sharky and her brood until my offsping got home from school. Sharky and I were discussing books. Specifically, The Tightwad Gazette and The Encyclopdia of Country Living. This conversation, I think, spawned from me telling her that I found it ironic that I had moved from a place where I periodically had to slam on my break to keep from hitting a group of kids up to no good, to a place where I had to periodically slam on my breaks to keep from hitting a group of wild turkeys.

My offspring got home from school and I hung out with her for a while. We had a pretty good time playing kick-ball. (Can't call it soccer because for the most part, it was me teaching her not to kick the ball with her toe.) I ate and headed to church.

Abundant Life Church is the church I used to spend the vast majority of my free time at when I was single. Not because I was cruising for a date or anything like that. It's a good church and I like the people there. This week, the were having special services on Monday and Tuesday nights due to the fact that they had a preacher from Zambia in town. Bishop Eddie Mulenga runs a church in Zambia that Abundant Life is closely affiliated with. I'd heard a lot about this guys, so I wanted to meet him.

Again, my arrival was poorly timed. I got to the church parking lot and found several boats in the plaes where cars would eb later. It turns out that the Men's Ministry had just returned from a fishing trip to Mark Twain Lake. Needless to say, I started ribbing the guys about their decision to fill the parking lot with water as opposed to paving it. Fortunately, these guys have a good sense of humor.

Having not talked to these folks in a while, I had to fill them in on the whole "lost my job, lost my lease, lost my marbles" thing. One woman, who shall not only remain nameless, but also aliasless, asked me how Katie was doing. I simply scowled at her until she said "Oh! I'm orry. Forget I spoke." One friend of mine, Tiffy, introduced me to Eddie, who told me that he'd heard of me. ALC had an associate pastor for a long time named Moffat Sinyanza who was a member of his congregation that had very recently returned to Africa from here. Apparent, Moffat spoke highly off me. That's cool. I liked Moffat. He was a riot to hang out with.

With all the preliminary meet-and-greet over with, services started. The music was good as always, then Bishop Eddie took the floor. I won't go into details here, but I will say this. Bishop Eddie Mulenga is truly a man of God. This man is easily the most dynamic and moving speaker I've ever seen in my life, and the message of his sermon spoke directly to a lot of the issues that I have had on my mind and on my heart lately. When services were finally over at 10:00pm (African preachers apparently have an even worse concept of time than their Amercian counterparts) I walked up to the front to say my goodbyes. I shook Eddie's hand and thanks him for the moving sermon, and this skinny little black man with the thick Zambian accent hugged me and told me that I needed to just have faith in The Lord and that things would work out soon and my current trials would be over.

I hugged him back and thanked him again, tell him that his church in Zambia was extremely lucky to have him.

It was then that I looked at my watch and realized that it was after 10:00pm and Munchkin was gonna kick my ass when I( got home. I told her that services would be over around 9:00pm. Oops. When I got home, Munchkin was laying in bed watching TV with Nicole and the boys were in the living room. I asked what was going on and she told me that Jayjay had conned her into letting them stay up until 10:30pm. She figured that if she let them stay up late that they wouldn't give her a hard time at 10:30 when it was time for bed...

...and she was wrong.

The fighting and fussing lasted until about 11:00pm and they two of us dropped off about 10 to 15 minutes after that.

The dreams were truly strange ones.

I woke to the alarm this morning and Munchkin got the goombas off to school. We are now in the (ongoing) process of packing the bedroom up. Also, it seems that the wheel bearings may be going out on The Voyager™, so we spent some time discussing that. Fortunately, if that is what's wrong with The Voyager™, it's a reasonably easy and cheap repair. Everybody keep your fingers crossed.

A bad case of the crazies

2005-05-03T07:14:00.000-05:00

Well, Monday was interesting, to say the very least. Arguing with The Mad Munchkin has continued... No great shock there. There is apparently some kind of hang-up at the nursing home concerning my background check, so in the afternoon, I got dressed in some of my nicer clothing (what there is of it) and went job hunting.

The job market in this little, one-mule town (we aren't large enough to qualify for a horse) is dismal, to say the least. Most of the places I applied yesterday were places where I had friends in management, or at least reasonably high up on the totem-pole, but there is very little that is hiring at the moment. The problem is that our population is growing, but our job-market hasn't caught up yet. Needless to say, I'll be expanding my search to the surrounding towns.

After I wearied of being rejected by The Lieutenants of Industry, I decided, as opposed to heading straight for home and chaos, to go and visit with my sister and then my mother and daughter. Teresa wouldn't be home from school yet, so I had more than enough time to have a cup of coffee with Sharky. Upon arriving, Skarky dropped a bomb on me.

Her and Dennis the Builder are having another child!

Fourth child in four years.

The two of them will henceforth, in this blog, be refered to at the HBPUs. That's Human-Being Production Units.

My GOD those two are fertile!

Anyway, We chatted about that for a while. Sharky is pretty pleased about being pregnant again. They were actually trying this time. Mom knows, but she hasn't told Dad yet, just cause she doesn't want him giving her crap about it. We also discussed my daughter (and the fact that I'm a crappy father) for a while. Shortly thereafter, I went down to Mom's for a while and played some soccer with my daughter (which I suck at, but not as badly as Teresa does). Watched some TV, borrowed some money for gas and came home.

The home front saw some more arguing with The Mad Munchkin and various other forms of chaos. She fell asleep about the same time the goombas did and I followed suit shortly thereafter.

During all of this, I was maintaining a dialogue in the comments on my last entry with a couple of people. Very odd stuff, let me tell you. I was considering doing a seperate entry about it, but that would make for a long one. If you wanna see what was going on, scroll down and click the link.

Anyway, it's now a little after 7:00am. Goombas #1 and #2 are quietly getting dressed for school (#1 has a field trip today which she is terribly excited about). #4 and The MAd Munchkin are both still sleeping. After I drop these two off at school, I get to go to my P.O.'s office and explain to him why I lost my job, why I have to move and why I haven't signed up for my classes yet. This aught to be loads of fun. Wish me luck.

Final Scans

2005-05-01T12:13:00.000-05:00

Special thanks today to Freedom Girland El Borak for recommending the new antivirus software that I've been using for the past few hours or so. It's working great. I'm just wrapping up the last harddrive scan and have come up clean so far. Kudos to both of you!

Krakhaus called me at either midnight or 1:00am last night. I honestly don't remember when, nor do I remember much of the conversation, due to the fact that he woke me up out of a dead fucking sleep. I don't mind, though, really. I owe him that much. Besides, he gave me some usful infomation, though I do not remember all of it. He told me that he'd been reading my blog and that I needed to download a firewall program that was more configurable than the one I've been using. He gave me the name of one, but I'll be damned if I can remember which one it was... but I remembered enough that when I woke up at 4:00am, I downloaded Outpost and am now using it for firewall protection. It seems to be working so far.

As the Trojan War draws to a close, I can relate this much to you folks. The final solution was to "kick it old-school style". A number of the infections were in places in windows that could not be accessed from windows and that the anti-virus software couldn't root out on its own.

Welcome to the DOS prompt.

I've been a geek for longer than I care to think about. Long enough that my first PC OS was NOT windows based. It was MS-DOS 2.11. I still remember most of the commands. So, when I pulled up my DOS prompt, it was a relatively simple matter to go to the files locations and delete them manually.

More good news from DOS land... I freed up an additional 15 gigabytes on Hal's harddrive. It now has 55% free space on it.

The scan is complete. Number of infections detected: 0. None. I win. Take that, you little Greek bastards!

And that, dear readers, if probably the last good thing that is going to happen to me today. I hate Sundays. Can't job hunt, at least, not terribly effectively. House hunting is a lost cause, not that we have any money to do it with anyway. Munchkin is sleeping at the moment, and the goombas aren't home... and of course, when they get home, it's gonna be attitude time, like it always is when they get back fom Shithead's place. I'm not too terribly worried about that, though. You get used to that sort of thing after a while.

Final Spyware/Adware sweep just wrapped up. This system is completely clean.

Hey, it's been a rough couple of months, especially recently.

I'll take my vistories, however small they may be, wherever I can find them.

Oh, and for those of you who didn't catch this on TerriblyWrong.com this week...

Little to Report today...

2005-04-30T13:47:00.001-05:00

Still trying to clean things up on my harddrive. Turns out that this particular group of trojans was carried as a rider on someone's blog. Nice, huh? Anyway, every time I surf the blogosphere, I've been picking it back up, so I've had it with the traffic exchanges. Anybody who wants to read my stuff can just find me the old fashion way from now on.

Speaking of traffic exchanges, I snagged this off of someone else's blog. Don't remember who's, but here it is. Enjoy!

After every flight, Quantas Airline pilots fill out a form, called a "gripe sheet," which tells mechanics about problems with the aircraft. The mechanics correct the problems, document their repairs on the form, and then pilots review the gripe sheets before the next flight. Never let it be said that ground crews lack a sense of humor. Here are some actual maintenance complaints submitted by Quantas' pilots and the solutions recorded by maintenance engineers. By the way, Quantas is the only major airline that has never had an accident.

(P= The problem logged by the pilot.)
(S= The solution and action taken by mechanics.)

P: Left inside main tire almost needs replacement.
S: Almost replaced left inside main tire.

P: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
S: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.

P: Something loose in c o c kpit.
S: Something tightened in c o c kpit.

P: Dead bugs on windshield.
S: Live bugs on back-order.

P: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200 feet per minute descent.
S: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.

P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S: Evidence removed.

P: DME volume unbelievably loud.
S: DME volume set to more believable level.

P: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
S: That's what they're for.

P: IFF inoperative.
S: IFF always inoperative in OFF mode.

P: Suspected crack in windshield.
S: Suspect you're right.

P: Number 3 engine missing.
S: Engine found on right wing after brief search.

P: Aircraft handles funny.
S: Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right, and be serious.

P: Target radar hums.
S: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.

P: Mouse in c o c kpit.
S: Cat installed.

P: Noise coming from under instrument panel. Sounds like a midget pounding on something with a hammer.
S:Took hammer away from midget

The Trojan War rages on...

2005-04-29T02:59:00.000-05:00

The remaining infection on Hal's harddrive has been located, but it's dug in so deep that I have as yet been unable to remove it. The good news is that the spot it is buried in is a part of the harddrive which is seldom accessed.

And now, for the messages to my commenters!

First and Foremost, Hi sis! Yeah, I know that you're going to give me shit about loosing my job, but that's not why I didn't tell you about it. Mom and Dad have enough on their plates without having to worry about me, so if you haven't told them, DON'T! We'll tell them about it after I get a new job, which will happen very soon no matter where the hell it is. I can't be out of work right now and we both know it.

To Doug, Greg S., Raven, Freedom Girl, and the rest of The Usual Suspects (Yes, that's how I've been referring to you guys in conversation): Thanks you all for your advice and encouragement. It's truly appreciated, more than you can realized. This whole thing with looking for work and a place for my family to live and drowning in debt has been causing me fits of despondency, some of which has been evident here, and reading your comments really does make me feel a bit better. Thank you all very much.

To Chana and Amourb4Decor: Welcome to The Diary of an Asshole! Sorry, you haven't exactly caught me at my best moment. If you would go back and read some of the archives, I'm sure you'll find some entertaining stuff. I seem to recall being a pretty funny guy before the Fit hit the Shan, as it were. *shrugs* Oh well, as Henry Rollins once put it, "I'd rather be funny than happy."

To The Complimenting Commenter: Dude, your "pay it forward" idea for blog comments is an awesome one!!! Simple, yet brilliant! For those of you who haven't caught with this fine fellow is doing, he's going around commenting in peoples blogs in the hopes that they will in turn comment in his, as well as visit someone else who has commented in his and comment in theirs. It's a really cool experiment he's doing and I hope it works out for him. I went to his blog earlier and commented to everyone on his list just to help him get a jump on things. I hope it helped.

And now, tonight's entry...

It's been pretty quiet on the home front tonight, except for locating the last hold-outs from The Great Trojan Purge. Munchkin is worrying her tiny little head off about what the hell we're gonna do. The house/apartment hunt is pretty much at a stand-still at the moment. I've got people out there looking for us, and I'm checking the papers and such, but with no work, i.e. no money coming it, it's making things very difficult. I'm trying to be positive and supportive, but there are only so many times I can hear "Are we really going to be alright?" before I begin to have nagging doubts myself...

Negativity is extremely contagious.

I keep telling myself "As long as I keep trying, God will provide." But I gotta tell you, I'm starting to wonder if I've finally pushed The Big Guy too far and he's giving me a You're On Your Own, Kid response. Maybe I have. Or maybe He just has a flare for the dramatic and God is waiting until the last second to send an angel my way. Who knows. Not I. "No one can know the mind of God."

Anyway, Dan (an old buddy of mine who is also a former Wal-Satan employee) came over tonight to help me get a dresser out of the basement. It didn't take much... Munchkin was just too small to lift one end of it to get it up the stairs. Once we had it up, I was able to move it on my own. His girlfriend, Laura, another buddy of mine, is trying to get on over at the new GameStop, but they apparently have a hiring freeze going on... Well, I can cross that stop off my list of "places I need to go put an application in so my life doesn't completely go to hell."

Very little else happened tonight. I watched the Sci-Fi mini-series of Battlestar Galatica, thus getting my geek-fix, and cuddled with, and reassured Munchkin. I eventually fell asleep that way, around 10:45pm or so, then inexplicably woke up at 2:30am, unable to get back to sleep. I surfed for a little while and tried to come up with a way out of the mess I'm in, but to no avail. At least, when I finally DO get work, I can pass a drug test with no problem, so that's a plus. It also opens up some places that I couldn't apply before... Unfortunately, most of them aren't hiring right now.

In any case, I need to do the following, in order.
1) Pray for a miracle.
2) Find work.
3) Pray for a miracle.
4) Find someplace for Munchkin and the goombas and I to live.
5) Pray for a miracle.
6) Get some of my outstanding debts paid off.
7) Pray for a miracle.
8) Get some of my health brought out of the downward spiral it's in.
9) Pray for a freakin' miracle!!!

I'm sensing a trend here.

An apparent victory...

2005-04-28T10:31:00.000-05:00

Well, My last 3 scans (using different programs each time) came up clean. I've apparently beaten this particular wave of trojans... they were legion. However, I'll be keeping a close eye on things as I don't doubt that there is still something hiding on poor Hal's drive somewhere, laying in wait.

I haven't heard back from Brandi yet about the job. I'm not worrying just yet, but I did take some time during the scans to look thru the wantads while I was waiting, and I realized something. I'm almost completely fucking unemployable. The skills that I do have are of little use in the job market, and the few jobs that I did qualify for are way too far out of range for me to drive to on a daily basis. And they didn't pay that well to begin with.

Crap.

This is the real problem when you screw your life up early on in the game. Our society isn't real big on second chances. Not that I blame them. Hell, I'm not real big on second chances. But when you spend 10 years being a complete and total fuck-up, even after you pull up out of the nose-dive you life has taken, it's damned near impossibly to gain altitude again. I've been clean for almost 2 years, but my drug years will haunt me for the rest of my days. The bad credit. The constaint changing of jobs and long periods of unemployment... To quote the Violent Femmes, "I hope you know that this will go down on your perminent record."

I don't know what I'll do if Brandi is unable to hire me.

I'm too damned old to turn to a life of crime again.

Electronic woes

2005-04-28T08:14:00.000-05:00

Ok, The good news is that CenturySmell apparently has a large backlog of work to do and haven't gotten around to disconnecting our DSL account yet.

The bad news is that my computer, Hal, is thuroughly getting his hardrive kicked by this trojan horse. I've been waging a battle against it for a day now, and it is a battle. I gain ground. I loose ground. I eliminate a division of infected files in one area, and a battlion of new ones show up in another.

I'm headed back to the front. Wish me luck.

More crap... and poll results.

2005-04-27T18:24:00.000-05:00

Well, today started pretty good. Once all the publishing was done and we got the kids of to school, Munchkin and I spent some alone time together then I ran my application up to the nursing home. Unfortunately, while I was there, Brandi informed me that she had inadvertantly let it slip to Sharky that I had been let go rom Wal-mart. I hadn't told my family intentionally because I didn't want them worrying. I'm job hunting and will find work before the end of the week, one way or another. My family has enough problems without having to worry about me too.

Anyway, I came home, and shotly there after, Munchkin and I decided to lay down for a nap. She dozed off, but I couldn't sleep worth a crap, so I got up and started surfing the net...

That was when all hell broke loose.

Somehow, a Trojan Horse got past my firewall and installed all variety of nastiness on poor old Hal's harddrive. I cleaned what I could, and ran the scanner seveal times, and finally slept for a bit. When I awoke, Munchkin had cleaned up the house some, and I had to break the news to her about the harddrive.

See, here is where the problem lies. In order to finalize the repairs, I have to restart Hal. If I restart Hal, we have to disconnect from the net. If we disconnect from the net, we may (and probably will) loose our internet connection.

SO that's why I'm posting now. I have to put up a new poll quickly before I restart, beacuse I'm not going to get a chance to later. Also, I hope that the "post by mail" thing still works... otherwise, if you folks don't hear from me for quite a while, you know what happened.

And now, the results of last weeks Weekly Poll...

Is it ok to tell a "Little white lie" to your
mate if you KNOW that said lie will make them happy?

Answer	%	Votes
Yes, as long as it has nothing to do with infidelity.	47.4%	9
Yes, as long as it's not harmful to anyone.	21.1%	4
No, and you should lie by omittion either.	15.8%	3
No, Lying is always bad no matter what it's about.	15.8%	3

total votes: 19

The calm before the storm

2005-04-27T06:45:00.000-05:00

Before I actually start this particular blog entry, I want to thank everyone who's been commenting here for their kind thoughts, words, and advice. You've all been a great help. I'm planning on contacting an attorney about a possible case against Wal-mart, Inc. I've been checking my comments with great frequency, though not responding. I'm sorry about that, but there is so much I want to say to each of you who've been so supportive that I really don't know where to start or how to condense it. So, Kudos to all of you!

And now, the daily wrap.

Yesterday was actually not bad at all. Jon is spending the week with his dad and Zach, so we only have Nicole and Jayjay, and they are both in school. That means that The Mad Munchkin and I had the house to ourselves for a while yesterday. We spend some quality time together and did the whole "closeness" thing. I think it was pretty good for us, consider all the stress we've been under. It's really the first time we've been able to do this is quite a while.

Around noonish or so, I called Warrenton Manor Nursing Home. Lora, an old friend of mine, answered the phone. I asked Lora if she still had my application on file. She told me that she did, but for some reason, Brandi, the D.O.N. had it. She transfered me and I talked to Brandi, who told me that she didn't know what she had done with the application, but she had taken it to check my elligability for rehire. She said that there was no problem with my elligability, but there were only two positions available. Both on 2nd shift. One full-time, one part-time. I told Brandi that I would have to take the part-time position because I was going to have to work around Munchkin's schedule. She told me that there were other applicants and that she would be making a decision this week, so I needed to get my application in. Looks like i'm gonna have to count on nepotism to get this job. See, Brandi has worked with me before, so she knows I'm good, but she is also a friend of Sharky's and her husband is Dennis The Builder's employer. I'm keeping my finger's crossed that this will work for me, not against me.

Anyway, I went up, got a fresh application, and talked to a couple of people in the office. While I was there, I had a brilliant idea for an invention, which I will discuss at length once I've talked to the patent office. I brought the application home and have to turn take it back to the nursing home in a few hours.

I came home, spent some more time with Munchkin. Eventually, the gombas got home and I ended up falling asleep for a few hours. I woke up around 9:30pm or so, just before said goombas were getting ready for bed. They didn't give Munchkin a hard time about going to bed, so I didn't have to get involved much.

Spent some more time with Munchkin, started coding TerriblyWrong.com's weekly update, and talked to Meesh's Pumpkin, and to Trashman who was doing this wek's article. During the coding process, Munchkin was starting to stress-out about the bills and the move and me being currently unemployed and needed comforting. I logged out and cuddled up with her so she could sleep and I ended up falling asleep myself until 4:30 this morning.

I woke up, got some coffee and started writing and coding what, in my opinion is, THE BEST ISSUE OF TERRIBLYWRONG.COM TO DATE!!! I highly recommend checking it out.

That brings us up to speed. Munchkin is getting the goombas ready for school as we speak. I have an appication to fill out and at some point, I need to do the first entry in my newest addition to the blogosphere, The Memoirs of an Asshole. This one is going to be stroies from my past... mostly from my "drug days" (or daze, as the case may be). Look for a notice that it's been started on this blog in the near future.

Testng a theory

2005-04-26T08:13:00.000-05:00

This is just to see if I can still post once I no longer have HTTP access to blogger. I know that our CenturySmell account has gone tits-up, so it's a matter of days, maybe minutes before this is the only way I can post. Welcoem to blogging via Outlook Express!

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...

2005-04-26T04:19:00.000-05:00

Well, the thumb is healing nicely, but things have gotten significantly worse. After getting very little sleep today due to the fact that my personal life is blowing up in my face, I got up to go to work. The Mad Munchkin drove me in, and things seemed to be going ok to start with. That fat, pineapple-eating piece-of-shit general manager, Don, had his Monday night meeting, which was surprisingly short, then we got our crew assignments.

As I was leaving to go out onto the sales floor, Don called me into the office. When I got in, I saw that there were 2 other managers there, Dawn and Larry. Uh oh, I thought, he brought back up. Don asked me to sit down and then started talking about my attendance and job performance. Long story short...

I got fired.

Anyway, I started walking home. It was cold and rainy and I had no coat with me. As I got up to the intersection, a car pulled to a stop. It was Tammy from the Lawn and Garden department. She gave me a ride home and when I got here, I broke the news to Munchkin.

I'm going up to apply for work at the local nursing home tomorrow morning. I should get the job. The Director of Nursing up there is a family friend and I have several years worth of experience, so it shouldn't be a problem... on the other hand, if anybody could fuck this up, it would be me.

Wish me luck.

And donations.

We still have to move and it's gonna be REALLY tight.

Oh, one more thing before I go. My DSL is going to be getting shut off soon. Probably in a matter of hours. If CenturySmell holds true to form, they will kill the login account and not the line itself, which means I will still be able to get e-mails and publish TerriblyWrong.com, at least for a little while. If the "mail in" option on blogger is worker, I should be able to post to this blog as well... keep us in your prayers.

A letter to an unsung hero.

2005-04-24T11:40:00.000-05:00

Dear Mr. Right Thumb,

It seem, dear friend, that I have taken you for granted for many years. I never realized how valuable your services were until recently when I was deprived of them. You've done so much for me and I have hardly noticed. When my car broke down, it was you who stuck you head out into the road to try and get a ride. It was you who allowed me to keep a grip in things, be it tools, food, or anything else. It was you who put the necessary spaces in all of my correspondence. You and your 4 assistance carried me through many a "lonely night" without ever complaining. I've never even thought twice about you.

My dear friend, since that accident took your use temporarily away from me, I've developed a new appreciation for you. Your 4 assistance have tried to tow the line in your absence, but they just cannot do what you do for me. Thinking about it, it amazes me how much I've relied on your opposition to them... Your always going a different direction than they to achieve the same goals. You are truly this bodies unsung hero.

They tell me that you will only be out of commission for a few days. I cannot wait for you to return to us. Neither can our other friend. He is already growing impatient. I promise that when you return to work, you will be treated with much more respect then you were previously.

Sincerely,
Mace

P.S. - We've attempted to out-source some of your work to your brother and his friends, but they just can't do the job that you and your team do. I look forward to benching them when you return.

Nine digits and counting

2005-04-23T05:14:00.000-05:00

With God as my witness, some days it seems like if I didn't have bad luck, I'd have no luck at all. About 20 minutes after my last post, I was back at work moving a palette of stereos when...

*CRUNCH!*

My right thumb gets smashed between the handle of the palette-jack and a metal bin full of cheap DVDs. Fuck. I examined my injury and determined that I couldn't bend the thumb, and there seemed to be a rather unnatural looking "dent" in it. I also determined at this point that it hurt like a motherfucker!!! I paged for a manager and both Dawn and Jeffrey came to Electronics. After a short discussion, we decided that it would be best if I went to the ER and got an x-ray done.

Crap.

So, Jeffrey goes and grabs a stack of papers and we fill out the accident report, which I had to sign with my left hand... In other words, they're just gonna have to take my word for it that I can sign my name under normal circumstances. At that point, we go out to Jeffrey's car and he drives me to the hospital. The ride there was interesting to say the least. Old Jeffrey is quite the character. During the ride to the hospital, I learned more about the man than I ever wanted to know. Including the following:

Jeffrey has been with his "partner", Jason, for 3 years.
He's cheated on said partner 5 different times.
The forth time he did it, he got the clap, and blamed it on Jason's infidelity.

I was relieved to get to the ER.

Once I got in to the ER, things went pretty quickly. They x-rayed me and determined that I had not broken my thumb, which is what I had figured. I have really thick, dense bones. They also determined that I needed to keep the thumb immobilized for "a while". As they were discharging me, the doctor said "I'm putting down that you can't work until the 26th."
I said, "No, you're putting down that I can return to work tomorrow, unless you want to pay my bills."
The doctor said, "Workman's Comp will cover that."
I laughed and said, "Doc, have you ever tried to get money out of Workman's Comp? It takes forever and my bills are due now. Just sign the papers and we don't have a problem."

The doctor sighed and signed off for me to go back to work on light duty tomorrow night under the condition that I make a follow-up appointment with the company's doctor in a few days. He then put a splint on me (which is making it take about 5x as long to type this as it normally would.) gave me a vicoden and my papers and sent me on my way.

I gave Jeffrey the paperwork and the rundown and we headed back towards Warrenton. During the drive back, we chatted and during the conversation, he reached up and started pushing buttons on what I thought was the clock in his car.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
Jeffrey replied, "playing with my dick."
"WHAT!?!"
Jeffrey starts laughing and explains what he meant. When he first bought the car, he read the owners manual. The Manual referred to the instrument panel he was messing with as the "Driver Information Center" and in parenthesis next to the name was "D.I.C.".
I got a good hearty laugh out of this. He said that now when I got back to work, I could tell everyone that I'd seen his D.I.C... I said, "No, I think I'll pass, but thanks."

I can see now why Jeffrey got so pissed when Jason wrecked his car. The thing had every bell and whistle known to man on it. The D.I.C. could tell him what kind of gas mileage he was getting, how far he could go with the gas he had, what the temp and direction were, the works. Not to mention the OnStar and the on-wheel stereo controls. I'd have been pissed if it got wrecked too.

Jeffrey dropped me off at The Voyager™ and I came home. It is now 6:10am... I started this entry a little after 5am. Munchkin and Nicole are still asleep And I will be joining them shortly.

Man, this splint in gonna make jerking off really tough.

Night of the living Exs

2005-04-23T01:18:00.000-05:00

I'm sensing a zombie theme in my titles of late... Wonder why that is? Anyway today could only be described as profoundly uneventful for the most part. Munchkin and I were both sick, her with stomach distress and me with that tension-headache that I've had for forever. I surfed, did some changes and additions to the template, added the weekly poll, and slept for a while.

It was when I got to work that things got interesting. (I'm home on lunch right now). We had a heavy freight night for starters. I didn't get the exact numbers, because when I was in the meeting where I get the numbers, I go called out to the floor because the CSMs couldn't be bothered to put anybody in my department after Cory and Lance, aka Tweedle-asshole and Tweedle-shithead, buggered off early leaving the department unmanned.

That wouldn't have been so bad, but we also had customers as far as the eye could see. The last few hours have been a nightmare.

On a more entertaining note, during the course of the last 4 hours, I've seen no less then 8 women in Wal-mart who are either exs of mine or one-night-stands from ages past. And every last one of them stopped to say "hi" and comment on how much weight I've lost. Really, I coulda never seen any of them ever again and been perfectly happy (No, Phillygirl, you're not on that list... In fact, I didn't even count you among the 8). Oh, Phillygirl did pop in while picking up some paint to let me know how the move was going. She was having some "sponge painting issues" along with the problems she was having with... nevermind, not gonna talk about that. Check out her blog if you wanna know more.

I finally came home for lunch, leaving Stephen to cover my department. I'm hoping he will have actually gotten some work done by the time I get back to work.

I need to head back to work, but there is one other thing I wanted to mention before I go. I was looking at my Geo-loc and I realized that I've only got 2 spots from the US where I'm read... but apparently, this blog is HUGE in places like Denmark. The german readers I've gotten to know pretty well. :-D

New addition to the sidebar.

2005-04-22T14:15:00.000-05:00

I added a poll (internal link) to the sidebar. Please take the time to vote.

We will NOT negotiate with terrorists!!!

2005-04-22T01:52:00.000-05:00

I finally got the Munchkin to scoot over onto her own side of the bed and got to sleep at about 6:00am this morning. Had a nightmare while I was asleep about getting into an accident with The Voyager™ because my right foot was stuck in the passenger side door... Sometimes, my subconscious mind even amazes me with it's stupidity.

I awoke from this at about 9:00am. Munchkin was out getting the few of the bills that we can pay mailed off. She came home shortly thereafter and I left to pay my court costs at the Warren County Justice Center. I got there, told them who I was and what I was there for. I then waited for 30 minutes will the insipid idiot working the front desk searched for a file that should have taken him all of 45 seconds to find. The original plan had been to pay the court costs so that I wouldn't have to go back to court on May 2nd for it... Now I'm gonna show up just to make sure my account got credited. This, dear readers, if why I am DEAD SURE that there are no vast government conspiracies. The people who work in government in general tend to rise to their own peek level of incompetence, then remain there.

After a couple of errands, I came home. The e plan had been to get a few more hours sleep since I'd only gotten 3 hours this morning. Didn't happen. The meds that Munchkin is taking tend to knock her the fuck out, and since Jon was up and about, I had to stay awake to watch him. She finally woke up around 3:00pm and at that point, I decided that it was time to head over to mom's to see my daughter.

The visit with my whelp went well. She's doing well in school now and got her paperwork for the 2nd grade today and is extremely excited about it. We hung out for a bit and I talked to my dad for a little while... Long enough to borrow his lawnmower.

Needless to say, it started raining on my way home.

I got home and Munchkin informed me that she had one more bill that she forgot to pay and was going to do so. I started to settle in to watch TV when Nicole, apparently the only 10 year old, redheaded, white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant member of the fucking Al Queda, decided that she was not going to let mommy leave without her. After a few minutes of Munchkin and our local suicide bomber arguing and Munchkin chasing her around The Voyager™, it was time for me to step in. I went outside and chased Nicole in to the kitchen. Munchkin told her to go to her room, and she refused to do so, at which point, I picked up said goomba and carried her to her room.

What ensued at this point was a Three Mile Island class melt-down. There was yelling, screaming, furniture being kicked, grenades going off, 747s smacking into office buildings, etc.

Eventually, Munchkin got back from paying the aforementioned bill and went into Nicole's room to cool her out. With that done, I was able to finally get my nap in. It was almost 8:00pm.

At 10:00pm, I was awakened by Jayjay, who has apparently been training to be the next Unibomber, refusing to go to bed. He was yelling, screaming, carrying on, making letter-bombs, etc. This one I flatly refused to get involved in. The Munchkin managed to take care of this one all by her little lonesome. I was pretty impressed.

Munchkin and I spent some quality time together, and she eventually fell asleep. I surfed for a bit, found the article which I linked to in my previous entry. And after a little while, was overcome by an ungodly craving for jelly-beans, which precipitated yet another trip to Wal-mart. After which, I started this entry.

A side note: Every freaking time I got in the car today, the radio, at some point during my drive, played The Who's "Behind Blue Eyes". Not sure that it has any significance, but I'm gonna post the lyrics anyway.

No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes

No one knows what its like
To be hated
To be fated
To telling only lies

But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be

I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free

No one knows what it's like
To feel these feelings
Like I do
And I blame you

No one bites back as hard
On their anger
None of my pain and woe
Can show through

But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be

I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
Thats never free

When my fist clenches, crack it open
Before I use it and lose my cool
When I smile, tell me some bad news
Before I laugh and act like a fool

If I swallow anything evil
Put your finger down my throat
If I shiver, please give me a blanket
Keep me warm, let me wear your coat

No one knows what its like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes

This is so stupid, it has to be shared.

2005-04-22T01:33:00.000-05:00

Check out this article on the (no shit) Unitarian Jihad.

I've decided that my Unitarian Jihad name will be Brother Inspired Mace of Patience.

Night of the Living Leftovers

2005-04-21T04:44:00.000-05:00

Shortly after I finished my last post... actually, just as I was wrapping it up, Munchkin came home. She had gone to the local Urgent Care clinic because her chest was hurting really badly (congestion and suchlike). She came back with Zythromax (The antibiotic from hell), as well as Zoloft and Xanex. Yay! I'm hoping that these will help with her depression. Also, while she was there, my sister, who was the LPN on duty at the Urgent Care clinic, fixed Munchkin's ear.

Anyway, after I got the rundown of all of this, I hopped into The Voyager™ and headed over to see my daughter. Upon arriving, I found that my daughter was out with Bubblehead (her mom), and that I had wasted the trip. Oh well. I figured as long as I was there, I would pop in on Sharky (my sister, the afforementioned LPN) and grab a cup of coffee. Sharky maked the best coffee. The kind that melts the spoon if you try to stir ANYTHING into it. I get there, grab my some coffee and I see that there are chinese food leftovers sitting on the counter. I asked if they were up for grabs. Sharky tells me to have at them. At that point, Dennis The Builder (my brother-in-law) and I get into a discussion about the General Tsu's chicken from this place. He says that it tasted like someone had gone and gotten KFC and dumped General Tsu's sauce on it. I tasted it, and damned if he wasn't right. It was good though.

Anyway, I have a pleasant visit and then came home. The goombas were being relatively well behaved, right up until about 9:30pm when it was time for bed, at which point the horns and pointed tails came out. Heads were spinning around, pea soup was being vomited up, the works. I eventually had to go to Wal-mart to cool down before I decided to cook one of the older children for tomorrow night's dinner.

I came home to find that the older two were still awake, laying in their beds, but Munchkin and Jon were both fast asleep. I got Nic and Jayjay to quiet down and they eventually dozed off while I was surfing the blogosphere for credits. I talked to Ford for a little while... mostly discussing the virtues if the hot redhead on Mythbusters (On the Discovery Channel. Check local listings). Around midnight, I headed back to Wal-mart to get my check. Talked to Christine and Stephen while I was up there. I think that they will end up getting back together. I also talked to Laura in the toy department, who talked me into meeting her and a bunch of the other wal-mart folks up at Denny's.

Upon arriving at Denny's, I sat down at a table with Ashley and Cary (a couple that I work with. Good folks), and Trevor and Lisa. The waitress came over to take orders. I ordered water (money's really tight, remember?). When the waitress brought the Ashley's salad, she realized that she had ordered the wrong kind. A garden salad instead of a side salad. She starts taking some of the salad off of her plate and putting it directly on the table. I chided her for making more work for the waitress and scooped the salad up onto a plate. Ashley says, "well, you might as well eat it now."

Don't need to tell me twice. I ended up eating it, plus left over fries and half a club sandwich that Lisa didn't want. By the time Laura nd Vicki showed up, I was stuffed. I sat with them and their friend Tammy while they ate, and we discussed death, of all things. Vicki seems to think that I have a bright future as a mortician. Greaaaaat... The conversation eventually turned to broken noses and such, and Vicki started handing me left-over onion-rings, which I munched gratefully, dispite the fact that I had already eaten. Eventually, we all headed out, I stopped and filled up the gas tank on The Voyager™ and headed for home, to discover that Munchkin had woken up after I left and was wondering where the hell I was. I snuggled with her for a bit and was getting ready to sleep when the phone rang. It was our friend Kelly, who was on break at work. She was gambling that we'd still be up. She was down and needed someone to talk to. Misery loves company. I talked to her for a moment, then handed the phone off to Munchkin so I could go to the can. It was there that I realized that I had forgotten several very important items at Wal-mart, including Imodium AD, dog food, and paying George the Maintenance Midget back the $5.00 I owed him... So back to Wal-mart I go.

I get there, talk to Stephany (one of the cashiers) for a bit, get my stuff and realize that I've forgotten my discount card, so I walk back through the store to ask Becca (yet another co-worker) if I can borrow hers. She agrees, under the condition that I don't pick on her naymore. I tell her that I can' make any promises. I'll try not to, but sometimes I just open my mouth and a joke at her expense comes out. (you'd have to know Becca to get that). I get the card, get my stuff, get the card back to Becca, get Midget the 5 spot I owe him and head for home.... only to find that Everybody has already fallen back to sleep and my space on the bed is now occupied by the Munchkin.

Therefore, I blog.

Untitled

2005-04-20T17:17:00.000-05:00

I'm pretty well operating on autopilot at this point. Work for the past two days have been extremely boring. The most interesting thing that has happened is that a young couple, Stephen and Christine, both friends of mine, have broken up. Christine has been trying to get Stephen to come back to her, but he's not sure he wans to. They have both come to me for advice.

Christine asked me exactly what she had done wrong in the relationship... well, sadistic prick that I am, I told her. She was in tears within the first 45 seconds of me speaking. Basically it came down to her being too demanding, and by the time Stephen developed any kind of backbone to stand up to her, he thought it was too late to change things, so he dumped her.

Guess you had to be there.

Other than that, not much going on. Trying to find a new place to live... with no money, that's a real trick.

Depression has most definately settled in.

Chaos, Disorder, Panic, and other daily staples of the Mace Diet Plan

2005-04-18T19:24:00.000-05:00

In the comments on a previous post, Tasha asked the question "What else bad can happen to you?"

Tasha, if you were here right now, I would kick your ass for tempting fate like that. I love that you read me on a regular basis, but you just had to thumb your nose at fate for me.

Now, for the explanation of the bad news.

-----=====*****=====-----

Munchkin is off work today which means I get to have a decent amount of sleep, allegedly. During the morning hours, our land-lady, The Nitwit, called to let us know that she was going to be coming by the house tomorrow with the new lease for us to sign. We knew that our rent was going to increase a little bit, but I figured it wouldn't be much considering the fact that this house is falling apart around us. I laid down around 11:00am, but had the damnedest time falling asleep... I figure I actually dozed off around noonish.

At a little after 5:00pm, CST, I woke up to the goombas fighting over the TV in the living room. This is not an unusual occurrence. I found Munchkin sitting at the computer desk with a large stack of papers and a worried look on her face. She was trying to work out the budget we need to go on with the new work schedules and in here depressed, worry-wart state, had come to the conclusion that we couldn't make it. I told her that it would take a little belt tightening, but we'd be fine. She continued to stress about it, but put the papers down like I'd asked her to. I have her home so she can relax, not get more stressed.

I laid back down, and literally seconds after I dozed off, I woke back up to Munchkin freaking out. I asked what was wrong and she told me that she'd just gotten off the phone with The Nitwit.

Our rent is going up almost $300.00 a month!!!

It turns out that The Nitwit, moron that she is, got it in her head that she could get $785 a month from NECAC for this place. What she fails to realize is that this place will never pass a state inspection. I called her and tried to explain to her that she couldn't get a state contract for this place without dumping a bunch of money into it first and that we could not afford to pay what she wants for the place. She wouldn't listen. She started talking about how much people in this area were paying for rent. What she failed to take into account was that every house in this neighborhood is in better shape than this one. Anyway, the upshot of all of this is...

We have to move.

Needless to say, we can't afford to move. The budget is stretched so tight it is absolutely unreal. After I got off the phone with The Nitwit, I decided to take a proactive (God, I hate that word) approach toward all of this and head over to Kelly's to find out how much she is paying for her trailer at Orchard Farm Park, and go to see my buddy Clint to find out how much he was paying at Adora Estates. I also planned to go see my daughter after those two stops.

Neither of them were home.

Crap.

I headed over to my mom's place and on the way in, stopped by my sister's house to see if she had a copy of this weeks local paper. She didn't, but when I got there, she informed me that Luke, my daughter's half-brother, has head lice. She called the school and asked them to check Teresa for them, but never heard back.

I headed down to my mom's from there and when I arrived, the first words out of her mouth were, "Your daughter got sent home today with head-lice." Oh, great, there's some good news. I grabbed mom's copy of the paper, told my daughter that I loved her and left. I can't afford to carry lice into this house to, so I couldn't stay and visit.

When I arrived home, I found Munchkin standing in the front yard explaining to the goombas that we were going to have to move. They didn't have a problem with it.... But I do. I hate moving and I can't think of a single way that we're going to be able to afford to move, even if Munchkin goes back up to full time, short of selling some of my body parts, someone else's body parts, my soul, robbing a bank, or winning the lottery (which would be extremely difficult since I don't buy tickets).

Long story shot...

We're doomed.

Lead me not into temptation... I can find it all by myself.

2005-04-18T07:23:00.000-05:00

Munchkin came home for lunch yesterday, and I convinced her to not go back to work. She was stressing out and hadn't had a chance to spend any time with Zack this weekend, and I desperately needed a couple of extra hours of sleep, which I got.

I woke up at about 9:15am. The goomba exchange happened while I slept. Munchkin had dinner (breakfast?) ready for me. Lemon herb chicken and tater-tots. *grin* I ate, got dressed and headed off to work.

It was a light freight night, but work wasn't that bad last night. My co-workers kept me thoroughly entertained. First of all, I got to my department and discovered that in the next department over, sporting goods, there were free doughnuts on the counter (hence the title of this post). Needless to say, I consumed some. A few minutes later, I was working some of my freight when to teenage boys walked by. I inhaled and the smell of them nearly knocked me the fuck over. They reeked of marijuana. I followed them to the automotive department and cornered them.
"You boys have any money?" I said in my angriest voice.
They both nodded.
"Show it to me."
The taller boy began to object, but I shouted, "DO IT!" and a wad of bills appeared in the shorter boys hand.
"Good," I said. "Now you two boy march your staggering asses over to the household cleaners department, buy some Febreeze™, take it outside and hose yourselves down with it."
The taller boy was getting indignant at this point. "Why the fuck should we do that?" He asked.
"Because, you idiot, we have cops come through here all the fucking time and you both reek of pot smoke. Unless you want to get busted and spend the night in holding, you'll do what I'm telling you to."
The shorter boy had a sudden look of gratefulness on his face. He realized that I was doing this for their own good and not just to be a dick. He said to his friend, "Damn, I didn't even think about that. Let's roll."
They left the department post-haste.

About 15 minutes later, the boys reappeared in the electronics department, both smelling April Fresh. Not a word was spoken about our previous exchange.

I fucking hate teenagers.

I continued to work until 1:00am when I came home for lunch. I found that the kids had climbed into bed with Munchkin after she'd fallen asleep. So much for a lunch-time quickie. I ate my lunch, checked my mail and comments and headed back to work. Shortly after arriving back at work I heard something on Wal-Mart Radio that will haunt me for the rest of my days and make me vomit once a day for the rest of my life...

Lisa Marie Presley singing Don Henley's "Dirt Laundry".

Badly.

EXTREMELY badly.

Don't get me wrong here, I am not a huge Don Henley fan, but that is a decent song. I even own a copy of it. Lisa Marie fucking slaughtered it. It was a musical travesty.Considering who her parents were, I have to ask myself how the hell that woman managed to end up ugly and completely untalented. Being forced to listen to this song was the equivalent to auditory rape, in my opinion. I ended up picking up the phone and hitting the page button and putting the phone down for 2 minutes half way through just to shut down the noise that this idiot woman was making.

Now, as far as my comment that my co-workers were keeping me entertained, I will explain. First of all, I spent most of the night hanging out with Laura from toys, who's a laugh a minute, once you get her going. She was in a good mood at when she got to work last night, so she was already off to a good start with the jokes when the shift started. But she wasn't the most entertaining thing going on...

We have a new woman on the shift as of 3 days ago named Cindy. She's a 35 year old single mother of five children and one grand-child. She's a little on the plain side, but as compared to most of the rest of the women we work with, she's great looking. Nowhere near as good looking as my Munchkin, but then, I got the pick of the litter, so to speak. Being new to the store, she hasn't really gotten her bearings yet and hasn't clicked with any of the cliques on 3rd shift (Yes, there are Wal-mart cliques. Sick, ain't it?)

We also have a guy named Kevin who started three weeks ago. The guy is a fucking idiot. He started out his first day by insulting repeatedly a guy named Jason that is pretty well liked by everybody at work. This didn't win him any points. He later that same night started claiming he was some kind of super-hacker while he was in the break-room and started spouting off complete gibberish trying to pass it off as computer-talk. Unfortunately for him, he was sitting at the table with me and Jeff. I'm no sloutch when it comes to computers, but Jeff is a freakin' genius. We both called him on his trash talking. This lost him even more respect. At this point, the moron has no friends on 3rd shift.

Well, at some point, Cindy let it slip in conversation that she was single. Kevin found out about this and started following Cindy around like a little lost ugly puppy. At one point, Quinn walked up to me and asked me, "Dude, who's the new chick and why's she hanging around with that dick?"
I responded, "Her name is Cindy, and I suspect it is not intentional."

At about 4:45am, long after Kevin had followed Cindy into the training room to do CBLs (Computer Based Learning... How we get trained), I poked my head in to see if everything was copasetic. Everything was fine. About 10 minutes later, Cindy showed up in Electronics. I gave her some fresh blades for her box cutter and commented that Kevin had been following her a lot. She looked uncomfortable. I told her that Kevin apparently had it pretty bad for her and we all thought it was kinda funny. She said "Well, I don't." I told her that she should just ignore him and she told me that he wanted to give her a ride home in the morning. She then exclaimed, "I would rather walk than ride with that creep!" I chuckled, but she followed it up by asking me for a lift home. I asked her where she lived and she told me that it was on the other side of town.... A little out of my way. I suggested that she ask Kim for a ride since it was on her way. She thanked me and went off to ask Kim, who agreed to run her home.

Anyway, That is the story. I got home at 7:00am and sat down here to post.

I feel Like Cheddar Cheese... Shredded and in a plastic baggie.

2005-04-17T13:26:00.000-05:00

As you may have guessed from the tone of my last entry, my night pretty much sucked ass. I still had a tension headache (which is showing no signs of going away between now the Second Coming) when Munchkin got home from work. I attempted to take a power-nap after she got home, but had the damnedest time actually getting to sleep. The amount of sleep I actually got could have been timed with the little shitty hour-glass that comes in the Yahtzee!™ box. Needless to say, I was pretty freakin' cranky when I got to work.

When I got to the Electronics department, I discovered that I had a full palette of freight waiting for me. Upon examining it, I realized that every piece on the palette was marker for week 15 (This is week 11 or 12, I think) and had to go into storage. Needles to say, this really pissed me off. The unloaders had their heads up there asses yet again. Shortly afterI made this discovery, one of the unloaders came with another palette full of week 15 freight.... But this one had a small amount of workable freight on the bottom. After me making a bit of bad noise in the general direction of said unloader and one of his compatriots, we removed the un-workable freight from the top of the workable, and they took the week15 freight to storage like good little drones.

All the while that this is going on, I have customers asking me stupid questions (the stupidest being "When does the new Star Wars movie come out on DVD?") and the phone was ringing off the hook. So the night was off to a shitty start... And failed to improve before lunch. Hence the one line entry at 1:00am when I came home to eat.

At about 3:00am, a pig walked into my department and asked me to come to Sporting Goods and sell him a Turkey Hunting License. Now, when I say "pig", I'm not just talking about the fact that it was a cop. This guy LOOKED like a fucking PIG! His nose looked like a snout. He was about 100 pounds over weight and a short shit to boot. He looked like a swine with a crew-cut that someone had stuffed into a Warrenton Police Department uniform. It was un-fucking-real! I sold him the license and sent him waddling along his merry way.

About 30 minutes after this, I felt the wound on the bottom of my foot re-open yet again. Munchkin and I had decided yesterday (my idea) that she would drop down to part-time at work, so I couldn't afford to miss the rest of the shift, so I went looking for the first-aid kit. As it turns out, the first-aid kits that Wal-mart keeps on hand for employee use suck big hairy wet ones. I ended up having to borrow $5.00 from George the Maintenance Midget (Thanks buddy!) and buy gauze, tape and neosporin. During this, I also remembered that I was out of Epsom Salts at home and needed them, but didn't have quite enough to get them as well. I went to the bathroom after my purchase and put a field dressing on my foot. It was then that I realized something about my feet that I had never really noticed before.

I have hobbit feet.

In other words, my feet are hairy. I realized right then and there that I was going to hate myself in the morning when I went to take the tape off. (By the way, I was right.)

Except for having to repair a telephone that the new girl, Cindy, broke when she was trying to hang it up, the rest of the shift was pretty uneventful until about 6:00am. It was then, while standing behind the counter doing exactly dick, PhillyGirl walked in to my department. Needless to say, this was an oddity. Of course, the first words out of my mouth were, "What the fuck are you doing up at this hour?" She said she couldn't sleep and then proceeded to tell me why. I'm not going to post the details here out of respect. If she wants you all to know them, she'll post them in her blog tomorrow morning when she goes to work. It was bad news. Really bad, in my opinion. We talked for about 15 minutes or so, and as she was leaving, I asked her if she could loan me a buck so I could pick up the Epsom salts (I felt like a schmuck doing this, but hey, I'm kinda attached to my foot. At the ankle. I wanna keep it there.) She didn't have a single and ended up giving me a five. I gave her the single I had left from what George had loaned me, so I owe her $4.00 on payday.

The shift ended and I came home to discover that Munchkin was already up and about. We talked for a bit and I laid down to sleep and discovered I couldn't. I'd drank too much coffee at work and was no wide the fuck awake! I did finally fall asleep, but didn't get anywhere near enough. Now Munchkin is at work and I have to be up to watch Zack. My eyes are burning. My head is throbbing. My foot is stinging. There is no relief in sight.

Somebody shoot me.

I ran across this a short time ago while surfing for credits on BlogExplosion.

Which File Extension are You?

To Quote Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols...

2005-04-17T01:10:00.000-05:00

... Did you ever get the feeling you'd been cheated?

Blogging for blog's sake...

2005-04-16T15:23:00.000-05:00

Munchkin just came home for lunch from her first day back at work after her LOA. I told her that I hadn't posted, and she informed me that I have to keep her and my fans entertained. Fans? Well, for the 5 people that keep reading this, here's todays post. *grin*

I spent the vast majority of yesterday afternoon examining the insides of my eyelids for cracks. After several hours of exhaustive searching, I found my eyelids to be in perfect working order then woke up. Nicole, Jon and Jayjay are spending the weekend with Shithead #1 and Zack was dropped off here for the weekend. Once he went to bed, Munchkin and I spents some time together then I headed to work.

Work didn't so much suck as blow.

It was a REALLY light freight night in electronics... but no where else. I spent most of the night wondering around my department trying my best to keep busy. I helped out where I could in various departments that weren't far from my own, but I ended up leaving work about 30 minutes early this morning after I discovered that the wound on the bottom of my foot had re-opened and my left sock was blood-soaked. Drag.

I got home this morning, cleaned out the wound in my foot, soaked said foot, and went to bed. Bteween the foot, a slight tooth-ache and a tension headache that just won't leave me the fuck alone, I had a great deal of trouble getting to sleep and was finally able to around 8:00am. I woke up about 10:45am, just as Munchkin was getting ready to leave for work. I spent the afternoon surfing the blogosphere and generally doing exactly dick. Nothing exciting today. Sorry folks.

Your Linguistic Profile:

65% General American English

30% Yankee

5% Dixie

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Not much to post today... Prepare for boredom.

2005-04-15T13:18:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was pretty eventful... But the vast majority of it is stuff that I wouldn't post here if you held a gun to my head. I saw my daughter briefly yesterday. Just long enough to tuck her in, really. Shortly after that, I went over to PhillyGirl's place and chit-chatted with her for a bit. Munchkin and I were in the midst of a fight and I needed to leave for a bit to cool off.

When I did finally get home, I argued with Munchkin for a while and it eventually turned into a really good heart-to-heart talk. Neither one of us it terribly happy with the way things have been going in our relationship, but we did manage to hash out what was making us both unhappy... We didn't exactly come up with a plan to fix it, but at least we are now aware of what the problems are on both ends.

By the time all of this was done, I had a tension headache the likes of which God Himself has never seen. I know from experience that when I get one of these headaches that ibuprofin won't touch it, nor will an of the other OTC or non-OTC painkillers, so I ended up taking one of the leftover flexirils. Sadly, this also didn't stop the headache. It turned every other muscle I had to goo except the ones I needed to relax. Drag.

I was finally able to sleep at around 4:30am.

Munchkin got the kids off to school ok this morning, despite the fact that Nicole was up incredibly late with a bad cough. I woke up at noonish when the phone rang. It was the school telling us that Nicole was running a fever of over 100 and that we needed to come and get her. Munchkin went to pick her up and while she was gone, work called. I didn't get to the phone in time, but Munchkin called them back. They just wanted to know when she was coming back.

Munchkin is going back to work tomorrow morning.

I have no idea how we're gonna make the bills.

Something else for me to stress over.

Before I close this, I want to send out props to Doug of Waking Ambrose, CT of Action!!!, Ford (as usual), Evie X, Talking Tina (even though I'm pretty sure that she's a bot), Raven of Raven's Rage and especially Tasha (for reading every last thing I've written in the past few months. Thanks chica!) Thanks guys. I truly appreciate all the support. You guys Rock!!!

An ego boost from an unlikely source

2005-04-14T14:49:00.000-05:00

I was surfing the blogosphrere again a little while ago when the phone rang. It was Munchkin's grandmother. She asked for Munchkin and when I told her that she wasn't home, Munchkin's grandmom proceeded to talk my ear off. *chuckles* She was that the divorce/custody hearing as a witness the other day. She spent about 10 minutes giving me the deatils of some of the things that happened at the hearing, then started telling me what a good person I am for supporting these kids that aren't mine and taking such good care of Munchkin and that Shithead #1 never did the things I do, etc. I must admit, it was a good ego boost. I have to wonder though where this high opinion that Munchkin's grandmom has of me comes from.

Guess she just doesn't know me well enough.

A brief reprieve...

2005-04-14T11:25:00.000-05:00

Yesterday wasn't too bad... At least, not by the standards I've been living by lately. Shortly after my last entry, my head was pounding and my foot was killing me (the infection is gone, but it's not healing properly due to the fact that I have to spend 10 hours a day on the damn thing). I was out of pain meds so I called Kelly and asked if she could spot me a vicodin. She said she would, but I'd have to come and pick it up. So I swung by her place and talked to her and Paul for a little bit, then came home and did the weekly update to TerriblyWrong.com. And let me tell you something. There is a reason I don't like taking pain medication. It was a necessary evil in this case, but it made the update take forever.

At about 8:30pm, I finished the weekly update of TerriblyWrong.com. My part of it looks like shit (mostly because I've been so... Wow, frazzled just doesn't seem to cover it... Stressed lately), but Krakhaus's article was great and Ford's Comic strip was awesome as always. What can I say... I'm a hack, but I've been blessed with some really, incredibly talented friends. I had a hell of a time doing the Video of the Week this week. The site that we normally go thru for the video feed has experienced a server crash due to a massive traffic increase. And no, they can't pin that one on me. We don't get THAT much traffic. Ford found us a new feed though, so I didn't have to spend an hour uploading a video from my private collection to the server. Thanks bro.

By the time I had wrapped up all of that crap, it was getting close to time to put the kids to bed. Munchkin was complaining that her head was killing her again, so I had her lay down. About 20 minutes after she laid down, we sent the goombas to bed and there was a knock at the door. It was Kelly, come to check up on us. She gave Munchkin a pill for her headache which pretty well knocked her the fuck out and her and I sat up and chatted for a while before she had to go to work.

The rest of the night was pretty uneventful. I cruised BlogClicker, BlogExplosion, and BlogaZoo to earn some more credits. Munchkin woke up at about midnight, feeling a bit better, so her and I spent some quality-time together, as well as some talk-time and cuddle-time. She dozed back off at about 1:30am or so, and I sat up a while longer. Went to bed at 2:00am... Fell asleep after 4:00am. Fucking insomnia.

Anyway, I woke up this morning pretty much just in time to see Munchkin leave. She had to take Jon down to Creve Coure (about an hour away) for a dental appointment. It's been really quiet today. I think I'm probably going to spend the rest of the day playing with the layout on my private blog. (yes, I have a second blog. No, you can't see it.) It doesn't have anything in it yet, and I think I'm probably just going to end up using it as a place to experiment with new layout ideas and such. Originally, I was going to use it as a repository for all the crap I can't put in this blog... You know, the evil thoughts. The kind that get you committed/divorced/locked-up/killed. But then I thought to myself, "Why keep that kind of evidence laying around?"

Oh. One more thing before I close this. I found this while I was surfing the blogosphere last night and got a huge laugh out of it. Enjoy.

***************************

Non-English speaking countries sometimes go out of their way to communicate with their English-speaking tourists:

Cocktail lounge, Norway:
LADIES ARE REQUESTED NOT TO HAVE CHILDREN IN THE BAR.

At a Budapest zoo:
PLEASE DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS. IF YOU HAVE ANY SUITABLE FOOD, GIVE IT TO THE GUARD ON DUTY.

Doctor’s office, Rome:
SPECIALIST IN WOMEN AND OTHER DISEASES.

Information booklet about using a hotel air conditioner, Japan:
COOLES AND HEATES: IF YOU WANT CONDITION OF WARM AIR IN YOUR ROOM, PLEASE CONTROL YOURSELF.

In a Nairobi restaurant:
CUSTOMERS WHO FIND OUR WAITRESSES RUDE OUGHT TO SEE THE MANAGER.

On the grounds of a Nairobi private school:
NO TRESPASSING WITHOUT PERMISSION.

In Aamchi Mumbai restaurant:
OPEN SEVEN DAYS A WEEK, AND WEEKENDS TOO.

The best!!! In a Tokyo bar:
SPECIAL COCKTAILS FOR THE LADIES WITH NUTS.

Hotel, Japan:
YOU ARE INVITED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE CHAMBERMAID.

In the lobby of a Moscow hotel across from a Russian
Orthodox monastery:

YOU ARE WELCOME TO VISIT THE CEMETERY WHERE FAMOUS RUSSIAN AND SOVIET COMPOSERS, ARTISTS, AND WRITERS ARE BURIED DAILY EXCEPT THURSDAY.

Hotel, Zurich:
BECAUSE OF THE IMPROPRIETY OF ENTERTAINING GUESTS OF THE OPPOSITE SEX IN THE BEDROOM, IT IS SUGGESTED THAT THE LOBBY BE USED FOR THIS PURPOSE.

Advertisement by a Hong Kong dentist:
TEETH EXTRACTED BY THE LATEST METHODISTS.

A laundry in Rome:
LADIES, LEAVE YOUR CLOTHES HERE AND SPEND THE
AFTERNOON HAVING A GOOD TIME.

Tourist agency, Czechoslovakia:
TAKE ONE OF OUR HORSE-DRIVEN CITY TOURS - WE
GUARANTEE NO MISCARRIAGES.

Advertisement for donkey rides, Thailand:
WOULD YOU LIKE TO RIDE ON YOUR OWN ASS?

The box of a clockwork toy made in Hong Kong:
GUARANTEED TO WORK THROUGHOUT ITS USEFUL LIFE.

Airline ticket office, Copenhagen:
WE TAKE YOUR BAGS AND SEND THEM IN ALL DIRECTIONS.

The best!!!! In a Japanese cemetery:
PERSONS ARE PROHIBITED FROM PICKING FLOWERS FROM ANY BUT THEIR OWN GRAVES

Penance

2005-04-13T17:18:00.000-05:00

Munchkin didn't get home from the divorce/custody hearing until 6:30pm yesterday. I won't go into the details here, but it's not over. The case will continue in June.

Really I'm not going to go into details on much of anything in this post. Partly because the details are fuzzy, and partly out of respect for the people involved.

So, while I was attempting to take a 2 hour nap in The Voyager™ yesterday before work, I came to realize an important fact of life. It's something that most people know instinctively, but never voice. I'm going to voice it here, just to get it out of my head and onto the net, where hopefully, it will no longer prey upon my mind.

Life is relentless. It just keeps coming no matter what you do. It never stops. It never quits. It just keeps throwing the terrors at you until you are dead. It is an advisary that we cannot beat. We can't win. It will not stop. Ever. Until we are dead.

Now, before you get all worried and shit, no. I'm not throwing in the towel. I'm not suicidal. There are two types of people as far as suicide goes. Those who talk about doing it, and those that just do it. I'm neither.

Anyway, I got to work at about 10:00pm. It was another boring night. I had all of my freight done before midnight. I spent most of the night bored off my ass and fighting a complete emotional break-down. My pride wouldn't let me have one. I can do that sort of thing in private, but it is so NOT happening on the sales floor at Wal-mart. Period.

I got home this morning a few minutes after 7:00am. Munchkin wanted to talk, but I was tired beyond the point of articulating a coherent thought. I put my earplugs in and slept until about 2:45pm. Good solid sleep, but not restful. The nightmare were a bear this morning.

Again, no details here, but Munchkin told me something about her past that upset me to the point of murder today. I left the house with the intention of going to see my daughter, but realized while I was at the gas pump that I didn't want my kid to see me in the condition. I got back in The Voyager™ and started driving south towards Sullivan, MO. I got as far as a little past Marthasville before I suddenly realized that I had no idea where I was going or who I was looking for. I sheepishly turned the vehicle around and came home, still seething, but embarrassed.

Before I close this, I'd like to thank two fellow bloggers. Freedom Girl for her prayers and "Good Vibes", and Raven for his comments to my last post which went as follows: "Dude you have fucking nerves of steel! You have earned my utmost respect. Show that dead beat ex what a man of steel is all about. Don't know how you do it bro." I appreciate the vote of confidence, brother. I don't feel like I have nerves of steel. More like nerves of butter. But thanks just the same.

Wish in one hand, shit in the other...

2005-04-12T08:33:00.000-05:00

Well, I didn't get my wish as far as sleep went yesterday. Munchkin woke me up in a panic. She was getting ready to head down to her lawyer's office to discuss the divorce (which is happening as we speak), and got into The Voyager™ only to discover that the engine wouldn't even turn over, the battery apparently stone dead. This didn't make any sense to me, so after a bit of reasoning, I popped the hood, hit the corrodid battery terminal with a hammer several times, and started the vehicle. By this time, Munchkin had already called her lawyer and told him that she wasn't going to make it. I went back to bed.

I slept fitfully for most of the evening, until about 8:30pm when I was to get ready to go to work. I needed to do some medical type stuff before hand. Hence the early rising. Unfortunately, I didn't get to do my medical type stuff because while we were in the process of sending the goombas to bed, Jayjay had a MAJOR meltdown. I ended up having to restrain him for about 10 minutes to keep him from hurting himself... though he did end up hurting me in the process. You'd be amazed what an 8 year old's shoe can do to the side of your head. Once this was all over with, I went to work...

Boredom ensued. Light freight night. Light new release night. Light crew.

I got home at 7:00am. Munchkin had gotten the goombas on the bus and I am now watching Jon. Munchkin is in court this morning for her divorce and custody hearing. I have no doubts as to the final outcome of all of this, but pray for us anyway. It never hurts to have a little bit of help.

Peace, Love and Homeland Security.

2005-04-11T10:06:00.000-05:00

I'm actually beginning to have trouble coming up with titles that have anything to do with the posts involved. See above for an example.Slept on and off as much as I could yesterday. Went to work at 10:00pm... which was a huge mistake.

2 trucks.

2600 pieces of freight.

5 palettes and 3 carts for Electronics.

It was fucking miserable.

I busted my ass all night, and finally finished up the freight at 6:45am this morning. A whopping 15 minutes before my shift finally ended. Work sucked in ways that work has never sucked before.

Got home a little after 7:00am and Munchkin was getting the goombas off to school. I had my mom come and pick me up to take me to my first meeting with my new P.O. I wish I had walked. I got a "talking to" from my mom this morning. Something I never want to deal with. Anyway, my P.O. actually seems to be a pretty nice guy, despite what the rumor mill said about him. I had him laughing his ass off by the time we finished the initial interview.

I will sleep soon. I'm hoping to actually just get a few hours of truly deep sleep. Seems to rest me better that way. 4 or 5 hours of coma as opposed to 7 to 8 hours of snooze. I don't know what it's like for everybody else. Maybe I'm just a weirdo.

No witty titles today...

2005-04-10T16:54:00.000-05:00

Yesterday wasn't too terribly bad. I went over to my sister's house at about 5:30pm or so to borrow a book from her. When I got there, I discovered her husband, Dennis, barbequeing on the grill... needless to say, I stayed for dinner. I like hanging out with Sharky (my big sis) and Dennis and their kids. Very down to earth people and their kids are hilarious. Of course, Sharky tortured me the entire time I was growing up, but I don't hold that against her. That's a big sister's job, right? During the course of dinner, I mentioned the fact that Munchkin and I don't have a grill, which is a shame because I love to barbeque. Dennis immediately piped up and told me that he had a perfectly servicable grill at the side of the house that only needed a propane tank. It had been left on a job site and he brought it home, but only used it a few times before he'd gottan another one. I told him I would come out tomorrow and pick it up.

I came home around 8:00pm and hung out with Munchkin, who was still depressed and headachey. We talked for a bit and I messed around on the computer for a while... ended up banning a guy from my comments cause he couldn't keep from running his ignorant mouth (You know who you are), and removing his links from TerriblyWrong.com and my sidebar. (I know you're reading this, and I've decided to keep your identity to myself, but here's a clue. Opinionas are like assholes. Everybody's got one, most of them stink, and when they're being loud, they are best kept to yourself.)

Went to work at 10:00pm. Work sucked as usual. The truck wasn't big.... only 1200 pieces, but we had a shitload of freight left from the night before. I ended up helping out in hardware and sporting goods again last night after I finished in Electronics.

Came home. Surfed the web. Slept. Woke up at 3:00pm to Munchin ranting about having had an arguement with Shithead #1 again. He's refusing to send Zack home. She expounded on this for a while and eventually got tired and laid down. I headed back out to Sharky's place to get the grill. I was planning on being gone for 20 minutes. I was gone for a hour. It took Dennis and I 40 minutes to figure out how to load the fucking thing into The Voyager™. First I couldn't get the back hatch open. Then it wouldn't fit in. We ended up taking some parts off of it to get it in.

I got home to find that Munchkin had fallen asleep again. Think I'll join her.

Remember how the Sex Pistols said "No Future"? Well, this is it. And now, more of the same.

2005-04-09T15:53:00.000-05:00

(a few of you.. VERY few, really, will actually GET that joke)

Well, yesterday was pretty uneventful, all things being equal. Munchkin let me get a little extra sleep, once she'd calmed down a bit. When I woke up at about 6:30pm or so, I discovered that the house was completely empty and had been cleaned from top to bottom. Needless to say, I was a little weirded out by this. A few minutes went by and I heard The Voyage™ pull in. Munchkin and Jonathan and Nicole all filed in. Again, an oddity. Shithead #3 was supposed to pick up the kids at 6:00pm. And if she didn't, where the heck was Jayjay? Munchkin explained to me that when their grandmother got there, Nicole and Jon both refused to go. I expected that from Nicole, despite the tendency of late to go from zero to attitude in 2 seconds. She doesn't like going to her Dad's place. But Jon never turns away an opportunity to see his father.

I spent the rest of the evening before work running a few errands. I had to run out to Mom's an pay her back the money I had borrowed from her for gas and smokes right before payday, and I had to put more gas in the car. Gas prices are still hovering right around $2.20/gallon. I'm thinking about either buying a horse (that would take care of mowing the lawn as well) or breeding dogs of enormous size. Transportation and home security all in one.

I talked to my dad for a little while last night. He's still hurting, but seems to be in pretty good spirits. The man is working himself to death and will not stop no matter what anybody tells him. He more than qualifies for a desk-job somewhere, but won't look for one. He says that he was raised to be "hands on" and doesn't like relying on anybody to do the grunt-work but himself.

I spent a good portion of my remaining time before work thinking about my father. He's a walking conundrum (yeah, I know, I use that word a lot. I like it. Shut up.). Growing up, I always thought that my dad was a hard-ass. I can count the amount of times he hugged me after the age of 5 on one.... Well, no hands, really. He was always very distant. What I never saw until I got old was what a wonderful provider he had been. My brother and sister and I never wanted for anything, even though my parents didn't have a lot of money. He always found a way. I never realized that the reason he seemed so distant was that he loved us so much. He would work 12 to 14 hours a day just to make sure that we had everything we wanted and I never realized it until I was older. It's amazing what you can take for granted when you're a kid. The problem with this is that I ended up growing up without knowing how to relate to my father. Don't get me wrong... I understand the man. I know that he loves me, no matter how badly I've fucked up over the years and what an ungrateful cretin I've been. I just wish I knew how to talk to him. I don't.

Anyway, I went to work at 10:00pm, and walked into, as Jeffrey so accurately put it during the nightly meeting, "A total shitstorm, with thunder, lightning and extra peanuts". We had close to 2700 piece of freight last night on GM side alone and not enough crew to put it all up. Once I got the Electronics freight (which was considerable) put away, I moved on to Sporting Goods and helped Laura put 4 palettes up, which was interesting because neither one of us knew dick about the department. After a while, Quinn and Steve came over to help us, which ended up being like the blind leading the retarded.

I got home at a little after 7:00am and found Munchkin asleep with Nicole and Jon up playing a game. I went to sleep for a little while and woke up around 9:30 or so to Munchkin damn near in tears again. She had woken with a migraine (which I am sure is stress related). She asked me to call work for her and I refused. Now, before you say that I'm heartless, let me explain. I was talking to Jeffrey last night and he told me point-blank that I had almost been fired for my absences. The only reason that they didn't fire me was because management is aware of what has been going on at home and they didn't want to seem completely heartless, but I absolutely have to keep my nose clean for a while. Anyway, I told Munchkin to call and talk to Don and see about getting a Leave of Absence until this court shit is over. At least, I think it was my suggestion. I was half asleep. Not really sure who's idea it was. Don wasn't there, but the co-manager, Debbie, agreed to it. Doesn't do much good to have an employee there who's already massively stressed. You'll only break them further.

This LOA is gonna hurt us. Maybe sink us. I'm gonna talk to management again tonight to see if I can get some overtime. It wasn't available as of last night, but if I bug them enough, they might agree to it. Besides, Wal-mart has a pretty high turnover rate... I'm bound to be able to pick up a shift somewhere.

Anyway, if you pray, pray for us. Please.

If it Ain't one fuckin' thing, it's another!

2005-04-08T11:36:00.000-05:00

I swear to God! First Blogger was acting like a squirrel with a crack habit, now Haloscan is down! WTF?!?!?!

Anyway, Last night was relatively uneventful, except for Nicole copping a major attitude with me about every little thing she could think of. I ended up sending them to bed about 10 minutes early, and she even copped a 'tude with me about that. I'm thinking maybe she was just over-tired 'cause about 5 minutes after I sent them to bed, all three of them were snoring like buzz-saws.

Munchkin got home at about 8:40pm and I gave her a rundown of my day. She told me that Nicole was grounded for giving me grief. We spent a little bit of quality time together and she ended up falling asleep a little bit after 10:00pm. I sat up bored for a bit and decided to take a drive down to Hawk Point to see if Mikey was awake. He was dead to the world... apparently, the new job was tougher than he thought it was going to be.

Upon arriving back in Warrenton, I decided to stop at Kicker's Night Club for a beer. I was in there for maybe 5 minute total. Kicker's was originally touted as Warrenton's "Adult Entertainment" club. Problem is, we've got laws against that in this area, so what they ended up with is one barmaid who's spent waaaaaay too much time in the tanning booth in a bikini. The locals apparently think that this is sexy. Personally, even if I was single, I wouldn't fuck this woman with a borrowed dick. I'd be too embarrassed to return it. Anyway, I get in there, order my beer and sit down at a table facing away from the bar an start to rink it quietly and smoke my cigarette.

About 1/3 of the way into my beer, a drunk woman dressed like a hooker walks up to my table, leans on it and starts talking to me. Telling me that it's her birthday and asking a bunch of questions. I finish my beer and get up and leave while she is still talking to me. I like beer, but I hate drunks. A conundrum, I know.

I get home at about midnight or so and lay down to sleep... unfortunately, sleep didn't come to me right away. I laid awake for 2 hours with my brain going a mile a minute.

Cut to 7:30am.

Munchkin come into the room and tells me that the kids won't go to school. We discuss it for a few minutes and we decided that if they aren't truly sick, they need to go. The oldest has missed too much as it is. I won't go into much detail here, but after almost an hour of fighting with the kids, I finally had to leave and cool down. I went up to Flying J truck-stop to hide for a bit. I figured, the kids aren't there, and there's a TV in the lobby. I get up there and it wasn't 5 minutes before I run into Munchkin's Aunt Terri. She asked what I was doing. I told her, quite simply, "Hiding." We talked for a few minutes about the kids and about the divorce case and whatnot, and shortly thereafter, I came home. Upon arriving home, I found that Munchkin had found a way to get the kids to go to school, and they had been waiting for me to get home with The Voyager™. She managed to get the kids into The Voyager™, and drove them to school. When she got home, she was in the midst of a small breakdown. The stress of the divorce case and the lawyers and the way the goombas have been acting this week had finally caught up with her. I immediately called Don at work to tell him what was going on and that in my opinion, Munchkin was in no condition to work today. Don agreed and thanked me for calling.

Munchkin is resting now. I have to work tonight, but I think she needs the sleep worse than I do. (Not that she agrees. She tried to get me to go back to bed, but I refused. I know that I wouldn't be able to get any real rest anyway with her as upset as she is.)

Now I'm experimenting with this nifty e-mail option on Blogger. I'm hoping that A) it takes html tags, and B) This will circumvent when Blogger goes all to shit like it did yesterday.

Of course, I'm not holding my breath.

Update: I have to laugh. Blogger is working fine (for the moment) EXCEPT for the e-mail-in-you-post option. Fuckers. You know, come to think of it, I don't have to laugh.

I wonder how much trouble it would eb to move this fucking thing to another service...

Test

2005-04-08T10:15:00.000-05:00

I'm testing the "e-mail your post in" option to see if maybe that can get around the fact tha blogger can't stop sucking.

Check this out!

2005-04-07T21:17:00.000-05:00

This is me as a Southpark Character! Check out This Link!

Blogger is such a piece of shit!!!

2005-04-07T17:35:00.000-05:00

Ok. I am typing this for the second time, and I'm pissed now, so it'll end up being brief. I had a nice long post filled with details and humor... But to paraphrase a quote that I used to use in school, "My blogger ate it."

Anyway, Munchkin and I spent some quality time together last night after we got the kids to go to sleep. She ended up falling asleep around 11:00pm or so, And at midnight, I opted to let her sleep and go up to Wal-mart to get my check on my own. While I was at Wal-mart, I gave some of my friends an update on my situation and I talked to Mikey about Brenda. Brenda had been complaining earlier in the dya that her back was hurting. Mikey told her, "Maybe you should try to stay off it." Since she'd been busted cheating, she didn't think that was funny. Mikey and I thought it was hilarious.

Once I got my check cashed, I went to get gas. The price is outragous! I ended up putting $25.00 in the tank, but that didn't even get The Voyager™ up past the 3/4 tank mark. Went for a short drive after that... would have been a long drive, but I just can't afford that particular pleasure anymore.

Got home around 1:30am. Was quite unconscious by 2:30am.

When I woke up this morning, the kids were already off to school and the Munchkin was pouring over a pile of paperwork. I asked her what it wa about and she launched into one of the most impressive tyriads I've ever seen her go on. Long story short, the papers were from DFS and what she was going off about was the list of bullshit that Shithead #1 had said about her. 100% lies, I might add. Needless to say, I think it's safe to say that he is out of the picture completely now.

Munchkin left for work around 11:00am and I sat down to check my mail. What I found there took me completely by surprise! There was a, what I consider to be, rather large donation to my paypal account from a Mrs. Adler. I immediately got ahold of Ford and Meesh to see if they knew who this woman was... what can I say? I get nervous when people I don't know sent me money. Anyway, they didn't know her, so after talking to them for a bit, I sent off a "Thank You" e-mail. It turns out that she was just some kindly soul who happened across my blog and decided to share her good fortune with me and my family. So, I would like to say again,
Thank You Mrs. Adler!
Anyway, with that said, the rest of my day has been spent typing this out twice and creating and place a banner for TerriblyWrong.com's Reader's Forum. The only other thing of any consequence taht has happened today is that Sam slipped out of his collar was he was in the back yard and I had to go out and find him. It wasn't hard. He came right way when I called him, but with as close to the highway as our house is, I was in a bit of a panic.

A victory of sorts...

2005-04-06T19:01:00.000-05:00

Munchkin's been bugging me for the past two days to do this post. So here it is.

I win.

Ok, with that said, and the aforementioned victory dance done, lemme explain what that was all about.

As those of you who read this blog with any regularity know, Munchkin and I have been having problems of late. These were mostly (but not entirely) due to the fact that he suddenly discovered that she still had feelings for Shithead #1 (the soon to be ex-husband). Well, to make a very long story short, he was unable to keep up his "nice-misunderstood-guy" guise for very long. He started being a dick again, even after the whole car-accident thing. She called him on a bunch of shit and to sum the whole thing up, the warm fuzzy feelings are gone and the only ones left are pretty murderous. Kinda like my feelings for The Filthy Whore (Katie).

Munchkin also had a bit of a break-thru/break-down yesterday. Apologizing to me through her tears and telling me that she loved me and asking me why I stayed. I told her that I stayed because I love her, and that just made her cry more, saying she was a bad person and such. (I'm over-simplifying here, but that is mostly due to the fact that I don't feel much like rehashing all of this yet again. There's no point.) I ended up taking the night off of work last night to spend time with Munchkin, and she took the day off today to spend with me. We had some issues earlier in the day, but they were unrelated (for the most part) to what was going on for the past week.

Mostly, today, I've been trying, albeit unsuccessfully, to de-stress. I got the new issue of TerriblyWrong.com, thanks to the continued efforts of Ford W. Maverick and the ever-faithful Meesh. It's a pretty good issue this week, in my opinion... Though I can already foresee that what I consider to be the funniest part of it is something we are going to be getting hatemail for. That being the Comic Strip. I thought it was hilarious. Minimal verbiage with maximum offense.

Anyway, I ended up getting sick earlier, after I got the issue done, in the midst of an argument with Munchkin. I'm thinking that my body is finally just completely rebelling against all the stress I've been under.
Raven was correct in his comments on my last entry. I've been in the red-zone for far too long.

The following is an excerpt from a song I heard on the car radio last night during my "victory lap" that kinda spoke to me. The song is "Breathe (2am)" by Anna Nalick...

2 AM and I'm still awake writing this song
If I get it all down on paper it's no longer inside of me
Threatening the life it belongs to.
And I feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd
Cause these words are my diary screamin' out aloud
And I know that you'll use them however you want to.

But you can't jump the track
We're like cars on a cable
And life's like an hourglass glued to the table,
No one can find the rewind button now
Sing it if you understand

My own private Twilight Zone

2005-04-05T15:30:00.000-05:00

Ok. Lemme bring you up to speed. Sunday, Munchkin came home from work 2 hours early so I could get a decent nap before having to go to work. She got her days off changed so that I can get sleep more regularly. In fact, this week, there is only going to be one day that I have to deprive myself of sleep, and that is Friday. Work on Sunday night was not too bad. Two palettes of freight and a breakpack cart. Nothing to write home about.

Monday morning, I come home, take an extremely brief nap and get up to go to court. No, I'm not going to list what I was in court about. I will say this, it had nothing to do with my driving and was not drug related. Court went exactly as I expected it to. I pled guilty and was given two years probation. It was after that when all hell started to break loose.

As I was leaving the court room, I opened the door and ran into Katie (see post archives as to why I want this woman's head on a spear in my front yard). This totally blind-sided me and the bitch actually had the nerve to try and strike up a conversation with me! I brushed her off and headed toward the elevator. As I was waiting for the elevator (feeling Katie's eyes boring into the side of my head), one of the bailiffs walked up to me and told me that I had to be finger-printed. He leads me back into the courtroom (past the filthy whore) and I sit there and wait until a count sheriff comes to take me downstairs to get the prints done. As we are on our way down to the station (which is in the same building) he looks at his paperwork and asks me, "Are you Jerry Lay?"

At this point, I begin to freak the fuck out! See, I know Jerry Lay. I've only met the deadbeat once, but he's been in my life for almost 8 years. See, he is the father of my daughter's half-brother, Luke. I tell the cop who I am, and he radios to the station and finally says "Ok. Lay is in custody. You still need to be fingerprinted though."

I sat and waited in the station for a half hour to be printed... all the while staring at Jerry Lay through the glass of his holding cell.

After the fingerprinting, I go to leave and decide to stop by Phillygirl's office (which is right next door) to give her an update. We talked for a couple minutes and she agreed that I was definitely having a fucked up day. I leave there, get back in The Voyager™, turn it on and I hear the opening chords of Better Than Ezra's "I like it like that" coming from the car radio. 93X never plays that kind of music, and that particular song was a favorite of another ex of mine's, Roberta. Yet another ghost from my past heard from. I turn the radio off and head for home.

I arrive at home and give Munchkin a brief update on how my day went and why I look like I'm about to explode. After that, I call my mom and head out there so I can borrow the gas card so I can put some fuel in the tank and get a couple packs of smokes... I'm almost out of both at that point.

I get out there and Mom gives me the card, and a hard time about my finances, which I had coming. I run up, get the gas and smokes, go to return the card, and head for my new P.O.'s office. Upon arriving there, I'm given paperwork to fill out, which is basically "Everything you can remember that you have ever done in your life in 10,000 words or less". Not fun. Once I finish that up, I head for home for the last time. The tension headache was a nightmare, my stomach was in knots and my brain was going a mile a minute. I knew what was coming.

I get home, sit down at the computer and finally have the breakdown that I knew was coming. Munchkin did a good job of comforting me and I eventually fell asleep.

The nightmares were excruciating.

I woke up about an hour or so before I had to be at work. I talked to Munchkin for a bit and ate some dinner. During this time, I decided to check out the blog of one of my many detractors. While I was checking it, I discovered some comments in it from some friends of my second wife, Colleen. Nice to know that these people still read the site. They were all talking shit, which is to be expected since they only had the ex-wife's word as to what was going on. I finished reading then headed out. I have to tell you, I was already in a piss-poor mood when I got there, and the job only made it worse. Monday night's are New Release night for DVDs, and that always sucks. Shortly after my shift started, Don (the GM) walked up to me and asked me what the problem was. I told him I didn't want to discuss it. He began to press me, saying "Well, if there is a problem, I need to know about it so it can be resol..." He trailed off when he realized that the box I was holding was being crushed in my hands as we was talking. It was still full of universal remote controls. I looked past Don and said "Don, you can't help me. No one here can. Please let me do my job. Go away."

Don scurried off fairly quickly.

After about an hour, I was finally beginning to calm down, when a man walked up to me and asked me if I could make a key for him. I recognized him immediately. His name was Woody. I hadn't seen him in ten years... Not since I found out he was sleeping with my first wife. He recognized me about half-way through making his key and tried to talk to me, saying that he was sorry about what happened, but I didn't want to hear it. I handed him back his key and gave him the new one. I told him to take it up front to pay for it and walked away from him. At this point, I was absolutely freaking out and barely able to hold myself together.

The rest of work went without incident. During lunch, I went down to Hawk Point to make sure that Brenda didn't have her boyfriend over while Mikey was working. To her credit, she was alone.

I came back, finished my shift and came home and slept.

I'm almost afraid what today will hold.

Sleep deprivation

2005-04-03T12:53:00.000-05:00

I managed to get about 45 minutes to an hour's worth of sleep before Munchkin left for work yesterday... And that was all I got.

All things being equal, yesterday wasn't a bad day. Zach was being extremely well behaved for the most part. I spent most of the day watching movies and surfing the net. I tried to get a power-nap in after Munchkin got home from work, but I didn't manage to pull it off. The upshot of that is that I was already exhausted by the time I arrived for my shift.

Work was work. The freight went up fine. Dawn, the manager, was being a bitch last night, but that's not all that unusual. I think that maybe she didn't get any this weekend. I asked her about changing my days off and she basically told me no fucking way.

The main problem I had last night was that I kept dozing off. I dozed on my feet 3 times... Actually falling over one of those times. I also dozed off for a few second on the floor while I was putting some freight on one of the bottom shelves. Not good.

I got home at 7:15am and was asleep literally within seconds of getting home. I slept solid for about 3 hours, until Munchkin woke me up so she could go to work.

Not enough.

I'm fried.

I tried to talk her into calling in sick so I could sleep, but she said we really couldn't afford it, and she was right, but I don't know how much longer I can do this. I can feel my body falling apart around me. She suggested I call Kelly to see if she could watch Zach for a few hours, but when I tried to call her, Kelly informed me that she got called back to work today and has a 12 hour shift starting at 7:00pm tonight. No luck there.

Basically I'm fucked. I'm going to have to keep doing this until I finally snap or my body stops functioning completely.

I do so love my life.

Insert witty fucking title here.

2005-04-02T14:22:00.000-06:00

The past few days have been so incredibly stressful that my brain feels completely fried. Friday sucked in ways I can't even begin to describe to you.

Munchkin came home for lunch to make a few calls, to clear up who was picking the kids up that night. After a couple of phone calls she found out that shithead #3 (the mother-in-law) was supposed to be coming at 6:00pm. She told me that she was going to come home on her last break to see the kids off. No problems so far.

Jayjay had some serious attitude issues Friday afternoon and ended up getting sent to his room twice, and eventually fell asleep. I made the three of them dinner, but Jayjay wouldn't wake up to eat. 6:00pm came and Munchkin came home. While she was here the phone rang. It was shithead #3. Munchkin took the phone and left the room.

A few minutes later, She came back into the room and said to me that Shithead #1 had been in a car accident, (I had one truly evil thought during that split second before she finished her sentence) and that he was hurt really badly. She had tears welling up in her eyes. I knew immediately that she was every bit as upset for herself as she was for the goombas. This really pissed me off, for obvious reasons. She asked me what my problem was, and I said "Nothing," but she pressed the issue so I told her. She told me that she had to go back to work in a huff and went and told the goombas what had happened to their father and left.

45 minutes later, she was back home, having been too upset to work. Again, this pissed me off badly... The woman who says she loves me being so upset that the guy who used to beat the shit out of her and degrade her. Shit, I'm insecure on a good day. This made me feel like my world was falling apart.

I just told her that I needed to get some sleep before work, laid down and napped. I woke up to Munchkin talking on the phone with her grandmother, going over everything that had happened in painstaking detail, and discussing the conversation she'd had with her brother-in-law, Donnie, while I'd slept. Shithead #3 had come to pick up the goombas while I'd slept as well. I decided not to interrupt the conversation, mostly because I knew I was too frazzled, and quietly got ready for work and left.

I hadn't been at work long before I started biting peoples heads off. Stephanie, one of the cashiers, got the worst of it, actually getting screamed at by me in front of 2 customers. I called Munchkin at about 11:00pm or so, but Kelly was here and I told her that I would just have to wait for my update. When I said this, Munchkin assumed that I wanted to pick a fight with her, so I ended up just hanging up the phone. Shortly after that, I took my first break. It's supposed to be 15 minutes long. I sat in the breakroom shaking and smoking for a half an hour. Everybody gave me a pretty wide berth, except for Laura in the Toy Department, who I told what was going on.

I came home at Lunch, and Munchkin was asleep, but Kelly was still here, so we talked for a bit. During the course of the conversation, I told Kelly that I knew exactly how this was going to play out.

Shithead #1 is going to start recovering from his injuries and he's going to come to Munchkin, going on about how he's been close to death and has re-thought what is important in life and how he wants to get back together with Munchkin and the kids and such and that he's a changed man.... And she's going to fall for it. When that happens, I give him 3 weeks maximum before the abuse starts again.

All Kelly could say was that she hoped I was wrong. The problem is, I never am wrong when it comes to this sort of thing.

***Cut to this morning.***

Zach is here for the weekend, which means I'm going to be going for 5 days without a good solid sleep. Kind of a drag. Jeffrey sent me home an hour and a half early from work cause my foot was absolutely killing me. I got home, saw that everybody was still asleep and tried to sleep myself, but I started having an IBS attack, so I couldn't. At about 7:00am, Munchkin woke up, and asked me what time I'd come home. I told her about me getting sent home early, and she flipped. Apparently, it's ok for her to get sent home early because she's having a crying fit, but it's not ok for me to get sent home because I'm in pain. Figure that one out. I also brought up this morning that every time I bring up the subject of her and Jason getting back together, she always says "Jason has told me in no uncertain terms that that is not going to happen."

Talk about saying the one thing that is NOT going to put my mind at ease!!! I know addicts and alcoholics. They can change their minds at the drop of a hat. ANY hat.

She could have told me almost anything, and it would have set my mind at ease, except that. She could have said, "No, I won't because I don't want to risk it." or "No, I won't because it's a horrible environment for the kids." or "No, I won't because I need to put that chapter of my life behind me." Or, and this is the one that really would have helped, "No, I won't go back to him because I love you now."

But she didn't say any of those things.

Now, don't get me wrong here. I love the Munchkin with all my heart. She's a beautiful woman. She's intelligent (when she's not being overly emotional), she's funny and quick witted. She's a caring person. She has many, many wonderful qualities... Too numerous to list here... But she's really putting me thru hell!

And there isn't a damn thing I can do about it. I can't leave her because of this. I have to stay because she needs me. And because I love her and the goombas with all my heart.

I guess that makes me a sap.

And this is why TerriblyWrong.com has a proofreader...

2005-04-01T13:53:00.000-06:00

English Genius
You scored 92% Beginner, 85% Intermediate,93% Advanced, and 76% Expert!

You did so extremely well, even I can't find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don't. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you're not afraid to use it properly! Way to go!

Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it!

For the complete Answer Key, visit my blog: http://shortredhead78.blogspot.com/.

My test tracked 4 variables how you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 31% on Beginner
You scored higher than 13% on Intermediate
You scored higher than 40% on Advanced
You scored higher than 65% on Expert

Link: The Commonly Confused Words Test written by shortredhead78 on Ok Cupid

Just so I don't leave you guys hanging...

2005-04-01T00:33:00.000-06:00

Munchkin got home at about 10:40pm or so and explained why she was so late by way of a detailed account of the massive fight she'd gotten into with the Shitheads™. She brought all of the goombas home with her except for Zack, who will be with us this weekend (so much for getting decent sleep this weekend. Oh well.). We spent some quality time together tonight after she got home. I had already called work to let them know I wasn't going to make it in for my extra shift, so there was no point in going in. Once they assign someone to a department, reshuffleing everybody is not an option.

Argh!!!

2005-03-31T21:42:00.000-06:00

So much for picking up an extra shift. Shithead #3 just called to tell me that Munchkin wanted her to call me and ask if I could find another ride to work. The shift starts in 20 minutes, and I've got a bum foot! How the fuck am I supposed to pull that off?

It disturbs me even more that the two of them were outside talking alone when Shithead #3 called. This shouldn't be taking anywhere near this long.

Chaos Theory in practical application.

2005-03-31T20:05:00.000-06:00

This seems to be the story of my life these days. I was awaked by the Munchkin at about 5:00am asking me why I was on the couch and telling me to come to bed. I woke again at about 7:00am when the alarm went off to get the kids up for school. Jayjay ended up staying home with an upset stomach (Though I personally think that he was faking). Munchkin and I argued a bit this morning about stuff that was really not even worth mentioning here... Mostly because it has nothing to do with my last post.

The day itself was relatively uneventful. We ran down to Troy to see the various lawyers involved in her divorce and custody stuff, but I ended up falling asleep in the passenger sit. My foot was hurting pretty badly when I got up and I took my darvocet on an empty stomach. Big mistake. I woke up when we got home, just long enough to head to bed.

When I woke around 6:00pm, Munchkin was on the phone with Shithead #3 (The mother-in-law), making arrangements to go down there and talk to her and Shithead #1 about custody of the goombas. The initial plan had been for them to meet up with the kids and let each of the kids choose who they wanted to stay with, but they changed that when the realized that that would put too much pressure on them, so they decided to meet alone... Just the 3 of them, Shithead #3 as an "Observer".

Do I need to even write out how incredibly uncomfortable it makes me, knowing that Munchkin is meeting with this jerk-off without the kids?

Anyway, I'm waiting for them to get home now. I was planning on pulling a full shift tonight, to make up for some of the time I missed, but my foot is still hurting like a motherfucker, so I'll probably only work a half shift. It all depends on how I feel after being on my foot for 4 hours.

The wholesale slaughter of the last American marsupial

2005-03-31T01:31:00.000-06:00

ARGH!!!!

At this point, I'm so fucking stressed out that I don't even want to post... But I know I need to while the events are still fresh in my mind.

I spent the afternoon updating www.TerriblyWrong.com and dealing with an ignorant pig-fucker who was flaming the site and this blog. I don't know if he moved on to other staff blogs, but I'll have to check that at some point. Munchkin came home at 8:00pm, I thought for lunch, but it turns out that her back was hurting too badly to go back to work. Shortly after that, Jayjay started bugging Munchkin to let him call his dad. Jayjay talked to his dad for a little while, then Munchkin took the phone and shortly after that, they started arguing...

After listening to the argue on the phone in the basement for over a fucking hour, I decided to head up to Wal-mart, figuring that I wouldn't be gone long and wouldn't be missed.

I get to Wal-mart, borrow a few bucks from George for gas, and go to leave when Bev, Mikey's aunt, stops me. She tells me that Mikey's girlfriend and mother of his daughter, Brenda, is missing. She took off at 10:00am, after Mikey busted her for having another man in the house while he was at work, and at that point, hadn't returned. I tell Bev that I'm gonna head down to Mikey's and see if he needs anything.

Upon arriving at Mikey's, I find Brenda sitting in the truck without their daughter, Savanna. Mikey comes out and says "Oh, you're not the cops. Come on in." I go in, and Mikey gives me the scoop, and as he wraps up the story, the cops pull up and arrest Brenda for an outstanding warrant. While this is going on, I call home to talk to Munchkin and let her know where I am. After I finish telling her what's going on, she tells me we need to have a talk... I can see where this is going already. So I ask her, "Is this about the fact that you're still in love with Shithead?"
She says "God, have I been that obvious?"
I tell her that I'm not fucking stupid and that I will be home shortly.

The cops made we wait until they were gone to leave, so it took me a while to get home. Upon arriving, I find Munchkin in our bedroom with the kids, and she very obviously has been crying. She sends the kids to bed and starts telling me about how Shithead told her that he'd been faking it for the last two years and how she still have feelings for him and such. I was extremely pissed to say the least. I tell her to look me in the eye and tell me that if he apologized and asked her to come back, she wouldn't. She did. The details of everything else she said are extremely hazy, but the upshot of it is that she had only been with Shithead before me and is not over him. I couldn't believe it. Not over a fucker who beat her and treated her like she was garbage. I was getting more pissed by the second. I finally told her that I needed to go and clear my head. And I asked her if she was still in love with me. She said that she loved me, but she didn't know how deep it went.

I told her that she had until I got back to figure it out.

She asked if I was coming back tonight. I told her that I had to. I live here and The Voyager™ is in her name.

Anyway, I get in The Voyager™ and start driving on back roads... For about 2 hours.

Discovers I made on the drive:

Driving does NOTHING to clear my head anymore.
The speedometer on The Voyager™ goes all the way up to 125 mph, and it'll do every bit of it plus some.
Possums in Missouri think that they own the back roads after midnight... I hit 3 of them out of the 20 plus that I saw.
If you hit a possum doing over 100 mph, they explode.
The water hose at the gas station in Hawk Point is free.

I got home expecting to find the Munchkin awake and ready to talk. I found her quite unconscious. Hell, I can't sleep when I'm massively stressed, can you? Apparently she decided that she didn't give a shit as to whether I was coming home or not.

I'm now gonna grab a pillow and go sleep on the couch.

Lyrics of Note
Crossfade: So Far Away

I've been changing but you'll never see me now
I've been changing but you'll never see me now
Now I'm blaming you for everything

No more holding it in
How many years can I pretend
That nothing ever goes the way it should
No more sitting in this place
Hoping you might see it my way
'Cause I don't think you ever understood
That what I'm looking for are the answers
To why these questions never go away

I'm so far away
I've been changing but you'll never see me now
I'm so far away
Now I'm blaming you for everything

No more waiting for the end
Of every day that I will spend
Wishing that I only had a choice
No more pushing you away
'Cause I'll be busy watching things go my way
Never looking back on this anymore
'Cause what I'm looking for are the answers
To why these questions never go away

I'm so far away
I've been changing but you'll never see me now
I'm so far away
Now I'm blaming you for everything

I've been changing but you'll never see me now
Now I'm blaming you for
Everything

I'm so far away

Hey, hey watch me wave
Goodbye to yesterday
Nothing left in my way
Hey, hey I've been saved
With sun shining on my face
Getting me through this day
Hey, hey watch me wave
Goodbye to yesterday
Nothing left in my way
It feels so good to say

I'm so far away
I've been changing but you'll never see me now
I'm so far away
Now I'm blaming you
I'm so far away

All's quiet on the Midwestern Front

2005-03-30T13:50:00.000-06:00

Not a whole hell of a lot to report today. I got up around 10:30am or so, and discovered that Nicole had once again stayed home from school with a fever. I called Mom shortly thereafter asked her if she could loan me the $41.75 I was going to need to get my scrib filled. Much to my surprise, Mom was more than willing to loan me the money, and also loaned me a can to hobble around on.

Got my scrib filled, took my pills, lounged around the house for a while. I can't do a whole hell of a lot in the way of cleaning, simply because I would have to walk around to do it. It's not impossible to stand, but it is a bit painful, even with the darvocet.

I've gotten a few complaints about the diatribe I have sitting over top of my donation button, so I'm gonna say a few things about it...

1) Yes, I smoke. No I have no intention of quitting. The cigarettes I smoke are sub-generic and don't cost a whole hell of a lot. Yes, It would save me $20.00 a week... But the lawyer for my murder charge after I killed some stupid motherfucker at work in the midst of my nicotine withdraw would be much more costly in the long run.

2) Yes, I drink. But I have a low alcohol tolerance and I think I've paid maybe $15.00 in the last month or so for alcohol. I don't do drugs, I don't meditate, I don't play golf, etc. If you can find a cheaper was for me to relax, please, put your input in my comments.

3) Yes, I spend a lot of time on the computer. Is it excessive? Yes. Could I be doing something more productive with my time? Probably. Does it cost me much? Not really. ISP and electricity.

4) Yes, I want to go back to school. Do have the time or money to do so? Fuck no. In addition to the time the classes would take and the cost of them, there is also the little factor that the nearest college to me is about 45 minutes away one way. Gas is over $2.00 a gallon. Do the math yourself.

5) Yes, I am thankful for what I have! I have been homeless. I know what it's like to sleep on the street and have absolutely nothing. But that's not the situation now. Now I have kids to take care of, a house to maintain, etc. I don't want to be rich... Well, no, that's not true, I do want to be rich, but that's a long-term thing. Right now, I just want to be able to pay my bills on time and not have to field calls from bill collectors.

Look, it comes down to this. If my blog offends you in any way then go read something else. You're not a captive audience here. Just click. Go to Disney.com or crayola.com or something, ya big baby! That's the wonderful thing about being an American! I'm free to bitch about my finances and you're free to not give a shit and not listen, capesh?

And now, some lyrics.
Social Distortion
Reach for the Sky Lyrics

When I was young I was invincible
I found myself not thinking twice
I never thought about no future
It's just a roll of the dice

But the day may come when you've got something to lose
And just when you think you're done paying dues
You say to yourself "Dear, God What have I Done?"
And hope its not to late cause tomorrow may never come

Reach for the sky cause tomorrow may never come
Reach for the sky cause tomorrow may never come

Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery
But I'm leaving right now
It's just about how its you and me

You can run you can hide
Just like Bonnie and Clyde
Reach for the sky
I ain't never gonna die
And I thank the Lord for the love that I have found
And hold you tight cause tomorrow may never come

Reach for the sky cause tomorrow may never come
Reach for the sky cause tomorrow may never come

So if you please take this moment
Try if you can to make it last
Don't think about no future
And just forget about the past
And make it last

Reach for the sky cause tomorrow may never come
(reach for the sky I ain't never going down)
Reach for the sky cause tomorrow may never come
(reach for the sky I ain't never coming down)
Reach for the sky cause tomorrow may never come
(reach for the sky I ain't never going down)