Just A Little Salty

Okay, I'm going to admit something right upfront: I am in no mood to write anything remotely nice right now. If there were some way to measure bitterness, I'd be about ten giant steps past vinegar. In fact, vinegar is starting to look sweet. Not a good scene.

I'm trying to think back to where this all began, but the only thing I can think is that it's been building up for quite some time and I just haven't had the opportunity or willpower, really, to just go off about it. Well, it's rainy and cold and people here are too freakin cheap to turn on the heat in May even though it feels like March and nothing good is on TV and there's nothing to do on a Sunday night, so here it is. Opportunity has come a knockin and I'm ready with a freaking sledgehammer.

First of all, I had to work the front desk during the Day of a Million Morons. This is the move-out day. Apparently, nobody thinks rules apply to them, because every single person wanted to bend the rules so that they could get on with their day. I was sort of setting myself up for failure because I had already worked the first move-in shift, which had gone swimmingly unwell, when I had to tell off about fifty freaks who came in and needed to get extentions to stay. Lucky for them and unlucky for us who also were staying in the building, all of those extensions were granted. Fanfuckingtabulous. What kills me, and this happens every year, is that while people are living in the building, none of them can wait to get out. Then, we give them the golden exit tickets (aka blue carts and a key receipt, with a swift sayonara kick to the ass) and suddenly, this is home sweet cinderblock home. Go figure.

Anyhow, I was answering tons of moronic questions and I was becoming increasingly frustrated. Some people just poked their heads in to ask a simple question - "What time is it?" - and my "Time to get a new watch," response was so icy that I swear the kid left icicle fingers on the doorknob. I can't take full responsibility though, because people ask ridiculous questions. Like this one kid, who called on the final day for extensions (as in, the building was closed. Go home) and asked for one.

First of all, he called up rather than came in, and I was especially rude on the phone because you avoid the risk of being spit at.

"Do I have to move today, or can I have another extension?" he asked.

"Move today."

"What?"

"Move."

"So can I have an extension?"

"No."

"No?"

"No."

"No."

"Nope."

"Umm, but it's raining."

"Yup."

Click.

Sometimes, I want to thank Alexander Graham Bell. I have a feeling, if that kid had been standing in front of me, he wouldn't have just left.

Then you have the assholes who won't deal with the fact that they can't move in until later in the afternoon. It's 8 AM, and they want to move NOW. Well too fucking bad. I tried telling them that they would hate this place once they arrived, so sit in their spacious apartments and enjoy it, but nobody liked that. Then, one girl snapped her fingers at me and I cut them right off with some sharp scissors. Seriously though, by the end of the day, if one more person had asked me one more question about moving or staying or blue carts, I was going to go all Planes, Trains, and Automobiles on them.

Then I went to a baby shower where somebody cheated off my game sheet to steal the big prize from me. This pretty much depleted any faith I had left in humanity. Maybe if someone had stolen my bag at a funeral, I would have been more upset. Maybe.

Not to mention, it rained for a week and I swear an unofficial sport began with "How Many Pedestrians We Can Take Out Driving Into Puddles." And you know what? SUV drivers really didn't have much on the asshole Jetta drivers.

Also, I'm trying to catch the season finale of My Super Sweet 16. Someone important must know I'm trying to watch it, because they haven't showed it once when I've had the TV on. Every other time, they rerun things about a zillion times on MTV. The one time I actually want to see the rerun? Forget it. Stupendous.

Oh, here's another depressing thing. Today, I spent about an hour filling out this online application for a school district. They have you do this entire thing before you can even view the jobs available, so I did it. I spent a long time double-checking for typos and everything. Then, they bring you to the screen where you can click on which jobs you want to apply for. There's this little disclaimer in annoying red writing above everything: "The positions for which you are not qualified are grayed out." I look at the box. A bunch of gray lines. I scroll all the way down. All gray. I'm not qualified for a single goddman thing. Talk about irony.

I slammed my finger in a desk drawer on Friday.

I also feel like there should also be a limit to how many favors/things someone can ask you in one day. As far as I'm concerned, you get three things a day you can ask me for. If I fulfill all three, then you're done. You've got to wait. I had a fifth grade teacher who said this to this wicked annoying kid once who was asking tons of questions. He just put his hand up to the kid and said, "Nope. You get three questions a day, and you've already gone over. Gotta wait until tomorrow." Poor kid, it was probably that he had to go to the bathroom or something. (Which reminds me. There was a kid in our elementary school famous for not being able to handle going to the bathroom without making a total scene. There were rumors of him coming out in his underwear, saying to the teacher he needed help, or not making it to the bathroom and totally ruining a kid's winter jacket. These things used to crack all of us up. Now it just makes me kinda sad and nauseous. I must be growing up.) Anyway, the point is, the teacher's idea worked. I'm going to translate that to dealing with morons who ask me for ten million things. It seems like whenever I answer one email or fulfill one request, there's another one popped in there along with the thank you. It's literally like, "Hey, thanks for your help. Also, I was wondering..." Listen, twerp, I was wondering if you were ever going to stop nagging me for every little thing I could possibly get you. Be happy with what I'm giving and shut it already. How hard is it to just write "Thank you," and click send? How about at least that? Could I get just a separate thank you? Really, could I?

The fact that Britney Spears is having yet another child with that excuse for a husband of hers makes me sad for humanity. And people look surprised (okay, horrified) when I respond, "sterilization," to what I'd like to do to help the environment. Britney could be my mascot, for godsake.

A week ago, I went to dinner at Uno's. The guy I was with finished his meal faster than I did, so the waiter came to clear his plate. He asked me if I was still working, and I said I was. About ten minutes later, I slid my plate over to the edge of the table. Sure, there was food left on it - half a burger, some fries - but it was at the far edge of the booth. The waiter came over, looked at it, and left. So I decided to try and help him out. I put all my silverware on the plate, along with both of our straw wrappers and my napkin. The trash is covering the fries at this point. The waiter comes back, looks down at the plate, and I swear, with a straight face, asks, "Are you all set?"

"Yup, thanks."

"Do you want to wrap it up?"

I couldn't even answer, I was trying so hard not to laugh. Yeah, sure. I really like leftover straw wrappers.

I've also been buying some of those Red Sox scratch tickets. AKA, I've been throwing away money. Every freakin person I knew had been winning big on those. One guy I work with won $500. FIVE HUNDRED BUCKS! Other people were winning $100, $300, $50. So I bought a few. So far, I don't even want to talk about what I'm down. All I'll say is, I'm considering it a win when I break even and win back the cash I spent to purchase the goddamn thing.

It probably seems like I've been walking around in a catatonic state. I really haven't been, until today. It's just been building up though, and the way I see it, it's gotta hit sometime. Maybe it was the week of straight rain. Maybe it was the day of a million morons (I think it should be a nationally observed day, titled just that). Maybe it's that I'm currently without a job, apartment, or boyfriend - the big trifecta. People say shit like, "It's commonly known that you can only have two out of three of a great job, great apartment, or great boyfriend." Well, Confucious, what say you if you're 0-3 on those?

I think that's it though. I can't take any more people asking me if I have a job or an apartment. Nobody's been hassling me about the boyfriend issue. Wait, that's not true. My grandmother, as we played Scrabble, asked about it. When I told her I'd been going out with some guys but nothing serious, she settled down, but not after reminding me that she had a boyfriend. Yup, even at 88, the woman's outdoing me. Too bad I aced her in Scrabble. Take that, Geriatric Juliet. (Leave me alone. I can take a shot at my grandmother if I want to.)

But seriously. Do people think I'm just not looking for a job? (Okay, fine, I really wasn't until this week.) Do people think I really want to be homeless in a few months? Granted, a friend of mine is doing a pretty solid job of bumming space on people's couches, but I'm way more high maintenance than this kid and plus, I like having all my stuff in one place. I also enjoy having a mailing address, come to think of it. (But really, he is an A+ guy, one of my favorites, so if he's "homeless," - note the quotation marks - something's got to be okay about it. For him. Not me.) I need to come up with a snappy line to give back to people when they ask about a job or apartment (or boyfriend), like "No, go fuck yourself." Something clever.

Yup, I think that's enough bitter for one day. I'm tipping out.

The Registry

Today I went with a few friends to Target, because two of us are attending a baby shower tomorrow, in honor of someone we work with. The woman and her husband are registered at Target, and so those of us attending from work (originally 3 of us) decided we'd go to Target to check out the registry and go in on a joint gift. Then, one couldn't make it and didn't go to get the gift, leaving me and my friend Doug (plus two others who came along for the ride) to go hunting for baby registry stuff.

First of all, this registry business is ridiculous. Does anybody have any idea how hard it is to buy a gift off a registry? They make you think it's easy by deceiving you early in the process. It seems so simple just to go up to a computer (don't even wait in the billion person customer service line!) and just type in the name, print out the list, and you're set. Only not at all, because you have to check to make sure that the list is updated to the MINUTE to make sure that you don't duplicate gifts (thus forget the bypassing the whole line thing). But that's not even my issue. If it were up to me, I'd have someone accompany anybody with a registry. They send you on your way with just a list of items and the item number. They say that they have the aisle number, which is a joke, because there are no aisles markings. They abbreviate everything, too, so you don't even know what you're looking for. Like NB Bzz Bee Bxt, or some crap like that. I don't know what that is. I don't even know what I'm looking for, but apparently I should because the serial number is there. Have you ever attempted to look for an item by serial number? I hope to hell not. It's a horrible thing to have to do. Trust me on this. If you add in that you're searching for a newborn baby item with a guy in the midddle of a bunch of moms and moms-to-be, points to you if you don't feel like killing yourself, the guy, or the people gaping at your idiocy.

Pretty much, everyone thought I was shopping for my own unborn child. (And YES, I know it would be shorter to write "pregnant," but there's no way in hell I'm even remotely writing that at this point in my life.) Let me tell you, it's horrible to walk around and have everyone think you're having a baby when you're not, and add to that that you're with one other guy, buying everything, and you've got people thinking you've gotten knocked up, you're walking around with the guy who'd rather be buying DVDs or a barbecue grill, and you've got no money since you're arguing over finding the $2.99 onesies versus the $8.99 sets. (By the way, infants, seemingly simple creatures, have so much complicated shit they need, it's ridiculous. It's like speaking a whole new language - onesie, diaper genie, all this other crap.)

By the way, and for the record, Doug wasn't doing much to help the situation. It's always funny when you're not the one assumed to be having the baby, because he was free to make jokes about this being the longest one night stand of his life.

I learned a few things from my little trip to Target. First, registries are ridiculous. I haven't quite figured out a way to get around this, but for starters, I think I'll be less specific. It's not just baby registries - my friends and I went looking for a wedding gift a few months ago, and the ridiculous specificities just make life horrendous. Like this couple wanted these measuring cups, but there were like 10 different sets. They wanted a specific set, so there were the three of us, inspecting serial numbers. Ridiculous. And today, Doug and I are looking over whether the white onesies we are holding are serial number ending in 1847, and if they're not (and they weren't) we have to look again and find the ones that match the number. They're measuring cups! And they're white onesies, which a kid will puke on anyway! God help me.

The second thing I learned was that there are two people who work at Target: helpful people and not helpful people. I walked over to one woman, registry in hand, and asked if she could help me. She barely muttered back "Yeah," before getting her act together enough to call someone who could (enter the second type of employee: helpful.) This guy was funny and didn't mind that Doug said "fuck" in the baby aisle and that I followed it up with "shit." Though he could not locate the item on the registry, I liked him anyway.

The last, and probably most important, thing I learned is that I don't want to have a baby right now. Sure, babies are cute and their clothes look cute, but the whole experience reminded me that I don't want to deal with the unfun stuff at all right now. Like, they have all this medical crap they have to get. And they have all this boring stuff like ear thermometers and bottles that are pretty significant/vital to a kid's life, and I don't really like any of that right now. Plus, I would probably be afraid I'd drop the kid and do some pretty signifcant damage. Not something I want to deal with.

And, when people think you're having a kid, they watch you more. Trust me, people were looking at me and poor Doug trying to find the correct infant clothing while simultaneously trying not to kill each other. If someone had come up to us with a referral for either a counselor or adoption agency, I can't say the person wouldn't have been justified. I thought about explaining it to these people, but it was too funny to continue. For instance, one woman's jaw literally dropped when she saw Doug swat at me with the rolled up registry paper and tell me that we couldn't afford the cute baby clothes.

The thing is, nobody else finds it funny when you insinuate abuse, whine about infants, or mock marriage.

We finished the baby shopping and went to look at things we need to buy for ourselves, like DVDs and Rubbermaid containers. As we walked by a barbecue grill, Doug stopped to look at it.

"You can't buy that!" I nagged. "We just bought baby clothes! We can't afford both!"

Doug didn't miss a beat. "Look," he said, without any patience left, "I earn the money! Don't tell me what I can or cannot buy!"

And of course, we both laughed. But the woman with the toddler riding in the front of the shopping cart didn't even break a smile. Too bad.

Oh, and in case anybody was wondering, Doug and I found half of the registry items we were looking for and supplemented the rest. It is what it is, people. There's only so long you can hang around in the infant aisle making jokes about getting knocked up.