Thank god it's Friday.

It’s lovely in southern California, and the weather is fabulous today. A little cold, but the sun is out and the sky is blue. I woke up in my Friday morning good mood, rocked out to Duran Duran on my way to work, got a wonderful pumpkin latte from Starbucks, and was ready for work. Which is pretty laid back on Fridays, so it’s all good.

When I logged into the company network, and I had a friendly email from Celestia wishing me well on my upcoming surgery:

[Our boss] told me that you’ll will be out after next week because you are having
some operation. I think that you are willing to have a dangerous surgery that might kill you is not smart. I also think that it is unfair that we are going to have to do you’re job tasks while you are gone having some surgery that is not even required by your doctor. I am very busy with my own things and will fall behind because now I have to do your work, too. Well, good luck with that.

Isn’t she just wonderful? Note the lack of grammar skills, and the friendly way she condemns me and then wishes me luck. Do you see what a schizophrenic wacko she is? This is my life everyday.

Jesus, if you’re reading this (and why wouldn’t Jesus be reading my diary?), please make her go away. I’ll never say goddamn again.

Thanks, Jesus! You’re the man!

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I was chatting with a friend this morning when I was reminded of a story from my childcare days.

All of the kids at this school were children of two working parents who worked non-stop, they were the same age as MY parents, and they dropped their kids off when we opened (at 6:30) and picked them up when we closed (at 6). Some parents even offered me extra cash to open sooner. That’s how involved most of the parents were with their children. Nice.

As a childcare provider, the most frustrating thing to me is a kid who has no common sense. So from day one, I made it my goal to instill some damn sense into these kids. Well, it just didn’t take with some of them. For example: Zack.

Zack was a second grader, and we were all convinced he was gay. He never played with the boys, always played with the barbies, he sang songs from musicals like My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music, and danced. Everywhere. He danced on the way to the bathroom. He danced on the way to the park. He danced walking from his classroom to the daycare site. And, as the final confirmation of his burgeoning homosexuality, for Halloween one year, when all the boys were Cowboys, or Batman, or the Red Power Ranger, he was Kimberly, the Pink Ranger. He was a sweet boy, but not terribly bright.

On one day, during the summer, we were eating lunch at the park. I always had a big circle of kids that I hung out with, so we were sitting there, and I noticed Zack had some pretzel sticks. Well, watching him stuff five at a time in his mouth, it wasn’t hard to figure out what was going to happen next.

I got distracted by some kid getting flung off the merry-go-round, when I felt a little tap on my shoulder, and heard, “Um… Andria, can you help me?” And, when I looked up, it took every single bit of energy I had to hold in my laughter. Zack had a pretzel stick stuck way up his nose. I have seen kids get more shit stuck up their noses than I ever thought I would, but this was the funniest by far. He wasn’t crying, he wasn’t upset, he just wanted someone to take it out. But, with all of the liability issues, for shit like this we had to either take him to the ER or call 911. And I have to tell you, I would have felt like a real jackass telling the operator (who was busy dispatching police for people being beaten, raped, or murdered and what not) that I needed help because I had a kid with a pretzel stick shoved up his nose.

So I drove him to the ER, which was right up the street from where I worked. When we finally got in, I had to call Zack’s mom, and she laughed just as hard as I did when I told her. She was one of the cooler parents.

His mom, Janet, asked him why he did it, and Zack said he wanted to see how far it would go. That was the excuse of almost every single kid that put a pencil, a crayon, a lego, a Popsicle stick, or anything else up their noses.

He also asked the [extremely hot] doctor if he could eat it after he got it out.

I really miss that job (and those kids) sometimes.

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Tomorrow night we are going out for Kay’s birthday (which is really on Halloween) to some hoity-toity Italian restaurant that I have never been to. But the owner is a friend of Mr. Big Shot’s, and I have seen his AmEx bill, and that place is expensive, man. I could think of a thousand other ways I would like to spend $50 than on dinner. And that doesn’t even include drinks. At times like these, it’s hard to be the broke motherfucker in the group.

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For the longest time, I swore I would never get a cell phone. I was against them, and against people who couldn’t go ten minutes without their stupid cell phone ringing no matter where they were or what they were doing. People could not believe I didn’t have a cell phone, as if life couldn’t be lived without one. I always made the joke that I don’t want my purse to start ringing when I am trying to decide which tampons to buy.

So, after my sorry un-geographic ass got lost alone at three in the morning driving home from the Mitchells' place, I decided that I had to throw my principles out the door and get a cell phone (and believe me, if you would have seen the dark and desolate place I ended up, you would have pissed yourself with no phone, too). So now I have become one of those retards I hate- driving with the stupid cell phone in their hand, yacking away like it’s perfectly normal to talk to your friend about the nonsense of the day while you’re driving, because that conversation just can’t wait until you get home. I have even paid extra for cute wallpaper and a Beastie Boys ringtone. I am such a loser.

Well, last night I was at the store, the stupid cell phone rang, and guess what I was doing – buying tampons.