mailbox

Dear Seven-Up:
High Fructose Corn Syrup, last time I checked, is not a natural product. I'm onto you, sneakys.

Suspiciously,
Me


Dear Oprah:
I will not think what you want me to think. I will not buy what you want me to buy. I will not subscribe to your magazine, neither the regular nor home versions. Seriously, you creep me out.

Warily,
Me


Dear lady who called work yesterday and insinuated that I was not well-trained enough in my job because #1:I didn't recognize your name, #2: I could not summon the owner out of thin air or beam her to work from her home just to talk to you, and #3: treated me like a third grader over the phone:

If you ever call again, and you haven't had a SERIOUS change of heart by that time, I will put every ounce of strength I have into cursing you under my breath. And I might hang up on you and pretend it was technical difficulties.

Shooting you with laser beams from my eyes,
Me

a whole week?

I assure the few of you who check in here that I am in fact alive and kickin'. Between moving to our new house, shooting a wedding in Parsons over the weekend, and camp, the times where I have said Hey, I should blog about that!' happen when it is entirely inconvenient. But here's a quick blurb about what's to come:

*Some poems I have been working on and some thoughts about poetry in general. Ooooohhh..and some thoughts about faith and poetry.

* A whole post about some of the most inconsiderate people I have come in contact with recently.

*Cat stories. (seriously, they love their new house)

*A detailed look into the life of someone who works in the spa industry (me) and how customers should and probably shouldn't act towards said worker (again, me).

*Stories of the new house.

So keep checking in, it's all coming soon!!

Overheard

'Mommy, is that?'
'Oil.'
'Mommy, how do you spell that?
'Oil...O-i-i-l. Oil.'
'Again!'
'Oil.....O-i-i-l.'
'Yay! Again!.....'

Do you tell a stranger when they're spelling things wrong in the dressing room at Target?

2 weeks in

We're two weeks into camp and we have already experienced the following things:

Cleaning puke out of a stopped up sink
3-4 broken air conditioners (ours being one of them that's still out of commission)
Kids with weapons
One emergency at the lake
Communion outside under that brightest stars I've seen
1 broken ATV
Assorted tick, spider, and bug bites (I had one that had a blister that broke open and was all gooey! Yay!)

And yet, I love it all, this wild wonderful place we call camp.

re:re: our apartment

Still smells funny.
Carpet is a brown-ish, rust color now.
Kitties still at parents.
We are still at camp.
Becca with no place of her own anymore.

**However**

We may not have to pay our last month's rent, which would pretty much make it all worth it!!

re: my apartment

It smells awful.

Just wanted to let y'all know.

At one point I really thought my bathroom might explode.

So as I type this, I am sitting in my parents house, in my sister's old room, with my two cats, their litter box, food, and water, my carry all bag, a bed, and this computer desk. We're very cozy here.

Want to know why? Because this morning I was awoken to the sound of a river running through my bathroom. I'm not kidding. It was much like the Mississippi had carved a new route and decided to head right through my little studio apartment. It might have even reminded me just a little of what the Bible tal;ks about when it says God's voice sounds like rushing rivers....

So I went to investigate and I get about four feet away from the bathroom door and all of the suddne I'm sloshing through a swamp. A swamp of beige carpet, mind you, but still a swamp. I press one get to the bathroom where the apocolyptic sound is coming from, and there's a tiny little leak coming from a whole in the tile under our shower spout. The sound is not coming from the leak. The sound is coming from the wall. I touch the wall, it is very hot. The bathroom is steamy. Come to think of it, when I woke up the whole apartment was kind of sauna-esque.

I called the aprtment office, and I tried to convey to them that my bathroom was seriously coming unhinged. The lady said she would send someone over. The first guy gets there, takes a look and says 'Oh no.' He goes to get another guy. The second guy gets there, says 'Oh crap!' and goes to get a third guy. The third guy come in and says 'Holy Shit'. Hey, my sentiments exactly buddy.

They turn off the water for the whole building, rip out my shower wall, and fidn out a whole entire piece of pipe has falled off. As in, just detached itself. As in who the heck takes care of our plumbing and let that slide by? As in for however long since it hapopended, my floor was getting dumped on by steamy, hot water coming through the wall. And the guy below me? Needs a whole new ceiling see as his fell down entirely.

In the middle of all this excitement I smuggles my cats out of there (Have I mentioned we're not supposed to have cats? ) And we are all taking a holiday at my parents while they fix my bathroom and suck the water out of my carpet.

We cannot move fast enough.

mailbox

Dear producers of 'The View',
Ha! Told ya' so.
Sincerely,
Me


Dear MTV movie awards-
You were truly awful last night, and I only watched maybe 15 minutes all together. We will just have to agree to disagree on what makes a good movie.

an ex-generation MTV'er,
Me


Dear David Glass an the Royals:
I really truly love coming to a baseball game, however, could we win one sometime soon? Oh, and Dave, buddy ol' pal, you cannot run a baseball team like you ran your crappy Wal-Mart company. You actually probably shouldn't run anything like you ran Wal-Mart. In fact, the more I write, the more I am convinced that you, sir, are just plain evil.

Please sell the team,
Me


Dear bank lady who just called me at work,

If you have been talking with my husband about the house we're buying, and you have calle each other several times, why on Earth would you call me today, and try to give me all the details? Did you think I felt left out? Because I didn't. I have no idea what you were talking about.

annoyed but still yours,
me

So then, I called the police.

And that's the first time I've ever called the police aout anything. I didn't actually hit 911, just the regular number. And when I say police, I mean the Sherriff's department, because it was 'after hours' for Merriam's police.

Police have 'after hours'?

Anyway, a couple of nights ago, I'm in the bathroom, and I hear this pounding. I thought it was the person below us, maybe hanging something, or making something or what have you. So I do some other stuff, and I keep hearing the pounding and realize it's coming from across the hall. I look out the peephole, and there is a person pounding on the door across the hall. To no avail, I might add, because the lady that lives there is hardly ever there. SHe lives with her fiance and hardly comes to her apartment. So he's pounding, and knocking, and tapping, and all sorts of stuff. He's driving Ollie crazy, who is rubbing in and out of my feet, trying to get me to let him out the door. The guy is wobbly, slurring his words (I have no idea what he's saying) and yelling out names every once in a while. He persists for about twenty minutes and I decided he's drunk. Or high. Or has Alzheimers and is lost.

I call the police. As soon as I do, he goes downstairs and starts knocking around down there. I talk to a very nice lady about this strange man that probably just needs some help and about 10 minutes later two officers show up.

I also notice an ambulance and a fire engine come soon after. They get out their stretcher, and come right under our window to the outside door and then I see them grab the guy, put him on the stretcher and take him away. I later learn they had found him sprawled out on the ground on the floor below ours.

After talking to another tenant, it turns out this guy is most like an older man, a Vietnam war vet that used to live in our building. He would get a little drunk like he was that night every once in a while and walk around banging on doors and such. But he had moved out a while ago, and nobody had seen him since. So I guess he got nostalgic. Or something.