Squeak’s Squeals

I have been sick the last few days. Yesterday, my temperature peaked at 103(F). This morning, it was still at 102. The bottom line: I feel poopy.

But life must go on and since I was not spewing forth nastiness from any of my orifices, I went about my daily routine as usual.

• Feed kids: Check.

• Everyone dressed: Check.

• Kids on the bus: Check.

• Car keys: Check.

• Four fully-inflated tires: um… well…

I had a flat. Not just a low-on-air flat. A pancake-on-a-rim flat. In my driveway.

I started digging through the car. I pulled out the dummy tire. I pulled out the pathetic looking little jack from the secret Subaru jack compartment. I looked it over. I put it down. WTF!? I don’t know how to use it. I’ve never seen one like it.

I went inside and called the office. “Boys, I’m gonna be late. I don’t know how late. Just late. Really, really late.”

“What’s wrong?” asked Bull, our resident tech.

“I’m stuck in a catch 22 at the moment. I have a flat tire and a jack I don’t know how to use. I can’t afford to pay someone to change my tire until I get my paycheck and I can’t get my paycheck until I get the tire changed so I can get to the office.”

“No problem,” my savior replied. “I have an appointment out your way in half an hour, I’ll swing by and change that tire for you when I’m done.”

“You, sir, are my freakin’ hero!” I replied.

I wandered around the house, straightening and tidying for about an hour, but there was no sign of Bull. I called his cell… his appointment was taking longer than expected, he had no clue how soon he’d get to my place.

Time for Plan B. The Internet. (Now, I realize with every blog post I write, I prove myself more and more the dumb blond I try NOT to be, but if it didn’t end with me doing something completely bizarre or utterly stupid it wouldn’t make much of a story, now would it?) So, I hopped on the internet and looked up instructions on how to use my weird little car jack contraption.

I changed my tire. All by myself. I was so proud! And all while running a fever that could fry an egg.  Now, if I could just get the grease monkey marks off my hands…..

Humor-blogs.com: More tales of personal achievement from short bus riders.

I live in the suburbs. I am not a suburb kind of gal. I may be a little bit country, but a little bit suburban, I am not.

I am perfectly comfortable in a little podunk, backwoods, inbred, redneck town, but I now reside in the ritziest, most upscale suburb in this part of Pennsylvania. I’m not here because I make a lot of money. I’m not here because I want people to think I make a lot of money. I am here because the schools are excellent, the house is gorgeous and the rent fell inside my price range. However, I get the feeling that I am nothing more than that weird, creepy neighbor no one talks about. Call me Lady Voldemort.

Maybe it’s my incessant need to wear my Bert and Ernie lounge pants in public. Maybe it’s the rusty, little, 275,000+ mile, back-firing beast of a Subaru parked in the driveway. Maybe it’s because my kids sing Weird Al tunes as loudly as their little lungs will allow. Maybe it’s because I like to sit on the back porch in my underwear and smoke cigarettes at 5am. It’s probably a combination of all of the above, coupled with seeing my hideous (translation: cheap and/or free) furniture when I moved in, indicating that I obviously am not wealthy and therefore not worthy of their company.

Seriously, my house is gorgeous. My furniture is awful. I have one of those eclectic collections of slightly-better-than-a-college-dorm furnishings (complete with milk crate book shelves). My couch is black velvet with pink and blue swirls. My coffee table isn’t a coffee table at all, it’s a night stand turned sideways. My dining room table cost five dollars at an auction five years ago - the chairs were ten bucks at a yard sale. But they are comfy and they are mine. Though some days I wonder if I should try to spruce things up a bit.. you know, maybe bring myself up to speed with my station in life. You know… start skipping the garage sales and hitting the thrift stores instead….

And I know the reaction people have when I tell them I’m a nerd. Believe me when I tell you the average Suzy Homemaker stay-at-home mom looks at you like a freak and never speaks to you again. Case in point: The kids started back to school this week. One of the bus stop moms introduced herself and we started talking. We hit it off quite well for being total strangers. This went on for a couple days… then she asked me what I do for a living, “I’m a web developer for an IT company across town,” I said. “Oh,” she replied. And she has not spoken to me since. In fact, she started standing on the opposite side of the street… like I’m carrying the plague. “Don’t stand next to that new girl…. you’ll catch the dweeb!”

Don’t feel sorry for me, dear readers, for I love being the odd man out. I like to do things - especially in a neighborhood full of snobs - just to drive them insane:

I let my kids hang a metallic, dollar store happy birthday banner in the front window… and I left it there… just for the hell of it.

I take my trash out while wearing a plaid bathrobe and platform shoes.

Sometimes, I close all the curtains and pull all the shades, then turn the lights on and off as fast as I can for two or three minutes.

I play “I am the Walrus” (the Jim Carrey version) over and over again during my 5am smoking sessions… in my undies… on the back porch.

I draw faces on the kids’ kick balls and make them talk in funny voices.

Yup. I know how to keep myself entertained… and it gives the gossip mongers something to talk about. I’ll stick with my nerdy, dorky buddies. They’re the best kind anyway… I just feel bad for my kids (in a strange sort of way)… they will forever be the girls with the REALLY creepy mom.

The loonies live at humor-blogs.com.

And now, an update on the continuing saga of Officer Sludge…. (and for those of you who are utterly confused right now, read THIS first)….

I just finished another phone call with our favorite, most obliviously unintelligent city cop, Officer Sludge.

He has informed me that he would like to have a list of wanted criminals posted on the website. Fine. Not a problem. [Note: Had I been talking with anyone OTHER than Sludge, I probably would have recommended setting up a database, but I truly think it would have been a lost effort on a man who can't find Windows on his Compaq.]

He proceeded to tell me that his secretary is currently in the process of piecing together the list in question. [Note: My initial thought: "Good. Cuz Lord knows what you would produce."] He then described to me the methods being used in the list’s creation. My question: is it POSSIBLE to have a negative IQ score? And if so, how is one able to function as the head of a special police task force with such a score? Then again, maybe it depends on your definition of “special.”

He and his secretary, he said, had taken every possible avenue to make the final list as efficient and easy-to-use as possible. He and his secretary, he said, printed - FROM THE COMPUTER - all the images of the criminals for the list. Then, he says, he had his secretary HAND WRITE the details about each person next to their picture. At the moment of our conversation, he said, his secretary was in the process of scanning - BACK INTO THE COMPUTER - the pages with the hand-written text and the images they had JUST printed. The secretary would be emailing me the list ASAP, he said.

Fast forward five minutes: a new message in my inbox. Great! Let’s see the masterful work first hand! Uhh… big negatori there, chief. Seems the secretary emailed me a blank white nothing - no message, no text, no images, no attachments…. just the bleak whiteness of an empty message. I replied to her empty message and let her know she had sent me absolutely nothing. She replied to my message… with nothing. There was blank white nothingness, followed by my original message, followed by her original message of nothingness.

These are the people sworn to uphold justice and protect the people of the land. These are the people we rely on - day in and day out - to provide us all with a sense of safety and security. These are the people who catch the bad guys and give them what they deserve. Is it any wonder the internal functions of the local, state and federal prison systems are FUBAR? THESE are the people responsible for running it! Be afraid! Be VERY afraid!

What could be more terrifying than humor-blogs.com?

The condensed story:

Men suck and I am outraged.

The back story:

Yesterday, I completed a site for a local, high-ranking political figure which included information on a special task police team.  For the site, I was responsible for the full design, full code and full back-end CMS development.  A link to the completed work was forwarded to the officer in charge of said special task police team, we’ll call him “Officer Sludge.”  Officer Sludge called my office this morning.  As luck would have it, I - ironically - answered the phone.

Little known - and apparently surprising - facts:

1. I am 100% female.

2. I write code for a living.

3. Roget’s defines “sludge” as ‘a viscous, usually offensively dirty substance.’

The call:

Sludge: “Hiya, sweetie, I was looking at this website and they asked me to look over the section about my special task team.  I can’t find a link to my team anywhere.”

Me: “At the very top of the screen, there is a menu.  It should say Home, About, Enforcement, Assistance and Education.”

Sludge: “All mine says is Education with a blue box behind it.”

Me: “Is the link on the far right side of the screen?”

Sludge: “No.  It’s the first thing on the left.”

Me: “What internet browser are you using?”

Sludge: “Sweetheart, I’m a cop.  I don’t sit in front of a computer all day.  I have no idea what you just said.”

Me: “If you look at the very top of the window, there should be a little picture.  Does it look like a blue E?  Or is it more of a blue circle with orange around the bottom?  Or is it something else entirely?”

Sludge: “Honey, I don’t know what a ‘window’ is.  Where do I find it?”

Me: “Are you in front of the computer now?”

Sludge: “Yeah.”

Me: “Are you looking at the website?”

Sludge: “Yeah.”

Me: “Okay.  You know the box where you type in the website address you want to go to?”

Sludge: “Yeah.  The one that says ‘http://www….’?”

Me: “That would be the one.  Either just above it or just below it, you should see a line of menu options: File, Edit, History, Tools, Help and so on….”

Sludge: “Yeah.  I see em.”

Me: “Good.  Click on ‘Help’.”

Sludge: “Okay.”

Me: “There should be a little menu that drops down.  What does the LAST line on that menu say?”

Sludge: “It says ‘About Internet Explorer.”

Me: “Great!  Your internet browser is Internet Explorer!  Now, click on the words ‘About Internet Explorer’ for me.”

Sludge: “Okay.  It gave me a little box.”

Me: “Good.  Somewhere in that box, it should give you a version number.  Can you read it off for me?”

Sludge: “It says ‘Version: 5.0. ……..”

Me: “Okay.  That would explain why the site is not displaying properly.  It was designed for use in Internet Explorer 7.”

Sludge: “Look, sweet cheeks, I have no idea what you are rattling on for.  My problem is I can’t see what I need to see on the website.  What I need is to talk to the guy who’s working on it.”

Me: “You got him.”

Sludge: “What!?  You’re a woman!  Jeezus!  [short pause] How about this: I’ll find out how to get my hands on this number 7 you’re talking about, then I’ll call you back.  I don’t want to makes things too hard for you to understand.”

Me: “You do that, sir.  Might I suggest you start your quest for the number 7 at microsoft.com?  Although, I could go back and modify the code to make it compliant with your current version.”

Sludge: “No!  No.  Dont’ do that.  No sense in having a woman go in and screw it up.”

The commentary:

Hmm…. where to begin?  Do I dare begin?  Do I make light of the situation?  Or do I go on a full-fledged feminazi rant about how men need to have their wankers firmly attached to their thighs via heavy-duty carpet staples and undergo involuntary estrogen infusions?

Now, don’t go getting your frilly, lace thongs in a bunch, fellas.  I know full well that not ALL men feel the way Sludge feels.  And I truly, TRULY appreciate those men.  My outrage here comes from the knowledge that men like Sludge STILL exist.

Honestly, WTF!?  Is this 1952?  Am I supposed to be donning a house dress and curlers while baking bread and planning a rummage sale for the PTA?  Give me a freaking break!  The simple fact that I have tits is NOT a reason to treat me like an uneducated, incompetent moron!

My absolute favorite part of the conversation (aside from being called a multitude of pet names)?  “No sense in having a woman go in and screw it up.”  That’s my favorite part.  Cuz, y’know, I’m only the SAME woman who went in and made it work in the first place.  But that was alright because it was assumed I had a nutsack.

Start YOUR search for the number 7 at humor-blogs.com.