Category: general complaints

things that kinda stink

Categories
general complaints life

i fought the law …

hoa approved rock garden and the law won.

I recently did something so heinous, I can’t believe that I didn’t get a single comment on my blog about it. That’s right, I dared to build a Japanese rock garden in the raised flowerbed that wraps my porch. My porch. That’s attached to my house. The house that I bought.

I should have known it would be against the HOA rules. The Japanese have the dubious distinction of being one of the few races to be rounded up and relocated in this great country where all men are created equal. My neighbors recently brought to my attention an article in our local paper about rocks in the yard signifying the homes of swingers. I have to admit, I didn’t realize that signing the HOA paperwork when I moved into the neighborhood meant that I would not be allowed to flaunt my offensive heritage – or, apparently, engage in an alternative lifestyle. I now realize that it is the duty of my HOA to discriminate based on race and sexual preference.

I am a little hurt that not one of my neighbors stepped forward to let me know what a hideous eyesore I had created. On the contrary, I had many people stop by to compliment me on it. They even dared to call it beautiful. And to think that I used to call some of them friends! I won’t make that mistake again.

After getting a not-exactly-friendly letter letting me know of my offense against the neighborhood, I was quite shocked. I was informed that I had 10 days to remove the garden, put mulch in the flowerbed, and plant things. When I sent an email (the HOA does NOT take phone calls – you can leave a message, but they WILL NOT return it) to the HOA Enforcement Squad, requesting mercy, I was informed that I could submit an Exterior Alteration Application. (In the email chain, the HOA-ES insisted on addressing me as ‘Mr.’, even after I started signing my emails with with a very deliberate ‘Mrs.’)

The Exterior Alteration Application is necessary when making changes to the exterior of your house. Like if you want to change the paint color. Or build a fence. Or build a deck. Or cut down a tree. Or, it would seem, put things in your flowerbed. That aren’t visible from the street.

The application requires signatures from your 4 most affected neighbors. And would you believe it, they all signed it without hesitation, and even feigned shock that I would be required to do such a thing.

I received notification of my application disapproval, delivered by certified mail, at 1 pm on Saturday. I was told I had 48 hours to verbally request an appeal. Which meant I had to make my request by 1 pm on Monday. The Monday I was going to be out of town until 4 pm. There are no HOA hours on the weekend. So, I had from 9 am on Monday to 1 pm on Monday to request my appeal. Needless to say, I missed that deadline. The disapproval letter also said that I had to attend the next ARB meeting to discuss my appeal. The next meeting that is happening while I am going to be in San Diego.

So, that is what brought me to tear up my garden yesterday evening. (Well, that, and the mood that always comes during a certain phase of the month.) And place it in 15 paper yard waste bags (because, per HOA rules, you can only throw yard waste away in paper yard waste bags). These bags are now on my porch, until 6 pm on Wednesday, because that is when I can put trash out for Thursday morning.

When the fall comes around, and I’ve had some time to forget about my rage against the establishment, I will try again. I will start over with the HOA, and find out what, exactly, I can do to my flowerbed to both celebrate my sliver of Japanese-ness, and not offend the sensibilities of the HOA-ES.

Categories
food general complaints

lacto-intolo-what?

As he occasionally does after a particularly rough day, my husband decided he needed a Maggie Moo’s chocolate shake. So after our brief trip to the grocery store, we stopped off at the ice cream place.

There’s a smoothie place 3 doors down from the ice cream place where they sell dairy-free treats. Maggie Moo’s even makes dairy-free smoothies. But there’s something about going into an ice cream parlor that renders me incapable of making a good dietary decision. Because I happen to love ice cream; I used to eat it for breakfast, back in my college days. I used to ALWAYS have a half gallon in my freezer. It used to be one of my four major food groups.

But then, as happens, I got older and my body decided it HATED me. My dairy intake has slowly diminished as my body has become more and more adamant that milk is evil. This enables me to live an uneventful life, devoid of … well, I don’t need to go into details.

But, there I was, at Maggie Moo’s, looking at all my choices. Ordering a regular raspberry roller coaster. Enjoying my wonderfully delicious, freshly “mixed” ice cream. By the time we made it home, however, it was already apparent to me that ice cream was a bad idea. Even though I had barely made it through half my treat, there was definitely some abdominal discomfort goin’ on. So what did I do? I stopped eating my ice cream, of course. And I put it in the freezer, so that this whole debacle can start again tomorrow …

Categories
general complaints

afternoon djs

I really don’t like my afternoon DJs. They have annoying voices, they are obnoxious, they say dumb things, and everytime I hear them speak I wish they’d hurry up and put another song on already. I may have thought that the bad-DJ phenomenon was coincidental, but I have 4 radio stations, and they all have bad afternoon DJs.

My morning DJs are nice. They have pleasant voices. They are funny. They talk about interesting and amusing things. In short, they make my drive to work a little more enjoyable.

So why does it all fall apart in the afternoon? I would think that radio stations would want to put their best and brightest on the air during commute times, as that is when they get the most listenership. Either good DJs are hard to find, or radio stations don’t value my patronage. Which is a-ok with me, my iPod never lets me down.

Categories
food general complaints

ode to the tostadita

My husband has to hear me complain about how I can’t get my tostadita at baja fresh anymore at least once a month, so I thought I’d commit my complaint to the written word.

My love of the tostadita stems from the fact that, though I am a grown adult, I cannot eat adult-sized portions. I cannot eat a 1200 calorie meal in one sitting. I just don’t have it in me. Don’t get me wrong, over the course of a day, I can put away close to 3000 calories (I don’t do that EVERY day, mom, don’t worry). I just can’t do it in one sitting.

And so comes my abuse of children’s menus in fast food restaurants everywhere. Happy meals, Adventure meals, you name, I’ve eaten it. And thus, I discovered the tostadita at baja fresh.

The tostadita (from the children’s menu, of course) was a small flour tortilla shell (deep-fried, just the way nature intended) with a scoop of beans (black or pinto), a scoop of rice, a scoop of steak (or chicken), a scoop of pico de gallo, and a sprinkling of cheese. I loved the tostadita. I loved it every time I went to baja fresh. But, apparently I was the only person on the planet who ever ordered it, because they removed it from their children’s menu.

And now, I must eat the tostada. Or, rather, I must spend 7.89 to eat half the tostada and throw the other half away (you can’t save a deep-fried tortilla). The tostado, however, is filled with lettuce – and guacamole, no matter how much I ask them to not put that green squishiness on it – and is most decidedly missing rice. It’s not quite the same as my beloved tostadita – but perhaps it’s time I graduated to grown-up food.

Categories
general complaints work

the 9 to 5 is killing me

I’m not the kind of person who can do the same thing every day. I thrive on schedule variation. I loved college, with classes scattered throughout the week, with time to use for studying, labs, homework, apartment cleaning and shopping, to do at my discretion, and at my whim. Plus, the schedule changed every 4 months.

I’ve been slogging through this daily 9 to 5 for 4 years now, and it’s wearing me down. Vacations help, but then it’s right back into that same old same old.

I have a great job with flexible hours, and I think that helps me cope. I get paid monthly, so I just have to make sure I get my hours worked within the month. On my timecard, I work anywhere from 0 to 11 hours in a day. Today, for example, I was there for an hour. And then I left. I’m sure people think I must be sick or something, but the truth is, I was completely unmotivated to do anything on my at-work todo list. Which is a shame, because there really are a lot of things I’m supposed to be working on. Due to the fact that I’m the ‘last man standing’, as it were, we’ve had 3 developers leave in the last 6 months. And they’ve been replaced with one. Who is awesome, but he’s still coming up to speed, and they’re trying to preserve his sanity by letting him focus on one project. As opposed to, say, 8. (Oh, I wish I were exaggerating…)

I am not a lazy person. In fact, I just wrote out a todo list of what I’m going to do with my random day off, and I will be hard pressed to accomplish it. Especially if I keep getting distracted by things, like, oh, blogging. Here is what I hope to get done today: Laundry (2 or 3 loads), possibly some ironing (I really hate ironing, so I probably won’t do it), change the kitty litter, take tortellini for a walk and give her a bath, put away the camp gear (this involves cleaning a lot of it first), dishes (you’d be amazed at how many dirty dishes 2 people can generate, all 32 of our forks are dirty), straighten up the living room and kitchen (the two rooms on the main floor, once they are clean, the house is clean enough for guests), change the sheets (oh, that will make another load of laundry), clean the floors, and dig up a bush stump or 3. Before I can do the laundry or dig up the bushes, however, I will need to buy dryer sheets and a root cutting tool. Which means 2 stores, and seeing as I am incapable of just walking into a store and purchasing the one necessary item, I will have to allot an hour or two for shopping. Because I love wandering through stores. Even Home Depot…

I have to go back to the 9 to 5 tomorrow. But as for right now – I have some laundry to do.

Categories
general complaints

fame and fortune

Alas, blogging has not brought me the fame I had hoped it would. I had high hopes of being discovered as an up-and-coming writer, and getting a book deal. Or, perhaps, a paying writing gig such as the folks at Television Without Pity get.

But, here it is, two months later and no one has discovered me. The only people that read my blog are people I harass into reading it. (That would be my family and my friends, I haven’t yet resorted to passing out the URL to people at the grocery store. Though, that *might* expand my reader-base…)

I had grand plans to quit my day job, publish new york times best sellers from time to time, and to travel the world. Then, I could write a new york times best seller about traveling the world! Who wouldn’t want to read that?

My husband tells me I need to have a large collection of articles for potential publishers to read, before I can get famous. So here’s one more article for the pile o’ discovery.

Categories
general complaints

high school reunions

Next year will be the 10-year mark for my husband’s high school graduation, and the year after will be mine. I really don’t have much interest in going to mine (I’d much rather spend the vacation time doing something … fun), but my husband wants to go to his. Mostly so he can show all the losers he graduated with that he makes twice as much money as they do. And that he married someone outside his gene pool.

He grew up in a small Texas town, of 2500 people. And, apparently, small towns have a tendency to inbreed. And, also, a tendency to make anyone not part of the ‘in’ group feel very much ‘out’ – which is the catalyst for my husband wanting to go to his reunion.

The problem with attending his reunion, however, is that no one may bother to plan it. I don’t know how many high school classes forego reunions, but it seems to me that entrusting 4 people to plan events 10, 20, 30, and 40 years in the future would mean that a lot of those events just don’t happen. Things that were important in high school, really hold no importance 10 years later. And sometimes, people die. You may not know this, but dead people really throw terrible parties.

Even if the blessed event does get planned, my husband fears that he may not be invited. For one, he doesn’t live even live in Texas anymore. Also, his family has relocated to Houston, and his mother has remarried and has a different last name. All of these things will make it difficult to track my husband down. For another thing, the senior class president hated my husband, and, in fact, had a small group of close associates. My husband thinks it highly likely that the event will be a small affair, comprised of people who still live nearby (many in their parent’s basements), with invitation passed by word of mouth.

Me, I’m hoping the thing doesn’t happen. My husband and I both have a limited number of vacation days, and I’d really like to see Scotland next summer. Or Disney World. Or maybe a cruise…

Categories
fashion general complaints

monkey arms

I suffer from the generally unrecognized malady of monkey arms. It is a condition that renders me unable to wear long-sleeved shirts that fit. One of two things generally happens: Either a long sleeved shirt will fit perfectly in the body, and the sleeves end 2 inches before my wrist – or else the sleeves are wonderfully long, and I end up swimming in the rest of the shirt, appearing to be horribly ashamed of my body and trying to hide it.

I have some oversized sweatshirts that I love, but I end up looking a little frumpy. Best case, I look like I’m wearing my husband’s clothes – worst case, I look like I’m wearing my husband’s clothes. There really is nothing flattering about wearing clothes that are too big, though with pigtails, it can, on occasion, be a cute look.

The savior to the monkey-armed is the 3/4 sleeve shirt. It ends up being a little closer to the elbow than the wrist (instead of right in the middle, as 3/4 suggests) but that’s perfectly acceptable. The misplacement of the end of a 3/4 sleeve does not offend the eye, as does a full sleeve that is one inch away from its intended target.

I found a suit jacket a year or so ago, made just for the monkey armed. It fits as if it was tailored just for me by the good folks at J. Crew. Luckily, I found it on the clearance rack at the outlet store, so it only set me back $75. (Because, well, I probably wouldn’t have forked over the dough for a $200 jacket. Yes, I really am that cheap.) One other benefit of J. Crew: they are under the impression that I’m a size 2. Guess if you spend the cash, you can be any size you want to be… Though, it does make one wonder what J. Crew expects people who really are a size 2 to wear.

I am on a quest to find reasonably priced clothing for the monkey-armed. In the meantime, though, I will just have to settle for 3/4 sleeves and the occasional trip to J. Crew to balk at the idea of a $68 shirt.

Categories
fashion general complaints

itsy bitsy teeny weeny …

It’s that dreaded time of year again. Bathing suit season. It’s so dreaded, in fact that I have entirely skipped it for the last 4 years, instead relying on the bathing suit from the season before. But, as all spandex things eventually do, my bathing suit has lost its elasticity. Which is a vital part of any good bathing suit. And so begins the search.

I actually have a rather unexpected problem when it comes to finding a bathing suit. My problem lies in the fact that I am small. And because I am small, that means one thing to the fashion industry: I MUST want a bikini. It’s the ONLY logical conclusion.

I can choose from string bikinis, halter-top bikinis, bust-boosting bikinis, boy-short bikinis and bandeau bikinis. I can even choose from tankinis that only show a little bit of tummy. The truth is, I would probably look good in a body-baring suit. But I don’t want to put my entire body on display. I don’t think badly of women who do choose to wear bikinis. On the contrary, I think they should feel free to flaunt it while they got it. I, on the other hand, am a relatively reserved person, and like to reflect that in my wardrobe. Plus, I totally hate it when men check me out. (Deep-rooted psychological issue. Still working on that one with my therapist.)

One piece bathing suits are styled for grandmas. Or they have 17 layers of spandex meant to slim and smooth the body. Or – they have cutouts, which places them squarely in that whole body-display category. And generally, one-piece bathing suits either start out one size higher than I am, or they are for a much shorter-torsoed person than myself. When in the market for a bathing suit, it is very important that it fits as close-to-perfectly as possible. Panels of fabric flapping in the breeze, or the constant tug of war between yanking up and down, really defeat the purpose of getting a one-piece in the first place.

My current suit is a two-piece: a boy-short tankini, where the top actually overlaps with the bottom. And I have loved it! It took me two years to find it, a tankini top that was small but LONG, with a bottom that didn’t bare my whole, well, bottom.

When I was in high school, I participated in a Japanese-exchange student program, opening my house to a girl from Japan. On one occasion, all the students went swimming – and the Japanese girls all had absolutely adorable one-piece bathing suits with skirts. Now, I know that sounds hideous, because the only things on the market in the US that approximate that are designed for 50-year-old women. But these were cute little sundress-styled bathing suits, designed with the teenage girl in mind. So – I KNOW it’s possible to design a flattering, one-piece, cute bathing suit with the teenage-to-thirties size-2-to-6 crowd in mind.

I am not ashamed of my body. As it stands, I rather like my body. It is something I am proud of, but it is also something that I don’t want to share with the world. Is it so much to ask that I can find a modest bathing suit that wasn’t designed for my grandma? I still have a few months before the summer hits, and I really can’t wear my old suit anymore. So here’s hoping that this won’t have to be a swim-less summer.

Categories
general complaints

watch out for the quiet ones

I’m a quiet person. I mean, really quiet. Like, I’m sure there are people I went to high school with, who think I can’t talk.

It’s not that I don’t ever talk. I will most certainly respond to anyone who talks to me, and if I am in need of information, I will willingly seek out and talk to people who are more knowledgeable than myself.

One of the benefits of being quiet, is that people come up with the craziest ideas about you. Some people are under the impression that I’m smart. Not just smart, but crazy smart. They think that because I spend so little time talking, I must be spending an awful lot of time thinking. Which I do, but not about how to improve upon Einsteinian theories. (Wow! Now THAT sounded smart.) I spend most of my day, for example, thinking about how I can’t go to Target after work because I’m totally wearing a red polo and khakis. And that I should never have bought a red polo, because I really love Target. Probably more than any healthy person should. But – I really do look good in red. And, well, polos are sort of a staple of the engineer wardrobe. So, it really was inevitable that I would end up with a red polo.

One of the drawbacks of being quiet, is that people come up with the craziest ideas about you. I once had a guy tell me that he thought I seemed like a person who would like Alice in Wonderland. The Disney cartoon. Now, I’m a big Disney cartoon fan. But there are some of those older ones, that I just can’t make it through. Like Fantasia. Or Bambi. (Total snore-fest.) Or Alice in Wonderland – it’s just weird. And boring. I’ve probably seen most of it, but definitely not in one sitting.

At work, we’ve got a blog, where people can post about the projects they’re working, and I generally post a quick update a few times a week. Since I’ve started blogging, several of my coworkers have stopped by my office to express surprise at the fact that I am mildly humorous. I guess, for whatever reason, since all quiet people are smart and like boring ‘Classic’ Disney cartoons, that it means that we must all be horrifically dull. Which, I have to admit, some of us quiet ones are. But – for the rest of us – give us a chance. We may just surprise you. 🙂