04/12/2002

Hands Clean? If you haven’t, it is – in short – about the record company exec she had an affair with for 4 years, starting at the age of 14. The record exec was in his late twenties (I think). Which makes me wonder if he’s out there somewhere waiting for Alanis’ dad to come kick his ass. I have, by the way, apparently turned into an 80 year-old man. A grumpy one, even. You see, we live at the end of a cul-de-sac, and there’s a family to the left of us with a large number of small boys, and in the house to the right of us is a family with a single young boy. The children like to all play together, and the mothers are friends, and to get from one house to the other, the children AND the mothers don’t bother to haul their asses 5 feet to the street, where they would walk from their own driveway to the other. Instead, they tromp directly across our front lawn, not ten feet from the window where I spend a goodly part of my day. And on a nice day, they tromp back and forth a LOT. To me, this is just the height of rudeness, to tromp across someone’s lawn because you’re too damn much of a lazy bastard to go out of your way NOT to tromp on their lawn. I wanted to plant daffodils down the side of our driveway this spring, but knowing that our fuckhead neighbors and their kids would just stomp across the line of flowers made me not bother. So they tromptromptromp all the live-long day, and I sit in front of my computer and shoot them dirty looks and mutter nasty words to myself, and next I’m sure I’ll be hiking up my saggy-ass pants and bitching about how we’d have a nice lawn if it wasn’t for those goddamn neighbors. Oh, wait. I already do that! I’ve told Fred that we should plant bushes and trees all around the border of the lawn to prevent it. I bet we’d certainly become the neighborhood pariahs then, wouldn’t we? Oh, wait. We already are. (No, not really) So, I had occasion to be sitting in a waiting room for several hours on Wednesday, and I was lucky enough (that’s sarcasm) to be sitting directly in front of the TV, and Maury was on. The show had to do with women who had hair that was four feet long and their loved ones who wanted them to cut it off. They did, in the end, cut it off – though none of them went for the Demi Moore in Ghost look; once the hair was cut off, they all had shoulder-length or longer hair – and they looked so much better in their after pictures. But really, who needs hair that’s down to their knees? Why would you want that much hair? I think that once the hair’s past the middle of your back, all it does is get in the way. And it probably causes neck problems, too. After Maury was Jerry Springer – the TV was on the classy channel, apparently, and someone from the group taking up most of the waiting room asked if I minded if they changed the channel and turned the volume down. I was reading and didn’t mind in the slightest, so I smiled and shook my head and went back to reading. As I was trying for the fourteenth time to actually pay attention to what I was reading instead of letting my mind wander, I heard the group in the corner discussing the likelihood of another group of people going to hell. "There’s such a difference between what they say and how they act," said one woman. "And they act like WE are going to hell, when THEY are actually the ones who are!" Apparently the Committee for Deciding Who is Hellbound was meeting in the waiting room. You’d think they’d have their own office somewhere, wouldn’t you? I wonder if I’m going to hell for reading F’d Company in public? Oh, wait. I AM going to hell, but not for that… I was most interested in trying to figure out which group of people they were so certain had an express ticket to Hell, but it was never clear whether they were talking about the Baptists or the Lutherans or the Catholics or the Buddhists or some other group entirely. I suppose I could have gone over and asked, but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself in case they should decide I needed to head to Hell right away. 1. What is your favorite restaurant and why? Currently, it’s probably Applebee’s, because I love and adore their Oriental Chicken Salad, which you can get half-size (in case you’re planning on ordering dessert) or full-size (in case you want to be stuffed after you eat dessert). 2. What fast food restaurant are you partial to? I really like Subway, but because I’m the laziest gal in the South and Subway doesn’t have drive-thrus, I generally opt for Wendy’s, which has some pretty good salads. I think I may have the new Buffalo Twister from KFC for lunch today, though. I’m an equal opportunity fast food restaurant eater, really. 3. What are your standards and rules for tipping? Since I worked as a waitress, I’m a really good tipper – I know what it feels like to work your ass of and get a quarter for a tip or even get no tip at all. As long as the server makes the slightest bit of effort and doesn’t make us wait for 45 minutes to get our check, they’ll get a good tip. I think I’ve only ever not left a tip once, and in that case the waitress was openly hostile for no apparent reason. If you’re having a bad day, that’s your problem and not something you need to take out on me – I may not look like it, but I’m one hell of a tipper. I’ve been known to leave a 50% tip for especially good service. 4. Do you usually order an appetizer and/or dessert? It depends on how hungry I am – I’ll split an appetizer with the spud sometimes, but when we go to Applebee’s we ALWAYS get dessert – apple chimicheesecakes rock. 5. What do you usually order to drink at a restaurant? Diet Coke – if they have Pepsi products, I’ll have water instead. —–]]>