Monday, November 22, 2010

sometimes there's a whiff of mischief

It was a foggy morning in WFNC today, with conditions ranging from 'picturesque' to 'pea soup,' depending on how far downhill you went. Naturally this meant that people felt it incumbent upon them to a) stay home drinking soup through a straw, b) stalk menacingly across the marshy spots in their neighborhoods, or c) drive like morons.

If you answered C, you win a prize. Morons, how they did abound.

I dislike morons in the morning, and thus set out to thwart moronitude whenever possible by doing what morons hate most: driving responsibly. It makes them crazy! One fine example of moronicity was the dude behind me in the interminable and dreaded middle school car pool line who spent a lot of energy trying to crawl right up Tink's bumper or being otherwise vehicularly menacing. We were in the parking lot, friends, a place built for PARKING, not 'racing up as fast as you can only to have to wait to drop off your kid.' To this fellow then, I wrote this letter, in the hope that maybe through a twist of serendipity he stumbles across it in a web-ramble and is struck by how him being a moron affects all of us, and not in a nice way.

Dear Sir: In case you were unaware (for I do like to give people the benefit of the doubt) there is only so fast one can go in the carpool line when waiting for the cars ahead of us to disgorge their precious cargo. Whether I go 10 MPH or 50 matters not, for there will still be a line we must wait in. RACING LIKE A MORON, IN THE PARKING LOT, makes no sense at all and therefore I shan't engage in such idiotic behavior, nor should you.

Also, just because your kid managed to LEAP out of your car at lightning speed once you attained the drop-off area does not mean that the instant they are deployed you should try to swerve around the car ahead of you (that car carrying me and MY precious cargo) to oe'ertake the precious 'one spot ahead in line' position, because hi, you're in a school parking lot, there are kids walking into school right in your swerving range, the car ahead of you will be ready to pull forward in, like, 2 seconds, and damn, just take a chill pill and relax for the next time blip. There is NOTHING you need to get to 2 seconds faster than what you'd achieve by just staying in line and acting like an adult.

Nor, as you are by now so keenly aware, shall I cut in front of a bus trying to turn left out of their dropoff area, because there is a sign that says I must let them out, and I as a mostly law-abiding citizen feels it necessary to engage in a LITTLE common courtesy on behalf of the bus drivers who, if interviewed, would likely be effusive in their thanks to those people who DO let them out such is their miserable lot in life that small mercies are appreciated well out of proportion to the effort it takes to perform them. Do you, sir, WANT to antagonize and aggravate the school bus driver? Yes, your precious snowflake gets dropped off by YOU every morning, as do mine, so what the bus drivers think about you may not be your concern, but I have noticed that they have very large vehicles and I'd be loath to go head-to-head with one in a battle for 'who gets to go first.' They would win, every time, no matter how tough you think your Jeep is.

Lastly, sir, as a final show of 'how to drive reasonably when you can't see 100 feet down the road because of the dang fog,' once we get onto the main road you must have noticed that I drove the speed limit, and no faster, which of course served to aggravate the living hot snot out of you, hot shot, but that's your problem and not mine. I'm not going to kowtow to your bumper-riding antics, nor your frantic swervitude, and in fact I might SLOW DOWN more just to give you the holy hopping maddies and hope that maybe your heart will flutter in adrenaline-induced arrhythmia causing you to reevaluate how your aggression is harming you and as a result you have an Epiphany and turn your wicked ways around. A girl can dream.

Love and blinkers on!

Tiff.

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In other news: the new dryer is in place and functioning well. Would that I could say as much about the paint I placed on the walls of the laundry room/pantry yesterday afternoon. It appears that painting over paneling, even paneling that been thoroughly washed and dried, is a tricky affair, causing some paints to slump and drip and ooze in the drying process, rendering the walls a lumpy ugly mess of tacky that even calling it a 'faux finish' won't improve.

Seriously - it's like being on an acid trip, without the acid. The freaking walls look like they're melting.

The good news is that the washer and dryer and the new shelving unit above them cover a fair amount of the terrible paint job, but covering 'most' still leaves 'some,' and it's that some that's tackying up the joint in fairly spectacular fashion. Fortunately, Biff 'has a plan,' which should mean that by the end of today the rework should be done and we can move the mountain of crap that's on and under the kitchen table back to where it belongs, before the neighbors call that "Hoarders" show and stage an intervention.

Who knew so much stuff could come out of such a small space? It's like there's some weird bending of space in that room, so that what doesn't seem like much while it's in there expands 3-fold once you take it out. The whole pantry/laundry is MAYBE 4 x 8, yet the entire kitchen is engulfed in what came out of there. Perplexing, and amazing. I can't wait to see how much room is left over once it all gets put back (minus the junk we deemed 'junk' yesterday and just threw out). Why, we might have room for a chicken hatchery, or small garage! A workshop for elves or a place to spin wool! A spot for a pet giraffe (who will, of course, shrink down remarkably in size once it crosses the threshold), or a nook for a printing press!

Goodness, the possibilities are nearly endless. I'm sure I haven't thought of even a tenth of the great stuff we could cram into that little room, given its remarkable powers of space warpery. Feel free to leave your thoughts about 'what to stick in that empty corner' in the comments, and then have a lovely day.

Tiff out.

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