The Minutiae of Life as a Militant Squirrel

It took me three hours to get to work today, in large part because I stumbled across an accident that must have just occurred . . . an SUV, flipped and still spinning slightly, while the two guys inside managed to actually get the doors open, crawl out, and WALK AWAY.

Talk about lucky days.

I hope those guys went and bought lotto tickets later.

*************

I caught most of the second half of the surprisingly awesome King Arthur last night. The Saxon leader had all the best lines, I thought.

The hands-down winner? After Arthur comes out alone to meet him and threaten his life?

Cedric says thoughtfully: So, Arthur. Finally. A man worth killing.

*************

I got a baby laptop from my daddy for Christmas, yay!!! It's the most adorable little netbook ever!

The only thing I would change is that I would have preferred it to be in my favorite color, red, but you know . . . horses. Mouths. Gifts. Whatevers. I figure I can just get it a red jacket.

Hopefully tomorrow there will be enough time so that I can load it up with fun stuff while I'm here at the office. By which I mean fanfic, of course.

*************

Today I made sure I brought my lunch like a good squirrel. Turkey leg and side of frozen veggies, yum!

Then lucifrix happened to mention in passing "cheese fries" and of course, I'm all like, twist my arm why don't you.

I'm SO easy.

It's just like when someone mentions Chinese food and then that's all you can think about for DAYS.

*************

My Atlanta Falcons won this weekend, in large part I'm sure because the game was not televised anywhere that I might happen to watch it and jinx them. On Sunday, though, I found myself wondering aloud, if you were the three-and-eleven Tampa Bay Bucs, and you're playing the New Orleans fucking perfect record Saints . . . seriously? Do you even show up?

And then they managed to trounce the Saints THOROUGHLY. That was AWESOME.

Of course, later on I found out that the Saints got smashed up the week before, too, which also made me a happy camper, as I bear a Falcon fan's unreasonable seething hatred for our chief rivals.

I still think we should be in the playoffs. Dammit.

*************

Tonight I am meeting Aunt Jinny's partner Claire for dinner and discussion about some problems I think I'm seeing with my mother: above and beyond the usual she-drives-me-crazy kind of problems. I have to make sure I set aside some time to organize my thoughts, as I mean for this to be serious business and not a bitch session ( because after all that is what I pay a therapist for ).

Aside from her general clinginess, Mom's become increasingly withdrawn, fearful, and certainly hostile. She's hit pretty much every one in the top ten of depressive symptoms, and I'm sorry, but I am not psychologically or financially equipped to take over her life ( which I suspect is actually what she wants, anyway ).

Maybe it makes me a bad person, but I am not prepared to run my mother's life for her, just so that she doesn't have to think.

Claire is a doctor, a geriatrician by specialty, and as a family member as well as a medical professional, I'm hoping that she can help me to come up with some kind of game plan that doesn't necessarily involve me being the sole focus. Because I already know I can't handle it, and that's why I'm asking for help.

*************

I defy anyone to watch this and not at least sniffle a little. I'm pretty sure my ovaries were going to explode. But there's something about the whole soldiers-in-Iraq thing that really gets me.

Speaking of which, I'm pretty sure I'm going to hell for it, but when the umpteenth overbearing and pretentious relative said with false sympathy to me at Christmas, "Oh, and no boyfriend again this Christmas? I'm SO sorry," like I had FUCKING CANCER or something, I totally LIED LIKE A RUG and said, "My boyfriend's in Iraq. We're planning to celebrate once he makes it back safely." Cue SADFACE.

And cue annoying aunt-by-marriage doing silent fish impression and then running for the hills.

I just . . . there's a limit to how much patience I have for educating people, you know? And I've been trying to explain for YEARS now why I'm happy being single. I just had. Had. ENOUGH.

*************

So, in recent weeks, I've been *gasp* writing Vampire Diaries RPS slash, because seriously, that is possibly the hottest brothercest since the Winchester boys. ( Although it puzzles me as to why my muse went the RPS route. )

At any rate, I've also become weirdly fascinated with . . . wait for it . . . Adam Lambert.

Why? You may well ask.

I blame astolat and her fucking awesome fic.

I draw the line at actually watching that stupid show, though.

*************

Well, that should do for now. I have notes to make and, in essence, a dinner meeting for which to prepare. Then I will stagger home, probably slapping myself in the face in order to stay awake on the drive, and try to catch the end of the Badgers' bowl game.

Five o'clock is going to arrive all too early tomorrow morning, I'm afraid.

They *suck* ... or they *should*. It would make them more interesting.

What is it about guys that makes them think that being polite means that you're overcome with lust for them? Or is that just something common to ex-boyfriends? They figure that since you used to like fucking them, you're always gonna want to fuck them?

I have a habit of staying on good terms with my exes. I'd even go so far as to say that I pride myself on maintaining casual friendships with them. Of course, their wives all hate me, so it's not like anyone's being invited over for Christmas dinner, but I think it's perfectly okay to chat with them on the street or exchange emails or texts.

There's two guys in particular who have made repeated attempts to reignite relationships with me over the years, who I've had to just as repeatedly shoot down. Why the hell do I have to be a complete BITCH before they'll fucking listen?

Now, here's a third ex. He crawled out of the woodwork a week before my fortieth birthday and yanked my chain about turning forty, then as usual tried to turn the IM convo to sex. Equally as usual, I shut him down and dismissed the entire incident. A week later, apparently he saw me in a local diner with my mom, and he IMed me to hassle me about how I didn't say hi. ( Of course, *he* didn't acknowledge me, but evidently that doesn't matter. ) He said he was with his wife and that she thinks he's not over me.

DEAR GOD IN HEAVEN. IT WAS OVER FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, WOMAN. DEAL WITH IT.

Last Thursday, he messaged me, chatted a bit, then told me he was sending me an email. Okay, whatever.

And then I open the email, and I get . . . a proposition. Oh, it was quite lengthy, and started off praising my charms, etcetera, etcetera. Then it becomes a string of backhanded insults ( like, he says, "Thanks for fucking me up so bad." )

From there it's all, I know you want me 'cause you still talk to me and I bet you haven't gotten laid in years and I don't wanna leave my wife, just hook up.

OH, REALLY?

They have websites for that, you know. They're called ESCORT SERVICES. I suggest you investigate a few.

Overall, I'm not even sure what part of his email pisses me off the most: his assumptions about my sex life, his belief that I'd be happy to be available at his convenience for sex, or his ridiculous conviction that I obviously am consumed with an overwhelming desire for his person.

WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK.

So that's it, then? I'm nice and I don't bitchslap his sleazy ass down into the street where it belongs, and so that must mean I want to have sex with him??????

MOTHERFUCKING ASSHOLE.

I think that's it. I think that's what infuriates me almost beyond the point of reason: the assumption that pleasant, polite, and conversational must therefore equal lust-addled.

I really wanted to find a way to forward the email to HIS WIFE, but I settled for a return reply of sufficient viciousness that all I heard back was nevermind, won't be writing you again.

To which I can only say a resounding THANK GOD.

I wish I were a tyrannosaurus . . . I'd go stomp his ass into the GROUND. What a DICK.

There's this quote from a FUCKING AWESOME t-shirt I bought last year that I find very appropriate right now:

I'M A T-REX TRAPPED IN A HUMAN BODY

Yeah. I can dig it.

Or something like that. Today's already been a supremely weird day, and it's barely ten am.

I'd only been on the bus for all of two minutes when some guy up front got up and stood in the aisle, shouting at some other guy and getting in his face. I sit in the very last row, so I couldn't hear much of what was said, but rush hour buses are usually fairly calm. The buses are full of people who are working or sleeping or otherwise focused on the day ahead . . . the random crazies don't generally come out until later in the day. Oh, and at night-- the freaks always come out at night.

Nothing escalated . . . the guy shut up and sat down, and though I craned my neck at the next stop to see if there would be any more interesting shenanigans as a couple of guys debarked, all was quiet.

At the following stop, a married couple I recognized got on the bus. They usually sit near me, and I've exchanged nodding hellos on a few occasions with the husband. The wife never looks me in the eye, and I figured she was the shy half of the couple. Relationships often work out that way, it seems . . . one partner extremely social and outgoing, the other person more retiring and quiet. No big deal. I was messing with my iPod and wasn't paying that much attention to them today, other than to identify and sort of mentally dismiss their presence.

Except that today, the wife threw "retiring, shy and quiet" right out the window when she stood up and demanded that I stop looking at her husband.

I didn't even realize she was talking to me, at first. I had to pull out my earbuds and ask, "Excuse me?"

"I see you watching him!" she informed me. "You just can't wait to try and get with him, you think I don't see it?"

I kind of blinked at her. I almost couldn't believe this was happening. I think I rolled my eyes and muttered, "Whatever," and then, apparently, it was ON. She started shrieking the bus down.

First off, let's just say that between you and me, flist? I'm not that hot. Secondly, I don't hit on married guys, especially ones that are traveling with their wives. That's just tacky. Thirdly? SILENT HEAD BOBS OF ACKNOWLEDGEMENT DO NOT COUNT AS FLIRTING.

When she took a breath, I said, pretty calmly considering the circumstances, "If you are seriously so afraid that your husband is going to cheat on you that you have to start screaming at strangers on the bus, you have bigger problems than just me."

Oh, man. I think she hit notes that only DOGS could hear. Then she called me fat-- like, *duh*, I've never heard *that* one before-- and said something like that she wouldn't be able to miss when she beat the shit out of me.

I started laughing in her face and am somewhat shamed to admit that I taunted her in return. I'm pretty sure I came up with the oh-so-original, "Bring it, *bitch*."

That did it-- she tried to climb over her husband and a couple of other passengers to get to me, only the bus driver slammed on the brakes and yelled over the loudspeaker, "Anyone standing up can walk off this bus right now, or the cops can drag you off!"

I was really glad that I'd stayed seated.

So her husband, who up until then had been meekly sitting in near-silence, gathered up their stuff and started moving. She followed him like she was incapable of letting him out of her sight, and threw back over her shoulder that I'd leave her man alone if I knew what was good for me.

I tossed back that she'd better start taking another bus, then.

You could see her *wanting* to come back and start screaming at me again, but her husband grabbed her hand and they kept going. And so the person who started all the trouble voluntarily removed herself from the situation, and I didn't even have to throw a punch.

Which was actually kind of a letdown.

All that adrenaline, and nowhere for it to go . . . I spent the rest of the commute shaking in my corner while all the fight-chemicals dissipated.

It will be interesting to see what happens tomorrow.

Oh, then I got to work and one of the guys was talking about a fight that started on his train that morning.

I'm telling you, it's gotta be the moon.

The people who run insurance company prescription plans are FUCKING IDIOTS.

I've been fighting for three days to get the prescription for Wellbutrin that MY DOCTOR PRESCRIBED FOR ME. First it was denied because the extended-release form isn't covered. Fine. Let's go to non-extended release. Denied: has to be available in a generic form.

Fine. Generic, non-extended release Wellbutrin.

Denied. Try something cheaper. Like Zoloft. Which has already stopped working for me.

Denied again. Reason? Wellbutrin is practically like Zoloft anyway, the insurance company says. And if Zoloft doesn't work on you, there's no reason for us to pay for Wellbutrin. Go away, they say.

And my doctor's office is closed for the day. So I am shit out of luck until Monday, unless I want to pay cash for the scrip, which opens up the whole barrel of laughs that is applying for reimbursement. WHERE DO I START.

I looked it up . . . chemically, Wellbutrin and Zoloft are both SSRIs, but they are not identical by any means and I've had other SSRIs before. There's no reason to think that Wellbutrin won't work for me, and WHO THE FUCK DO YOU PEOPLE THINK YOU ARE ANYWAY?

They're INSURANCE ADJUSTERS, NOT SCIENTISTS.

Worse, they're some preprogrammed fucking computer blocking my medication, not even a live person making the decision, most likely. And it's 4:30 on a Friday afternoon and the few live people there don't give a fuck anyway.

I swear, if you hear about a torched office building for MedcoHealth? It's probably because I'm not on my antidepressants and MY depression has a huge anger component.

This is the kind of shit that TOTALLY MAKES PEOPLE CLIMB BELL TOWERS WITH AK-47s.

*seethes*


p.s. If you want to comment with sympathy, that's fine . . . but please, please, please do not tell me about how the insurance company is trying to save me money on my prescription plan or ANYTHING ELSE IN THEIR DEFENSE BECAUSE RIGHT NOW I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR IT I JUST WANT TO KILL THINGS.