Butter and Nails

It is a bizarre feeling to go to bed on a Monday night and your world is perfect, only to wake up Tuesday and have everything turned to a giant stick of melted butter. Once the butter melts its next to impossible to have it mold itself back into stick form. Even if you do get the butter to look like a stick again, it will never be whole since there is still melted butter residue left in the bowl it melted in.

That's how I feel right now, like a giant stick of melted butter. Each time I pull myself together, I lose a giant chunk of my myself. I try to walk with my head held high and the confidence I once had, but I'm pretty sure that part of me was washed down the sink a long time ago. When the smoke clears and I'm able to finally rebuild myself, what will be left of me? A shell of what was once there.

We live in a country with a judicial system that claims we are "innocent until proven guilty," yet we don't live by those standards in our own personal lives. I have been prosecuted and convicted before I was even accused. While the world was plotting against me, I was enjoying life and smelling the roses.

As I write this, I am fully aware that there will be individuals who will read this and will try to analyze what I've wrote in the hopes to find an ounce of ammunition against me, but you will find none. I am a defeated woman who has already been broken down. My once vibrant spirit has been annihilated and pulverized. You can't break someone's spirit when it has already been destroyed.

While I may wake up each morning fearing what the day will bring, I know I will get through this. I refuse to play these elementary school games and will not fight fire with fire. I will fight back the flames with the help if the fire department. And when the smoke clears and a pile of ashes lays at my feet, I will rise from these ashes to reclaim what us mine. I may not be the same vibrant person I once was, but I will be stronger and smarter than ever before.

Doorstop

Spring break started on Friday, which means that for a full ten days I would not have to go to work. My original plan, was to play tons of video games, get around to updating Owl Stretching Time with some new blogs, and possibly seeing Jurassic Park in 3D. The most important game plan for the week, was to relax. To flush all of the conflict and stress occurring with coworkers slip my mind as I stayed in my pajamas and played every video game I could get my hands on.

With the exception of playing video games, this week has been anything but stress free. The Langmore Salon recently expanded into the space behind them (and directly below our apartment). They have primarily been working on the weekends and in the early morning hours before their Salon was open. I have become numb to the noises coming from below, however due to the amount of cleaning, knocking down walls, and sanding, the odors coming from below are reminiscent from when John still lived there.

On Tuesday, I propped the main hallway door open to get some fresh air into the building. At around 11 am, our neighbor, Louie, went into the hallway and kicked the doorstop from the door, causing the chunk of wood to clank against the radiator. He then slammed the front door shut and stomped towards his apartment. As he was about to enter his apartment, he screamed out that he was "fucking tired of these girls. They are such fucking assholes. It's too cold for this shit." Afterwards, he promptly slammed his door shut.

As this was all happening, I had Gerald sitting in my lap. Gerald does not like loud noises, screaming, and sudden movements. Seeing that Louie's temper tantrum involved all three of these vices, Gerald jumped out of my lap, puncturing my arm and fled towards the bedroom. 

At this point, I was a little shocked and frankly terrified of our new neighbor. What would have happened if I had been outside having a smoke break? Does he usually behave like this? Is he even aware that I am home on spring break?

I decided to not press the issue and the following morning, I headed outside to see Rachel off to work and the hallway smelled again. I propped the door open once again, said bye to Rachel, and headed back outside. Within 30 seconds of my door closing, I hear Louie's door open. He proceeds to close the door and go back into his apartment.

Two can play at this game. About an hour later, I headed outside and noticed the door stop was completely gone. Asshole had taken it inside with him earlier in the day. What the fuck is wrong with this nut job? I came back inside and plotted a new game plan. After hearing him leave, I went outside and grabbed two bricks and used them to prop the door open. 

Timing has never been my strong suit, and within moments of placing my bricks I noticed Louie's truck pulling into the parking lot. He came up the stairs with his groceries falling out of the bags and paused at the door with a confused look on his face that screamed, "Oh god! These girls practice witchcraft." He brought his groceries inside and then waltzed to the door, grabs the bricks, and throws them onto the porch.

Bring it on scrawny white boy. Bring it on.

He starts to scream as I calmly light my cigarette, cross my legs, and flick the first ashes into the ashtray. I really wanted to crack my knuckles before letting loose, but let him have it. Obviously, my huge problem was the fact that he tore through the hallway like Hulk the day before. As soon as I start to speak, the words flowed out like a harsh whipping. Louie, tucked his nonexistent tail between his legs and ran towards his car. 

He came back upstairs and decided to unleash again on me, which prompted me to unleash back. After I unleashed back, he tells me that if I prompt the door open again he's going to call the cops. Of course, he goes running for his car. I jump up from my seat and start to scream back, telling him that the door has been propped open well before he moved into the building and will be propped open well after he moves out and that if he's got a problem with me then he can say it to my face rather than behind a door. I proceed to call him a coward and a dickhead and at this point I can hear the neighbors coming. One by one, screen doors are opening above and below me. The employees and customers of Sisters are standing on their porch laughing their ass off as Louie, is now dropping water bottles all over the ground.

He storms back up the stairs and goes inside. I thought that the argument was over and continue having my cigarette when he proceeds to come back out a third time. Now he's claiming that I intentionally closed the hallway door, causing his mother and son to be locked on the porch for hours. I sat their shocked beyond belief, seeing that one of my many reasons for propping the door open in the first place is that it locks on its own. 

Of course, he doesn't want to hear that we had overnight guests the last two weeks, the fact that the door automatically locks when it closes, and that I have been locked out several times in the past. He only wants to spout out that I intentionally locked his kid on the porch and now his son is terrified of me. 

He goes back inside again after I pointed out that he was a dickhead for the upteenth time and obviously doesn't have much brains in his head if he really believes that I intentionally locked his kid out. Moments later, he comes back out for round four. 

Round four starts out with him saying that we are even, since he called me an asshole and I called him a dickhead. Now I am hysterically laughing at the notion that we are "even" and point out the fact that I have more balls than he does, since I called him a dickhead to his face. He once again reiterates that he's calling the cops the next time the door is open and that I am going to pay his electric bill. I reiterated the dickhead comment by stating the obvious facts that 1) the door is not an emergency door and can be propped open, 2) our heat runs on gas not electric and 3) he's a dickhead. 

The argument finally ended with me telling him that I was going to call the cops if the doorstop didn't show back up by the end of the day. He claimed he doesn't know what happened to it but then clams up when I told him that I watched him take it into his apartment. I then called him a dickhead again and told him that he was currently in possession of stolen property. 

Obviously, I had no intention of calling the police about a chunk of wood but I had the desire to battle fire with explosive materials. I'm not sure if he is the type to call the police over something so trivial, but I do know he's the type of person who craves being made to look like a fool. 

A Discovery of Witches

A Discovery of Witches

Title: A Discovery of Witches
Author: Deborah Harkness
Published: December 27, 2011
Publisher: Penguin Books
Length: 592 Pages













In the first book of the All Souls Trilogy, A Discovery of Witches introduces the reader to a world in which humans unknowingly live in the same world as daemons, witches, and vampires. Witches, daemons, and vampires of course no about each other but they are not allowed to associate with each other. At the beginning of the novel, we are introduced to Diana Bishop, a witch who doesn't want to be a witch who was born into a very long line of witches. In fact, her ancestral roots trace back to the Salem Witch Trials. Her parents were two very powerful witches, Stephen Proctor and Rebecca Bishop, who were both killed when Diana was seven years old while they were in Nigeria.

Within the first ten pages of the book, Diana calls a manuscript called Ashmole 782, which sets the events of the book into motion. After returning the manuscript, it becomes apparent that every witch, daemon, and vampire has become increasingly interested in the manuscript since it had not been opened in hundreds of years. Diana eventually meets a 1,500 year old vampire named Matthew Clairmont who comes to her aid when a witch attempts to enter her mind.

Over the course of the story, Matthew and Diana fall in love, get married in a quick vampire wedding, and decide whether to attempt to open Ashmole 782 again. They are quickly attacked by witches, vampires, more witches, and then more vampires as Diana learns her lengthy list of talents. They eventually come to head with the Congregation, a council of three witches, three vampires, and three daemons, before timewalking into the 1500s.

The story starts off painfully slow with Diana going to the library and reading old alchemy manuscripts while daemons, witches, and vampires gawk at her. She goes home to drink some tea at night and exercise, then the next chapter is rinse and repeat. By the time I was into a third of the book, I was ready to throw in the towel. When the rinse and repeat was over, the story picked up quickly. In fact, the story went from crawling at a snail's pace to moving at the speed of light.

Many of the problems with the writing weren't even the author's fault, but mistakes that her editing company never picked up (missing periods, commas, quotation marks). There were several places were it seemed as if she wanted to go back into the text to add more detail, but simply forgot so there are gaping holes in some of the thoughts and dialogue pieces.

Once the story picked up (at around Chapter 12), I was hooked. The rising action became intense with plot twists, new information unveiled about vampires, and the introduction of new characters. I'm not exactly sure whether the lack of climax was due to the fact that this is the first book in the trilogy and the author hasn't gotten to that point yet or whether the author didn't know how to write a story will all of the elements of plot.

I know it seems as if I had butchered this book, but the story was actually really interesting and I do plan on reading all of the books in the series. A Discovery of Witches is definitely not an adult version of Harry Potter, as Deborah Harkness described it, but it is an enjoyable light read that will lightly savor your mouth, making your crave a little more vampire/witch love action.

Trash Queen

Rachel and I have lived in the Langmore for almost four years (I think). When we originally moved into the building, the place was packed with every unit being rented out. Since the death of Mark and the building being purchased by Tracy, the humans dwelling in the building as dwindled down. With the exception of the store fronts below us, there were only two apartments being rented out consistently for the last twelve months.

Amy lives above us on the third floor, and has been an anti-social weirdo since we moved in. Conversation between has never existed. I have always been polite to her, saying hello, asking if she needed help during the hurricane last summer, dropping off her mail that was mistakenly put in our box, ect. My attempts of friendliness are returned by her with grunts, stares, and more grunts. Even with the grunts, I have still maintained a level of friendliness.

Everything changed when I accidently filled her garbage can up with our trash. It was an honest mistake and was not intentional. Rachel and I were in the process of overhauling our apartment in preparation for moving David’s furniture into our apartment. David is my amazing father-in-law, who is in the process of moving to England with his wife. Rachel and I threw a lot of shit away, filling up our trash bin in record time.

Each apartment has a separate trash and recycling bin which is taken out on Sunday night for Monday morning pick-up. On Saturday night, I went to the trash area and pulled out an empty trash bin from what I thought was one of the empty apartments. The two of us pulled up our trash bins to the building, along with the empty bin and finished filling them with our trash. We also didn’t see any sense in pulling the heavy, filled bins back to the trash area in the back of the property since we would be taking them out to the curb the following day. We finished cleaning up and called it a night.

The following day, Rachel went to work and I hung around the apartment doing my usual Sunday cleaning. At one point, I headed out to the porch and noticed that Amy was in a mood and a half. She was already in her car and peeled out of our parking lot in a rage, creating missiles with the gravel in the parking lot and two huge black marks skid marks.

I headed inside in disbelief and noticed I had a text message from Tracy asking if anyone knows why Amy’s trash bin was filled. I didn’t think anything of it, especially since she had recently rented out the apartment next to Amy. The new tenant had been dumping crap into our bin all week, but I didn’t make a huge deal about it. Obviously there is something wrong with this weirdo that she went running to our landlord about her trash can being filled. I headed back outside to double check to make sure that my car wasn’t dented from Amy’s temper tantrum and finally noticed why she was so pissy: I had accidently grabbed her bin.

In my defense though, trash is picked up on Monday morning and taken to the curb Sunday night. Think about how much trash you take out in your house during a given week. By Saturday night, wouldn’t there be some trash in your bin? I grabbed an empty bin on Saturday night (at about 2 am).

When Rachel got home from work, I gave her the run-down of what had occurred today. She too thought the situation was funny, especially Amy’s reaction to her trash bin being filled. While we were having a good laugh, Amy pulled back into the lot. I waited outside so that I could apologize to her and explain what had happened. At first she tried to avoid us, hoping that we would go back inside before she had to head into her apartment. When she finally came upstairs, I attempted to apologize, but she cut me off before I could even explain what had happened, calling me “unorthodox.”

I was speechless that this douche bag had just cut off my apology to call me unorthodox. Does she even know what that word means, let alone how to properly use it? I responded by telling her that I “was trying to apologize, but fuck it. You don’t deserve one.” Rachel quickly cut me off and calmed Amy down by literally talking over her to get her point across. I sat there in stunned silence that Amy was such an ass and in amazement over my wifey’s communication skills. It honestly was mesmerizing to watch how Amy went from irate bitch to plain bitch in a matter of minutes.

Needless to say, Amy and I barely even speak. I refuse to say hello to her and she refuses to even look at me. She has been much friendlier with Rachel, saying hello to her and actually initiating conversations with her.  I have heard through the grapevine that she’s still trying to cause trouble, such as telling Jackie (the owner of the salon below us) to put our trash bins in front of my car. As always, I will have the last laugh in this situation since I plan on pissing the bitch off in small ways, such as throwing random shit into her trash bin and parking really close to her car.

Poo Wars Revision

Rather than poo in Sasha's shower, I think I'm going to bread her numerous times for the next few weeks. I learned about this new trend this evening, there is even an official website, Breaded Cats.

Poo Wars

There is an inter-species war occurring in our apartment, a war between the upright humans and a four legged tortie that goes by the name of Sasha. Sasha was a part of the package when Rachel and I moved in together. In the beginning, Sasha and I got along fantastically. She snuggled above my head at night, followed me around the apartment like a lost puppy dog when Rachel wasn't home, and relaxed in her kitty sauna when I took a hot shower.

Lately, Sasha and I have not been seeing eye to eye. The problem started as a strange behavior, when Rachel and I realized that she liked to pee in the tub. She would position her little pee-hole over the drain and a perfect stream of pee-pee would go straight down the shower drain. I was repulsed at first, but then realized that it was better that she pee-peed (how the hell do you spell that?) in our tub than in other places, such as my shoes or in the bottom of my backpack.

Eventually, Sasha either got bored of simply pee-peeing in the tub or has been intending to tinkle but gets caught off guard with the surprise/accidental poop. At first, this shit fiasco occurred in bursts every few months. She would shit in the tub two or three days in a row, then abruptly stop. Rachel and I tried to solve the problems in a variety of ways: new litter boxes, new litter, rearranging the apartment to perfectly place the litter boxes, and even allowing Sasha to drink from the bathroom tap.

Nothing seemed to work. In fact, the poo wars only got worse, instead of being every few months, Sasha began pooing in the tub on a monthly basis, then a weekly basis, and then a daily basis. We went from cleaning up three piles of shit in a month to cleaning up two, sometimes three, piles of Sasha poo on a daily basis.

Not only are we cleaning up cat poop on a daily basis, but it's not just any cat poo, it's the Sasha poo. A poo that is a weapon of mass destruction. Her poop has the odor of cat feces (obviously), raw meat, and rancid potatoes and has the texture of baby food. Cleaning up her poop is a nauseating and gagging experience, to be honest, I have delegated the poop cleanup to Rachel. I only clean up her poo when it's an emergency situation, such as needing to shower and Rachel isn't home to clean it up. I know it sounds evil, but to make cleaning up cat messes even, I am responsible for cleaning up any cat puke.

Recently, Rachel and I have been keeping the bathroom closed off, specifically at night, since Rachel has been waking up on a daily basis to a pile of toxin poo. Having the bathroom closed off has been a wonderful solution for the last week. Sasha poos in her litter box at night and Rachel doesn't have to clean up poop before her shower. Though, Sasha does poo in the tub while we are at work, so by the time I get home, there is a guaranteed pile of poo with venomous odor in the bathroom.

Last night was no different, Rachel closed off the bathroom as I tuckered into bed. In the wee hours of the morning, Rachel wakes me up in a panic because she can hear Sasha scratching and attempting to cover something up under the bed. Wifey wakes me up in a frantic, upset, panic and explains what Sasha was doing. As soon as she has finished explaining her fear I get an overwhelming scent of cat shit. I get out of bed, get on all fours, and take a peek under the bed. What do I find?

Sasha attempting to cover up a giant pile of poo with a Puffs tissue box. Poor tissues never had a chance. Rachel and I had to move the entire bed so that we could clean up Sasha's disgusting mess. After moving the bed and getting a nose full of toxins, I immediately went into gag mode. I stumbled out of the room to get fresh air, almost tromping through another cat mess, this time a giant pile of cat puke.

Sasha and I are at a stalemate. I'm not quite sure what to do about this problem, though I'm beginning to think I should start pooing in her shower...aka her mouth.

Need a Moment?

I've spent the last two hours staring at this blank white text box with absolutely no idea what to write. I've watched an episode of Hoarders and now I'm watching an episode of Kitchen Nightmares with the gayest of gay men. With countless topics to write about and no ideas where to start, I decided to surf the internet. Legend has it that you can find anything on the internet, which I mistakenly did not take very seriously.

Apparently the legend is correct, because tonight I discovered this photo (along with several others) from an Israeli fashion magazine called BelleMode. According to the magazine, the man in the photo is an Ultraorthodox Jewish model.

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I figured you may have needed a moment before you continued reading, though I really have nothing else to say. I just wanted to point out that I gave you a moment to enjoy.