Anything Said

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Press the pound key for more options

Ok, so you know how when corporate groups or community organizations want to make their staff sit through customer service training, they always bring in some asshole from a major company like AT&T or Walmart to give a presentation? Like, at my library's last all-staff inservice, they brought in a higher-up from a major grocery store chain to talk to us about making our customers feel happy and appreciated? Except that said major grocery store chain is known for offering high prices and crappy service? Just like how most major companies treat their customers like numbers and make them wait in long lines to get served by underpaid and undertrained and undersupervised employees or make them sit on hold listening to instrumental versions of Beyonce songs before transferring them to "Julie, the automated customer service rep" who will force them to shout things like "Yes. No. NO. Speak to an agent. SPEAK TO AN AGENT!" and then ultimately disconnect them? And yet those same companies all purport to offer unmatched customer care and have gold fucking stars plastered all over their websites and answer your call (after you've been on hold for a good ninety days) by saying something like "Thank you for calling Blah, making customers happy one at a time, how can I fulfill your needs today?"

I just spent about two hours setting up and cancelling accounts with utilities companies.

I mean, why even bother with the whole "WE CARE" song and dance? Automated customer service rep Julie is not asking for my home phone number so she can "better address my request" -- she's asking to make things easier for the phone rep who will pull up my account on the computer, take my call, and then ask me for my phone number AGAIN to confirm. The electric company's hold music advises me to try effecting my transaction on their website, so I obey. But the website is a mess and keeps insisting that I want to start service when really all I want to do is stop service. This makes me feel 90 years old and confused, so I call them back on the phone, and when I finally get off hold and explain to the phone rep what I'd like to do, she asks me if I might like to hang up and have my request fulfilled online "for my convenience."

When I call the gas company to have my gas shut off, some twelve-year-old answers with a three minute long "how can i make your wildest dream a reality on behalf of the fine folks who lovingly deliver your heat" spiel which she delivers in a flat monotone while chewing gum or, perhaps, Skoal. Do I even have time to get into this here? I mean, just, WHY? Like, who believes that the gas company is remotely concerned with the desires of my heart? What am I going to do if I'm disappointed with their care? Take my money to their competitor, a little company known as Freezing To Death?

Just drop the act, you know? I don't want to hear you read your script, I just want you to say "What do you want?" Then I want to tell you what I want and I want you to make it happen. If you feel the need to take a couple of minutes to try and sell me some shit, feel free. I can appreciate that there's probably some kind of commission involved and I respect your family's right to thrive. Then after I politely reject your extra offers, I'd like to draw your attention back to the issue at hand, and I'd like you to respond with prompt action and a confirmation number. Not one of those U-Haul imaginary confirmation numbers that leave you carrying boxes to your Hyundai on moving day -- a real one, one that you're typing in somewhere, one that I can use. Then I'd like to call it a day.

Oh, and when I give you my forwarding address for my last bill and you ask me "Is that an apartment or a house?" and I say "IT'S A HOUSE, MY HOUSE, MINE MINE MINE," I expect you to align with the "Don't Hate; Congratulate" school of thinking. Maybe you can even lend me one of those gold stars.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

It's Sunday and it's raining and I don't have to leave the house

"Do you ever have those moments in life...where everything is ok? Do you know what I mean?

Just for, like, one moment everything is great?"

"Not since I graduated, no. But, yeah...yeah... When you, like, catch yourself in a moment,

and you're saying, wait, I'm happy here in the moment."

"Right. And then it just goes away really quickly."

"Gone."

"I know I've had a couple of those, you know. I always forget them, but I know I've had them."

"Oh, me too. Like... right now, is one."

"Yeah. Like now."

If I have to tell you where that's from, you and I would not have been friends in 1994.

I only have two more weeks to work at my current soul-suckage of a job. Only two more weeks of commuting two hours a day. I can't tell you what that does for my frame of mind.

I've been watching a lot of movies lately, instead of doing what I should be doing which is packing and preparing and ordering appliances and buying a year's worth of dry goods from Trader Joes. I saw Lars and the Real Girl, from which I was expecting nothing. It was almost unbearably good. Sweet and smart and crazy. I saw Margot at the Wedding and Rendition. They depressed me. I saw The Savages and was disappointed. Philip Seymore Hoffman is one of my fantasy boyfriends, along with Bono and Mark Ruffalo and Jon Stewart and Steve Nash, and this movie was supposed to be all funny and moving and really it pretty much just made me sleepy. The husband and I watched There Will Be Blood. It took us two nights. We had to turn it off about ninety minutes in when I started to doze off, not because I was bored or didn't like it -- more because it was the kind of movie that seemed to require a little more processing than I was able to give. We finished it the next day and boy howdy -- the last ten minutes are the kind of batshit crazy that only comes around once in a great while. Good stuff.

The husband and I also finished season 2 of Angel on DVD. It almost filled my Buffy hole. We're saving season 3 for after the move. As you do.

Last night I went out to see Baby Mama with Jen. We went to the late show at 9:30. I got downtown a little early, parked my car and walked down the street to the theater to meet Jen. It was dark and all these kids were out, standing around in groups laughing, carrying Starbucks cups, filling up the whole sidewalk. It felt like I was the oldest person around; it felt like I was walking around in this hidden subculture I knew nothing about. I am never out past 9:00 anymore. I am rarely out past 7:00. I tried to explain this to Jen when she arrived, but she looked at me like I was crazy. I think it's because she has a life.

I have not done the research (read: googling), but I can't imagine that Baby Mama is going over too well with the infertile and TTC communities, by the way. Gotta love those magical pregnancies that spring forth from nowhere.

This morning I got to sleep in until the glorious hour of 9:30. I woke to the sound of my daughter pounding on something, I know not what, with drumsticks. The husband made me waffles and turkey bacon and I managed to shield a good 2/3 of it from the pathetic begging of the child and the dog. I got to take a long shower, scrub my face, finish off with my mother's day present -- the stupid-expensive organic face moisturizer I've been guiltily wanting. Now I'm blogging while the husband is off playing soccer in the pouring rain. Later I will lounge and read trashy magazines and eat sushi. Sometimes even I have to admit: life is good. Happy mama's day, all, to you and the nice ladies who birthed you.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Oh no she di'int

Oh yes she did!

Sketchy McBetterbusinessbureaupants emailed me yesterday to share that she will be showing the apartment from 3-5 PM on Sunday. That's Mother's Day to those of us with a soul. I emailed her back, all "Look, I know you don't celebrate Mother's Day in your house because that would mean you'd have to let the kids out of the attic, but my family actually loves me and I plan to spend the day being lauded and feted and generally drooled on in the comfort of my own home. Which is currently this apartment. Let me call your attention to Exhibit A: your fat wallet stuffed with my cash. As long as nothing's broken, I get to rock this place how and when I please."

Bitch did not respond.

But she did call my phone this morning to leave a message about all the showings she planned on doing today while I was at work. I had already blown the joint, so I did not have a chance to properly skankify all exposed surfaces. This will be remedied post-haste.

In other news, my library is in the midst of an end-of-the-fiscal year spending spree, wherein librarians in my position are encouraged to order books with wild abandon, paying no attention to critical reviews, quality, or price. It's wasteful and mired in bureaucratic bullshit and, as such, in the past few days I have taken this unchecked opportunity to offer The Man the following additions to the collection, in response: a 500-page tome on transgender history, an anthology of feminist Vietnamese poetry, a treatise on gay marriage, the Go Fug Yourself book, an Icelandic cookbook, and a couple of manuals on how to speak Africaans. Because if there's one area in which white suburban Illinois needs to build skills, it's the language of oppression.

Sunday, May 04, 2008

We get cultured

We have yet to hang any signs, but after we left the apartment yesterday for the afternoon showings and returned to find that Shady McSlumlord had picked up Cletus' toys and sprayed some kind of stanky cleanser into our freshly mildewed air, we made sure to position mousetraps in prime locations around the kitchen.

In other news...

Tickets to the Field Museum? $28.00. Gassing up the car for the 45-minute drive to the city in bumper-to-bumper traffic? $30.00. Parking at the Field Museum? $15.00. Acquiring enough fruit leather and pretzels to mollify a stroller-contained toddler for roughly one hour while parental units gaze upon dinosaur bones? $5.00.

Getting off the highway at the first exit and scrapping the whole plan in favor of going for coffee and then sitting in a bookstore reading Tori Spelling's autobiography (me) and a paperback about punk rock (him) while Cletus damaged merchandise we were not about to pay for, all before going out for a dinner of hot dogs and cheese fries? Priceless.

Friday, May 02, 2008

Tenants at will

As our many, many years of renting draw to a close this month, I'd like to take a moment to thank all the fine folks who made this bliss called "Throwing Money Into a Fucking Hole" possible. First I'd like to thank my husband and myself, for deciding to spend our post-college years living in large metropolitan areas while engaged in a combination of grad school, post-docs, and dead-end jobs, thus rendering us both poor and transient, two excellent qualities well-suited to longterm renting. Next I'd like to thank my Tivo, my Netflix subscription, and the various and sundry strangers who put the most recent season of the L-word up on Youtube, for robbing me of my ambitions and helping me realize how comfortable my couch really is. Without your help, I might have got off my ass and researched how much money I've lost to rent payments over the years -- but because you're always there to distract me with something shiny, I guess I'll just never know.

And finally, I'd like to thank those crazy kooks who made all the magic happen: our landlords. You guys! What are we going to do without you? (Besides be warm, be happy, and build equity, that is.) It seems like just yesterday that you, Washington DC Landlord, were ignoring my calls about the dirty water pouring through a ceiling leak into my kitchen. Hey -- remember that time when you refused to return my security deposit for no reason? That was fun! Oh, or how about all those times that you, Boston Landlord #2, drove by our apartment like a stalker to make sure our trash can was pulled back against the house the way you liked it? Or when you, Boston Landlord #3, fucked up the plumbing so that stuff from the garbage disposal came up through our bathtub drain, then sold the house and left us with Boston Landlord #4 who was about 12 years old but didn't let that stop him from raising the rent $200 and trying to kick us out? Ohhh, don't worry Chicago Landlord #1, I'm not forgetting about you! Why, just the other day I was reminiscing about all the good times we shared with you and the mouse infestation and the kitchen scattered with pots to catch the melting snow dripping in through the rotted-out roof that you refused to fix.

Given all these fond memories I hold so dear, you can imagine my joy at receiving an email today from my current landlord, listing the approximately 305 showings she has scheduled over the next 3 days for the apartment we are about to vacate. I checked Craigs List for the apartment listing to see if it makes any reference to the ridiculous paying-the-heat-bill-for-the-whole-house arrangement -- you know, the one she innocently "forgot" to mention to us or to include in our lease -- and *SURPRISE* it does not. The listing also mentions a dishwasher (the dishwasher does not work and is missing its bottom panel) and "good privacy" (I generally know what my upstairs neighbors are eating for dinner on a given night based on the sound of their chewing carried through the paper-and-cardboard walls).

In the spirit of togetherness, with a heart that fervently yearns to promote the goodwill of my fellow renter and to strike down oppressive forces, I am trying to embolden myself to hang signs bearing the following messages:

Hung above the thermostat--
"Roses are red
Violets are blue
Someone's paying the heating bill for this entire house even though they don't know it yet
And that person is you."

Hung in the kitchen--
"Do you want this malfunctioning dishwasher, dangling cupboard door, exposed pipework, and crumbling molding to be repaired before the day you move in? Guess what?? SO DID WE!!"

Hung on my person via a sandwich board--
"Ask me about the snake who just handed you a rental application."

I welcome any additional suggestions. Because dressing stuffed animals in lingerie and writing "BALLS!" all over the kitchen dry-erase board just didn't do it for us last time...

Monday, April 28, 2008

Ode to the checkout guy at Jewel

Oh checkout guy at Jewel.

You stare blankly at the fennel placed before you.
You page slowly through a black plastic binder.
"It's fennel," the woman in front of me offers.
You look up, consider this.
You return to the binder.

It is five minutes later. I have grown old.

"Do you know what it would be under?" you ask the woman.
The woman blinks.
"Do you know where I can find it?" you ask again,
holding out the binder.
"Um," she says. "Try with the onions."
"Try with the herbs, too," I say.
Oh checkout guy at Jewel.
Read your binder, do.

Finally, you give up. Surrender. Ask Dante in Aisle 4 for help.
He calls out a number. You type it in.
The number is wrong.
The woman does not care. She says, "I will pay.
Sweet God, I will pay."

My turn now, I hand you my bananas, my diapers, my yellow onions.
You hold the bag of bulbs. You turn it over and over.
You ask, "Do you know how much this is?"
Oh checkout guy at Jewel. No I do not.
That is for you to know.

"Do you know where you found this?" you ask.
I point. "Over there," I say, "with all the other onions.
Under the sign that says 'onions'."
You follow my gaze. You push hair from your eyes. You say,
"I'll be right back."

And then you leave.
Oh checkout guy at Jewel, you leave, and I am standing here still,
alone, with bananas,
and you are walking so slowly
and you are looking for the onions
and I will never see my family again.

Friday, April 25, 2008

Squalor

Yesterday one of my colleagues laughed out loud in the break room while reading a magazine column about housecleaning shortcuts. She called me over and asked, still laughing and shaking her head in disbelief, "Melinda, how often do you change your bathroom towels?"

Now you all know me, or at least have read this blog once or twice before. You know I am a filthy spectacle of a human being. I backed away from my colleague, all "um, no, not interested in going down this path with you, oh ye of the ironed blouse." But she persisted. "This article says it's ok to change your towels once every six or seven days," she announced, repeating herself for emphasis. "SIX or SEVEN days! Can you believe that?"

Now, if this had been me and the husband sitting on the couch reading that article, I would have made the same announcement, only it would have sounded more like "Six or seven DAYS! Can you believe that?" As in, "Can you believe that some people measure the amount of time between towel-changes in days? Aren't we scheduled to break out a new hand towel in July?" I'm sure I've mentioned it on the blog before, but let me remind you in case you're not carrying this little nugget around in a locket close to your heart: when I was in college, I owned one towel. One. And I can assure you that that bad boy was not frequently washed. The husband was the same. In fact, we still own both his and my College Towels, as a reminder of the bond that brought us together and holds us dear.

Since college, I've come a long way in terms of cleanliness, mostly because there was really nowhere to go but up. I take out the trash, I clean the floors, I sanitize kitchen counter tops and *occasionally* remove old food from the fridge before it grows tri-colored mold. Last week I scrubbed the bathroom until it shone and Cletus watched, entranced -- I don't think she realized that the shower walls were supposed to be white. But I still suck at dealing with linens. Our sheets are rarely changed, except for Cletus' and that's only because even I draw the line at sleeping in the remnants of last night's poo. The slipcovers on our couches are gross and dotted with blotches where Frodo the Pug licked a discarded graham cracker crumb into the very fiber of the fabric.

I think that I was raised doing certain chores -- washing dishes, sweeping the floor, picking up my room, doing laundry -- and those are the bits of housework that now comprise my essentials. Like, the husband's mom never forced him to make his bed when he was growing up; therefore, today he makes his bed by lifting the comforter off the floor and piling it atop his person at bedtime. Having lived in apartments for the past ten years, he and I have never had to take care of more than six small rooms at a time. Now we're going to be moving into this lovely house, a lovely house for which we finally have an official closing date and time (May 29th! 3:30!). And we're going to have to take care of two whole floors full of rooms, a basement, a garage, and front and back lawns. Two bathrooms to clean! Hardwoods to mop AND carpet to vacuum! Neighbors who won't invite us to their potlucks if we clean off under a garden hose in the unraked leaf-pit of our front yard.

Is there, like, a course I can take on this kind of stuff? "Learn How To Stop Living Like a Twenty Two Year Old And Be the Responsible Adult You Were Supposed to Become Before Reproducing." How did you guys figure out how to take care of a home, those of you who are living in one?