Sometimes, My Temper Gets The Best of Me

So, way back a long time ago, I wrote this post about how I sometimes lose my temper and act like a full on crazy person.  It happens.  Not TOO often, but often enough that I have learned to live with the general humiliation my crazy temper actions cause me.  Sometimes though, I begin to full on lose it in a situation, when, what can only be God, takes pity on his crazy, little hot-tempered Kristi and intervenes so that my overreaction is only witnessed by me and two little dogs.  Luckily for me, this is one of those times.

A couple of weeks ago, I return home from my hot, sweaty walk from the office and immediately get the two little spastic dogs ready for the afternoon bathroom walk.  I take the dogs out, they do their business, and I am soon waiting for the elevator to rescue me from the heat of the Texas summer and take me back to my apartment.  As soon as the elevator appears, I am surprised to see the person who lives below us (a new person since my stomping war, but no less volatile and aggressive) exit the elevator and walk swiftly outside.  I take the dogs up to our floor, and walk to our apartment.  Upon turning the corner to my floor I notice a small brown pile directly in the middle of our doorway.

I cautiously walk up to it.

It’s poop.

Dog poop.

NOT my dogs’ poop.

I manhandle the dogs around it (I have one certified poop eater of a dog), and go into the apartment, processing the fact that there was a pile of poop in front of my apartment door that WASN’T there just 10 minutes earlier when I left to take the dogs out.  At first, I place the blame on Chopper.  He is a swift pooper.  Maybe he somehow did it when I wasn’t looking.  After about 5 seconds, I dismiss this.  He isn’t THAT swift!  I walk pretty quickly from apartment to elevator.  He wouldn’t have had the time.   I then start piecing together my latest mystery.

Sometime, in between the ten minutes that I left the apartment and returned, a pile of dog poop appeared in front of my door.  I saw no other dog walkers.  I DID however see my crazy downstairs neighbor.

Quick facts about crazy downstairs neighbor:

1)  The people directly below Blake and I have a palace of a balcony.  Seriously, it is the same size as our bedroom.  Therefore, anything that falls off our balcony, lands on her balcony-palace.  When she first moved in, she called management on us to report that we throwing dog poop on her balcony.  Which, we weren’t THROWING, we were just allowing our dogs to go to the bathroom on the balcony, which would sometimes then blow on to her balcony-palace before we could clean it up.  Woops.  We have since changed our ways (PROMISE) and don’t even allow the dogs to go to the bathroom ON the balcony anymore.  Because of this, anytime ANYTHING dog-related lands on her balcony, she immediately blames us (throwing giant dog toys that obviously belong to a much differently sized dog onto our balcony that she thinks our tiny dogs “dropped.”)  She has gotten in screaming fights with the people above Blake and I because they one time watered their plants and water landed on her balcony-palace.  She is very protective of this balcony-palace.

2)  She one time got into a hysterical screaming fit on her balcony with her live-in boyfriend involving the following:

• The “C” word.  Yes that “C” word.
• The phrase “Your ass is grass.”
• Drinking from noon on
• Her boyfriend screaming, “LIES, LIES, LIES, LIES” at the top of his lungs.

It was a source of endless amusement for Blake and I (we still use the LIES LIES LIES line to express our dislike of something the other one of us is saying), but it did make us question the sanity of the two 35 year olds living below us.

So, with full knowledge of the above facts AND her presence in the elevator around the time of the rogue dog poop crime, I decided that it must have been her.  That someone else’s dogs must have pooped on their balcony, angered her, and she immediately blamed it on the innocent Porky and Chopper.

AND I GOT MAD!

I began pacing the apartment,  imagining knocking on her door and rehearsing all the perfectly timed and cruel things I was going to say to her when she answered.  I thought about transferring the dog poop from in front of my apartment to hers.  I thought about calling the apartment management and reporting her for placing rogue dog poop in front of my apartment.  I thought about throwing it ONTO her balcony and repeating the cycle.  With each scenario, I grew more and more angry and more and more confident that I could NOT let this slide.

Without a clear plan, I grabbed some paper towels and got ready for my imagined confrontation.  However, when I opened my apartment door, I realized that the dog poop was gone.  I looked down the hall both directions, to see if it been kicked either way, but there was no dog poop in sight.

I then realized the more likely of scenarios.  On the way out, some dog had gone to the bathroom in front of my apartment.  Their thoughtful owner had cleaned the area upon returning, while I was plotting more and more elaborate revenge on my innocent downstairs neighbor.

Could you imagine what would have happened if I had hurled it on to her balcony while she was sitting their smoking her cigarettes?  I probably wouldn’t still be sitting here to tell this story.

Thanks, God!

Dear Unions, Your Strikes Are Terrible.

There are several great things about my tiny walking commute in downtown Dallas.  First of all, I love the fact that I am able to actually walk to work, it makes me feel all urban and sophisticated (ignoring the fact that I usually am wearing some sort of combination of skirt and tennis shoes which immediately deducts all my sophisticated points and places me squarely in the lame and decidedly unsophisticated middle aged woman camp.)  There are all sorts of tiny flowers popping up all over the place, and when it’s not too hot, the walk is pretty much the best part of my day. 

However, there are also several terrible things about the walk to work.  The weather rarely cooperates, and I find myself often arriving at work in some sort of disarray resulting from hurricane-ish winds or sweating massively from a Texas sun induced heat stroke.  The path I take to work also leads me past several secret homeless sleeping spots, hidden carefully under various bushes, and impossible to see from a car (but not impossible to see as you search the area from the source of the strong smell emanating from the area.)  There are also a number of strikers and picketers peppered in front of various buildings.

These strikers seem to all originate from the same group, but you know, bad marketing on their part – I have no idea exactly which union the represent.  They usually present themselves in one of two manners:  either standing in a giant circle around the building, or chanting some unintelligible chant as they march around in a small circle.  Despite seeing both types of strikers numerous times, I could not even begin to tell you who they represent, why they are unhappy, or who they are unhappy with.  Usually, their sole purpose seems to be handing you wrinkled version of the same flyer with a cartoon picture of a giant rat on the top, the words RAT written in bold letters below it, and some contact information for the union (but not the name of the union, of course).  I mean really, a rat?  Are we actually in the 1920′s?  Do people get all offended when they are called a rat?  Does the union think that something is being accomplished by having all their members (or paying the homeless, as the rumor goes) to stand around in a silent circle around a building, handing the same oblivious office workers the same pointless flyer over and over again?  And honestly, the chanters are worse.  After passing the same chanting group in front of a nearby building for a month or so, I finally was able to make out one of the chants.  And it is stupid.  It goes:

Where are they?
INSIDE!
Where do we want them?
OUTSIDE!
Where do we need them?
OUTSIDE!

And so on and so on for a while.  Another time they spelled out RAT slowly.  Again – I have no idea what exactly they are striking about, just that they want someone to come from inside to outside, and also….rat.  There is usually one head chanter, who varies his chanting style so that the people marching around in a circle are unable to follow it, breaking out into a R&B-esque, scale-jumping, singing exercise every now and then, leaving the rest of the strikers to simply march around in a circle until it becomes clear that they are supposed to yell out “OUTSIDE!’  There is also the same lady with a tripod set-up, monitoring the strikers and compiling hours upon hours of footage of a small group of people walking around in a circle.  The whole thing is insane!

After watching this unfold many, many times, I have discovered a new business opportunity for anyone interested.  I think there could be a lucrative future for any marketing minds out there for “Strike Coordinator,” responsible for organizing the union, printing flyers that mean something for the average office worker and not just evoking history lessons from the 1920′s (“rat” is out, “idiot” is in!), and coming up with some intelligible chants and head chanters who don’t feel the need to break out into song.  Oh yeah, and compiling all those hours of footage into some great art project.

I think I’m on to something.

Here Are The Reasons I Hate Wearing Heels

I have never liked wearing heels.  Even on my wedding day,  I had big plans for some comfortable tennis shoes or flats of some sort…although those plans were quickly thwarted through the combined efforts of my tailor and my mother.  After hearing that I was going to wear tennis shoes under my fancy wedding dress, the tailor exclaimed, “No! No! No!  You are short!  No!” and basically shamed me into picking out the tiniest heels I could find.  (This was the same tailor who, after seeing me in the dress before any alterations, frowned at the gaping material around my minuscule chest, before exclaiming, “Oh, we can fix that!” and grabbing what can only described as two pieces of raw chicken with which to stuff my bra.  It was awesome.)

So, in essence, me and heels?  Not friends.  More like enemies.  Here are the reasons:

1)  Heels hurt.  This is common knowledge, and people are usually all, “sometimes you have to suffer for beauty” but you know what?  I don’t really think this.  I don’t like to strap little torture devices to my feet in the name of beauty.
2)  I like being short.  People assume that I wish I was taller – this is not true.  I feel weird when people are shorter than me, and somewhat like a gigantor.  I don’t like this feeling.
3)  I can’t walk in heels.  I look like a little kid playing dress-up.  People make fun of me.  It is all around embarrasing.
4)  My feet are so tiny that heels make my legs kind of look like there is no end.  Like all I have is a stump with a tiny shoe attached to it.  Not really that cute.

Beeping, Snoring, and Sleep Theft

After having a weird dream in which I was receiving emergency leg transplants that just happened to be identical to my 8 pound dog’s legs (that’s right, I was going to have tiny yorkie legs), I was woken up this morning to a soft, “beep, beep, beep.”  I sleepily opened my eyes, surveyed the room and immediately fell back asleep.  About 15 seconds later I heard another, “beep, beep, beep.”  I opened my eyes again, turned over and noticed it was 6:00 in the morning and fell back asleep.  Fifteen more seconds pass and three more beeps wake me.  This time I wake up to Porky standing on my head staring down at me.  I swear, she mouthed the words, “Make it stop!”  At this point, I am awake long enough to hear another beeping interlude coming from Blake’s side of the bed. Further investigation reveals that the beeping is a result of his blood sugar monitor, alerting him that he has ventured too far away from it during his sleep.  Blake, of course, king of sleeping and snoring, has not even remotely heard any of the beeping alarm situated one foot from his face.  I grab his arm, probably a little roughly, and say, “Blake, your blood sugar monitor is beeping at you.”  I lay in the dark, listening as Blake types a few commands into his monitor, and promptly falls back asleep, snoring loudly.

At this point, I am wide awake, lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, as Blake slowly breathes in less and less air as his snoring becomes louder and louder, culminating in a long silence then gasp for air.  Sleep apnea at its finest.  I stare over at Porky, who is staring back at me and willing me to smother Blake with a pillow.  That little dog is murderous. Luckily for Blake, I do not share Porky’s murderous intentions, and I simply turn to face the clock and watch as it slowly counts down to 6:30 then 6:45, and finally 7:10, when my alarm goes off.

I let it loudly buzz until Blake stops snoring, and then satisfied that his sleep was interrupted, I snooze it and try vainly to sleep for an additional 10 minutes.  However, seeing as how I cannot fall asleep in the 2 second window between Blake’s silence and his snoring, the loud noises emanating from the lump next to me keep me from falling back asleep. 7:20 comes, and the alarm again wakes him up.  This time, I am furious!  Porky is also furious!  (Chopper, is in Blake’s camp, with the ability to sleep through pretty much everything on the planet except for maybe if you picked him up and threw him across the room.  That MIGHT wake him.) I throw the covers off of me and stomp to the bathroom, exclaiming, “Blake!  Your snoring and beeping robbed me of an extra 1.5 hours of sleep!  Next time I am going to send you to the couch!”

Blake looks up at me, all innocence and sleepiness, glances at the Chopper, blissfully sleeping next to him, closes his eyes again and within 3 seconds continues with his snoring.