Ojas Versus Euclid: The Score So Far

Euclid:

1. Brown-out (one point)
2. Water stoppage (one point)
3. Garmin stolen (five points)
4. Recent citation demanding that we cut our grass, or pay a $150 fine (one point)
5. Sudden appearance of new crazy man named Pete living down the street who won't stop talking to me when I walk the dog (one point)

Total: Nine points

Ojas:

1. Acquired new Garmin, which will be carefully hidden, more than likely in one of my bodily cavities, until we have officially vacated the premises (one point)
2. Kim's Euclid city tax bill was inexplicably only $9.06 (one point)
3. Moved to a much nicer community with no grass-mowing related laws, where Garmin will remain safe forever (one bazillion points)

Total: One bazillion and two points

So HA! In your FACE, Euclid! You have been powned by our superior level of awesomeness

Clearly, God is angry that I haven't left Euclid yet-- ever since we started Operation: Get Out of Dodge, He has been inflicting us with a multitude of plagues, including the theft of my beloved Garmin (still pissed about that, by the way-- I've been wanting to drive by my new house all week, and without Garmin, I am incapable of finding my way there-- screw Mapquest, I'm done with that garbage!). Recently He decided to up the ante with a brownout, and tonight, I am without water due to a massive water main break about five houses down from mine-- a different water main, mind you, than the one that exploded on my street last year. Why are there two water mains on my street? Because Euclid sucks. That's why.

Even more distressingly, I was in the middle of a crucial load of laundry when the water was shut off, so now my outfits for this week are wet and soapy and no doubt forming some sort of crud crust down in my stinky filthhole of a basement. So now I have to break into my junior varsity clothes, which include a lot of polo shirts and ridiculously cuffed jean capris.

And more distressing still was the fact that I spent the whole day cleaning the house, and so was a disgusting smelly wreck-- "this is okay," I thought, "because once the house is clean I will shower and be a fresh morning lily!" Not so! Filthed up and sticky with cleaning residue, I drove the forty minutes to my parents' house, showered, and drove back, thus killing the evening I had planned to spend watching The Nanny Diaries, which I will most certainly not be allowed to watch once Ben is back in town.

So at least now I'm clean, and I have a gallon of water for teeth-brushing and hair-refreshing in the morning, should water not be restored. And I'm doing my best to avoid the inevitable situation that will develop when I need to use the bathroom. I think I can hold it for the next twelve hours, until I get to work. Right?

Robbed!

Dear Asshole That Stole My Garmin,

You're really lucky you got that when you did, because I'm about to move away. So I hope you enjoy the drugs that its pawning afforded you, unless you're actually using it to plot routes to some other, unrelated drug score, in which case I hope you enjoy the pleasant Englishman voice I programmed into it for you.

I do appreciate that you didn't take my CDs, and also that you very gently shut the car door so that I wouldn't wake up to a dead battery. That was really nice of you, really.

Since I will be leaving town in a few short weeks here, I would appreciate it if you didn't come back and try to take any of our other shit, although I imagine that I will likely spend most of my remaining evenings here hiding in the bed of Ben's truck with a baseball bat. You know, just in case.

In conclusion, I hate Euclid, and I hate you, and I hope your face is eaten off by vicious dogs (which are also abundant in this neighborhood, just to warn you). I would also like to give a special shout-out to the Euclid Police Department, who always stop patrolling our street as soon as school lets out (which would explain why we were robbed DURING THIS EXACT SAME MONTH two years ago).

All best,
Kim

The girls in my neighborhood are unacceptable.

Why, for instance, do the girls in my neighborhood travel in packs down the sidewalk in the dead of winter, talking so loudly that I can hear their entire conversation from a block away? Because you know what? I am not even slightly interested in what happened to Lakeisha in Mr. Palmer's third period today. But I know what happened. And it wasn't even interesting. Why talk so loudly about such boring things, Lakeisha? Perhaps, just perhaps, this is why Mr. Palmer has not taken a liking to you.

Also, why do I develop a paranoid fear of having to talk to these girls, to the point where I will yank my dog at a breakneck pace down an icy sidewalk for a whole block just to avoid having to interact with them? I don't have this problem with the boys in my neighborhood. Of course, the boys in my neighborhood, in general, are not interested in talking to a weirdly-dressed woman with a big, crazed dog.

(As a side note, I always feel poorly dressed when I'm walking the dog, mainly because of every episode of What Not to Wear, where Stacey and Clinton made it REAL OBVIOUS that they feel that you should still wear heels and an expensive scarf and a tightly tailored black blazer while walking the dog, even in the dead of winter.)

But I will totally go out of my way to avoid talking to the girls. One, because they talk too loudly, and I'm afraid if I'm right up next to them they might actually burst my eardrum. But two, because they scare the crap out of me.

I don't know if this is a leftover from middle school, where interactions with big groups of girls usually ended in tears, or what.

Point is, they are unacceptable. Or I'm unacceptable. Or something. I don't really know what the point is. I just got back from walking the dog, and ran into these girls, and now I'm in here, blogging. Quietly. Mr. Palmer would be proud.

Dear Shithead Neighbor,

First of all, the six flowering plants you have deposited haphazardly into the ground around your light pole do not constitute "a garden." And second of all, if my dog needs to poop two feet from them, and I am standing eight inches from her ass with a plastic baggie, ready to collect the damages, you do not have the right, as a decent person, to scream at me about how I need to "keep my filthy dog out of your garden, because that's what the tree lawn is for."

Obviously, you have never had a dog, and are not aware that they are not, in actuality, genetically programmed to shit on the tree lawn, and it is impossible to direct them to do so.

But aside from that, I am aghast at your inhumanity. What gives you the right to scream at me, in broad daylight, in front of other neighbors? I wasn't dancing on your "garden." We actually weren't even in your "garden." And may I remind you, I do not believe those plants constitute a fucking "garden!"

Does it honestly give you pleasure to make people like me feel bad about myself, and make me afraid to walk down your street again for fear of incurring your vengeful wrath? Once you got out of your iffy-looking pick-up truck, did you go inside and say to your husband (if he's even still with you, considering you probably berated him daily for not remembering to put his shoes back on his shoe tree) "I had quite the productive day, I went to the grocery store and then I made a nice-looking girl and her cute pet dog doubt their self-worth"?

Listen, I saw the sign on your lawn that says "Best Yard on the Street." I'm not quite certain if you made this sign yourself, or if some sort of pathetic block party committee gave it to you to shut you up for a few months so everyone else could enjoy their summer. But in my opinion, the Best Yard on the Street is not the one with the randomly sodded flowers, but the one in which people are not afraid to congregate, let their dogs and children run, and have a good time.

You probably don't have any children. And if you do, they probably left town right the fuck away.

Anyway, don't worry, Che and I won't be back to darken your "garden" again. Do not be surprised, however, to find that, in the middle of the night, your "garden" meets with an unfortunate accident. I'm just saying.

All best,

Kim

Could you hate this dog?

The ups and downs of Wednesday

Down: A water main exploded in front of our house yesterday morning:

Note! In this next picture, you can see our garbage cans! And also, the box for the fan we bought the other day to fight the stifling heat in our attic bedroom:

See them there, right on the left edge of the picture? Our garbage is famous! Fortunately, the water was turned back on by the evening, so except for some occasional but very scary air bubbles that cause the water to shoot out in all directions at a very high power, everything is better. As for the street crater, it has been filled with dirt, which immediately became mud, as the entire road was flooded. Thus, I am a very muddy person. BUT! I can easily shower, so it's all good.

Up: Later that same evening, I got to go to the Cavs playoff game with my mom! Other than the fact that we were seated next to an extremely drunk woman, and a Dude Who Would Not Cheer, No Matter What, we had an awesome time.

As you can see from my hat, I am a Witness. Rise up!

Even better-- I won the chance to buy tickets to game C (for those of you not from Cleveland, I'll explain-- tickets to the Cavs are so in demand that you have to enter a lottery just to be allowed to BUY them), so I might be going again-- there's a chance I might have to miss it for Amy's birthday (GO AMY!), but if not, I will totally be there again, representing in my Witness hat and Lebron jersey.

I bet you never thought I'd be a jersey owner. But I showed you-- I showed you all!

Euclid Loves Ricky

On a routine trip to the Euclid library (which, in a bit of trivia that might interest those of you who are local, is apparently considered the third best library in the nation-- I highly recommend it), I decided to peruse the CD collection, expecting to find the usual libraryesque selections-- Pavarotti, Joni Mitchell, and a random Wilco album from 1993.

So I was shocked to find an entire rack dedicated to Ricky Martin, including no less than seven copies (seven!!) of his Spanish-language album Vuelve, an album of which I believed I owned the only copy (please, do not even question why I would own a copy of this. I bought it to impress a guy, and it didn't occur to me until much later that a guy that would be impressed that I owned Vuelve might not be interested in me).

My question is, why would the Euclid library believe that seven different patrons would come in within two weeks of each other, just really wanting to hear "Por Arriba Por Abajo"? And that only counts the ones that were actually on the shelves-- what if there are, like, seven more copies of Vuelve out there, already checked out to happy Ricky Martin fans?

And there were tons of other Ricky Martin selections, as well-- Livin' La Vida Loca, that one that has "She Bangs" on it, et. al. Why? I would have investigated further, but someone was hovering around near me, clearly wanting to get a look at the Ricky Martin rack. And I didn't want to hog the Vuelve. Whatever that means.

Dear Euclid Neighbors,

Why do you keep throwing rib bones into the grass around the school across the street from my house? Why? Why are you even eating so many ribs? I swear on all that is holy, I probably haven't eaten ribs in seven or eight years. Not one rib. And yet, somehow, you're all eating them like they're going out of style, and the unceremoniously throwing them into the lawn in front of the school (which means you also often eat outdoors, which is again weird, as I never actually see any of you eating outdoors, and I'm out there quite a bit. Are you throwing them from your car? Are you eating ribs in a moving car??).

Don't you understand that every time my dog finds one of these discarded rib bones, she has to pick it up and eat it-- I don't mean chew on it, I mean she eats the entire thing, and it makes sickening crunching noises, and I just can't stop thinking, my dog is eating something one of the neighbors already chewed on.

So please, please, please, please please stop doing it. There are enough obstacles on my morning walk-- renegade poo bombs, mysteriously dead-of-apparently-natural-causes squirrel carcasses in the middle of the sidewalk, kids who set fire to things in the school parking lot-- that I don't need your rib bones adding just that much more evil to my day.

Love,
Kim