Man, my worries about the J-Man not fitting in/making friends were completely unfounded.

So far, he seems to have met every damned child in the neighborhood, and yesterday he had three boys over to play video games and run around in the spacious back yard. It was great to see.

He’s also been spending a lot of time down in the dead end of our street, flirting shamelessly with the girl who lives there, the girl whose locker is next to his and has purple streaks in her hair.

Purple streaks. At twelve. My mother would have plotzed.

I’m relieved to no end to see all of this social activity. These Indiana public school kids seem to be a much different breed of child than the snobby, aloof, private school kids at his old school, and for that I am profoundly grateful.

Unfortunately, they also seem to be rife with germs, as the boy came home from school puking at ten o’clock this morning. Ouch.

Hopefully it’s just a short-lived bug.

In other news, I had a fun weekend – the kind of weekend I rarely have anymore, one that involved a bar night AND a party and lots of beer and old friends and fun and hangovers and napping on Sunday. It felt really good, even though it took me a full two days to recover.

I’m far too old (and on far too much medication) for such shit, but it sure is nice to forget that and cut loose once in a while.

In still other news, my cats are at war with my stepdad’s cats, and as a fellow basement-dweller, I am caught in the middle of the constant yowling and spitting and hissing. It’s enough to drive you to drink.

Skittles constantly pounces on the unsuspecting Buttons and Cheetah, and believe me when I tell you that they are not amused by her youthful antics.

Did I mention that the door to my bedroom doesn’t close completely, and that Buttons and Cheetah both sleep on my bed, and that this tableaux plays out every night ON TOP OF ME??

Yeah. It’s thrilling.

And I have one more piece of good news – thanks to a lot of rigorous dieting, I have finally been able to dip below 175 for the first time in oh, at least five years and am fitting into clothes that are probably so out of style it’s sick.

I couldn’t be more thrilled.

Here’s hoping your week is going as swimmingly.

Happy Wednesday.

So, yeah. I got dumped. Via text message.

Yes, via text message.

Stay classy, Indiana.

It went down like this. Mr. Tall was being rather uncommunicative last week, and by the end of the week, I said, “Are you passively dumping me?”

“No,” he said. “It’s not you at all, just going through some heavy stuff. I just need a few days.”

I’m an understanding kind of gal, so I said, “No problem. Take all the time you need.”

Of course, I *was* flipping out a bit. The title of this blog is Not Just Your Garden-Variety NEUROTIC Smartass for a reason. I was worried something serious had happened, I was worried he was indeed lying to me, I was worried he was fucking someone else, I was worried about the Dow Jones, you name it.

Finally this week I texted him. “Look, I don’t mind waiting, but I need to know whether I am waiting in vain (strains of Bob Marley). If you’re not interested, I need to know.”

He texted back, “Sorry, not interested.”

Ouch.

After I smoked a cigarette and regained my composure, I texted him back. “Just out of pure curiosity, can I ask why?”

“Too much baggage.”

I don’t deny that fact. At all. Still, he was an asshole to be so glib, I thought.

Later on, he texted, “You still live at home, and you don’t drive. I just couldn’t handle it. I’m sorry for any pain I caused you.”

Fair enough. But what irked me was that he KNEW ALL OF THAT GOING IN, and he claimed that it didn’t bother him.

Anyway, there you have it. I think that the conversation could have been done via phone or in person in a much less tacky fashion, but some people have no home training.

So, I’m single again. My only consolation is that he never really met the J-Man and the family save the odd “hello”.

I swear I’m going to amend my dating site profile to read “please read this sentence over and over again until it sinks in: I cannot drive. I live at home. If you don’t like it, you can lump it.”

That, and: “If you have too many issues, cancel my subscription.”

Lord.

I’m kind of hurt, but I think I’m less hurt over losing him in particular and more hurt by the fact that I am the dumpee and not the dumper, when I’m used to being the dumper.

That sounds shitty and self-centered, but there you go.

I have a party to go to tomorrow night – one of my friends is finally finishing teaching school – and that will no doubt get my mind off of things. I’m very much looking forward to it.

How are YOU?

So here are some photos of my new digs. (Click on pics to enlarge – some are crappy, some not.) I will post some photos of my new ‘hood later on, but this is the interior of the house.

The J-Man’s room, which is now relatively boring, and we need to spice it up in the worst way:

Woo Freakin' Hoo.

The living room. Note the Notre Dame blanket on the sofa. My stepfather is a bonafide Notre Dame MANIAC.

Lou Holtz would be proud.

A rare (very rare) photo of my mother. Don’t ever tell her I put her on this website, because she would kill me dead.

The kitchen wall. Note the strange Catholic art, which I call “Bread and Soup AGAIN?”

All I want is a Hot Pocket...

Now we move on to the basement. Now, I’m not trying to act like this is anything other than a shitty basement. It’s a wood-paneled, craptacular basement. I can’t do much with it. I DO plan to do more with it than I currently have, however, so cut me some slack on its current state. We just fucking moved.

Let it be known that this wicker bullshit is NOT MINE.

I take full credit for the gargoyles, though. Heh.

Meh.

And then you have my room, and my bathroom.

Small and bordello-like. So there you go.

And the john:

And there you have it.

Oh. And this one’s crappy and taken with my phone, but here’s the new hair:

Pics of the ‘hood forthcoming.

Happy Wednesday.

There is wildlife out here, and I don’t mean the kind of wild life you call the cops about.

I’m used to noise, folks. I’m used to falling asleep to the strains of mariachi music or gangsta rap. Now, shit is QUIET. Aside from crickets and birds, there ain’t much happening in Indiana. You can occasionally hear a car going by, but I do mean occasionally. Like once every four hours.

I smoke out on the side porch, and next door (which houses a group of mentally disabled individuals, but I will tell stories about our interesting neighbors at a later date) in the backyard I saw a Creature.

At first, I had no fucking clue what this Creature could be. It was larger and fatter than a cat, and it had a small round head and a little tail.

Upon closer inspection, I noticed that it had a flat face. Was it a beaver? I thought not, because there was no water near us. I then came to the conclusion that it was a woodchuck.

A woodchuck.

We have woodchucks in my neighborhood.

I don’t even know what to make of that.

We also have gargantuan spiders. Now, I thought I knew from spiders. I did not. I was familiar with the Sout’ Side house spider; which, while occasionally terrifying and sometimes large, was NOTHING compared to the Indiana Outdoor Spider.

These spiders have leg hair and veiny eyeballs and large, blood-soaked teeth. They are so intimidating that I actually invited one in for a ham sandwich to avoid being mauled.

You don’t kill these spiders. These spiders kill you.

There are wasps and bees everywhere. Flies fly in the house every time you open the fucking door. I never had use for a flyswatter before. Now we have three.

A family of raccoons once trotted through the backyard. There is a large opossum that sometimes wanders up to the side porch. My stepdad calls him Jake.

I am about natured out, here.

In other news, my worries about the J-Man fitting in at the new school were completely unfounded. He loves it. He’s already met new friends, has people to sit with at lunch, and has a very cute girl in residence at the locker next to his. He couldn’t be more thrilled, and neither could I. He hasn’t missed the bus once yet, and he loves his teachers. He’s even been staying off of the computer to go outside and ride his bike with the neighbohood kids, which is a huge shocker.

Things are going swimmingly.

Nature notwithstanding, I’m glad we moved.

Happy Sunday.

So Wednesday the J-Man begins junior high at his new public school, which is approximately nine times the size of his old school.

He doesn’t seem to care much one way or the other, as long as he is properly dressed in his new skinny jeans (oh strange trend) and fresh new kicks, but I am a nervous wreck.

For one thing, he will be taking the bus. Now the bus picks up about half a block from the house, so I’m not too worried about him getting on in the morning, but I am worried about him getting on after school.

Despite my propensity for being always fifteen minutes early for everything, I have raised a diddle-daddler, a screwer-arounder, someone with absolutely no sense of time.

I predict that he will miss the after-school bus at least once per week, ensuring that my stepdad, who would be the backup driver, will most likely kill him.

I’m also nervous about the kids. These kids just seem so much more… savvy than the private school kids. They dress cooler. While decked out in less expensive duds, they look more hip. From the little I’ve seen during the open house and my few other visits, they breeze through the expansive hallways of the school as if they own the place, while I’m worried my kid is not going to remember where the hell his locker is for the first two weeks, simply because the building is huge and confusing.

And will he make friends? Will he find people he likes that like him back? Will it be hard? Will the kids be snots just because he’s new?

AGH.

I’m worked myself up into a froth over all of this, but when I ask the J-Man whether he is worried, he looks at me like I’m insane and says, “Nah.”

Maybe he will be just fine and adjust accordingly, and I’m just being a ridiculous mother hen. I strongly hope that’s the case.

In junior high, I had glasses and braces and was the tallest kid in the class by at least two or three inches. I was popular, but Lord, was I dorky-looking. I remember begging my father for Guess jeans and Reebok shoes in order to keep up with the trends, and I also remember him telling me to get a job.

What were you like in junior high?

Happy Monday.

So, after much grunting and groaning and unpacking and nerve-wracking, we are in the new place. I was without internet for FIVE WHOLE DAYS, but I will get to that, and how Comcast is full of Fail.

On Saturday, my redneck relatives showed up at the buttcrack of dawn (Note: The buttcrack of dawn has been moved to 8 AM.) with coffee in hand to get us moved into our freshly-rented U-Haul truck. Obviously this would be a piece of cake, because we had sold half of our furniture on Craigslist and most of our boxes were neatly stacked in the garage.

Thankfully I was right, the gods smiled upon us, and it was a piece of cake! My strapping relatives made short work of the remaining furniture, even my ridiculously heavy antique dresser that was still in the basement, and the truck was stacked high in no time at all.

We trucked out to the sticks and unloaded, leaving the cats in the house for the time being, and then later returned for the cats, litter boxes, and other few essentials that we could fit in the cars. We then traveled back to the sticks with a chorus of wailing cats.

Now, I am anal. I’m not the kind of person who can sleep until everything is unpacked, my room is exactly the way I want it, pictures are hung, and things are perfect-perfect.

I know, I’m sick.

Anyway, I went to town on J.’s room first, and then on my room, and my late evening I had everything predominantly done in my bathroom and bedroom, pictures and all. My clothing was mostly still in the closet at the old house, because we hadn’t brought our hanging clothes over yet.

So that was done, but I still had a basement full of books and other assorted shit to sift through, and my mom was drowning in crap upstairs.

We spent the week unpacking and sorting, and I moved furniture around and unpacked books, and it’s actually starting to look like someone lives on the lower level of the house.

Comcast was supposed to come out last Friday and hook up our high-speed internet, phone, and cable, including our DVR, which I cannot live without since I never watch TV at the proper time.

The fuckers showed up five hours late.

I was livid, but the guy had gotten lost trying to find our convoluted little subdivision, and I can sort of understand that, although I cannnot forgive NOT CALLING. Anyway, he was still prepared to do the job until he saw that we didn’t have our main computer hooked up, and then he said he would have to come back.

Again, I was livid. He could have hooked up the fucking modem or something and left it, right? And then have come back? Or he could have just installed the cable? Something? Anything?? Throw this bitch a bone??

Anyway, we got 25 bucks off of our bill because they didn’t show during the allotted time frame, but they couldn’t service us again until the following Thursday, meaning that I would have to go without internet and cable and long-distance calling for five days after the move.

This may not sound like a big deal to you, but to me it is LIFE.

So yesterday the same guy shows up, on time, but tells me five minutes later that he doesn’t have enough cable to do the job and will have to go back to the warehouse which will take about an hour, and oh, by the way, do I mind if he goes and gets lunch, too?

You have to be kidding me, Comcast.

Of course I bit my tongue and smiled and said, “No, by all means, go ahead!” Fuck me right up the pooper.

Therefore the job took about four hours, because he was gone an hour and a half, but I did successfully get my internet, phone, and cable installed.

Ah, first world problems.

Today I am going back to the old house to clean the shit out of it for the new renter, a woman named Della who seems really cool and loves the place more than I thought possible. She is practically peeing herself at the thought of moving in, and calls the house “a dream”.

I guess it was our dream house, too, once upon a time.

In other news, the J-Man starts school on Wednesday, and as you can imagine there is much rejoicing and glee and happy dancing on his part. NOT.

There might be on mine, though.

Happy Friday the Thirteenth.

So last night I went to Mr. Tall’s for pizza and a movie. I was sort of excited for two reasons, because seeing someone’s place tells a lot about a person, and because hey, there would be making out.

He picked me up after work and we drove out to the sticks. His place wasn’t bad. It was a medium-sized apartment with an extra bedroom for his kids, Bears paraphernalia hanging on the walls, and some new furniture. It wasn’t super-duper clean, but I can’t say that I expect that from a busy bachelor.

We watched a short documentary about the Pixies and then settled in to watch Funny People, which was great, and eat pizza, which was also pretty great, and I enjoyed myself and felt pretty comfortable.

Afterward, there was much making out. Furious making out. Marathon making out. It was… hot.

He dropped me off at around midnight after walking me to my door and making out with me some more, and Lord, I was feeling it. I was practically ready to jump him right there in the driveway, on the hood of my mother’s car.

Anyway, I woke up this morning and looked in the mirror, and my chin was gone.

Gone.

There was a giant, weeping sore where my chin used to be. I touched it and immediately screamed, it hurt so badly.

I applied a liberal coating of Neosporin, but Jesus God, it looks bad.

My mother woke up this morning, and I said, “Look.”

“What’s THAT?”

“He didn’t shave.”

“Oh, GREAT. I don’t want to hear this.”

Really, men. Have a heart. Shave your face. Some of us are thin-skinned and need your support.

I mean, I shaved my armpits and legs, damn it.

In other news, the move is in three days. Mostly everything is packed now except for the stuff we’re using, and I am very excited.

I’ve been showing the house to prospective tenants for the past couple of days. We put an ad on Craigslist, and the e-mail is pouring in.

For some reason, people are LOVING this house. I guess it’s sort of charming in that old-house way. It has built-in china cabinets, a laundry chute, a coal room, French doors for closets, little cubbies and cabinets for storage – all sorts of cute little features like that. I guess it’s working. So far we’ve had five serious prospects, including one very large Rastafarian dude.

I just hope that we pick the right person and don’t end up with some ghetto-fied person who is going to trash the hell out of the place.

In still other news, today we are getting cable and internet hooked up at the new place, so that’s where I’ll be today, sans internet for several hours. Oh, woe!

Happy Thursday.

So. I received a very wonderful anonymous gift.

I don’t know whether it came from anyone here, but if it did, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I am touched.

Thank you.

Jen

OK, I have dated good kissers before. No big. I like to think of myself as a pretty good kisser.

This man, however; this Mr. Tall, takes it to another level. I swear, I astroplaned or some shit.

It was the kind of kissing in which it’s not super-crazy or all grabby-grabby, but you just don’t Ever Want To Stop. Slow and smooth and so fucking perfect.

And if I have a bit of a raw chin from stubble, what of it?

I had a great time on my date, and we are going out again Wednesday night (midweek, because I AM moving this weekend, damn it).

This is exciting stuff. I’m having a lot of fun. I’m not thinking about what could be or what might happen, I’m just rolling with it, and it’s pretty damned awesome.

Happy Weekend.

I keep waking up at five-thirty in the morning.

This goes so far against my grain that I fear aliens have taken over my body. I LOVE to sleep. I relish it. I stretch a good night’s sleep out for as long as humanly possible, and I only leave the bed grudgingly, and with much grumbling and mumbling.

Now I am popping out of bed like someone lit a fire under my ass as soon as it begins to get light outside. I don’t get it.

The cats, who normally don’t get fed until my mother wakes up at six-thirty, are enjoying this immensely, and have taken to gathering around my bed in a small black semi-circle to wait for their early breakfast. It’s like a fucking Poe story every time I wake up – black cats staring, yellow eyes gleaming from the dark expanse of the room.

The good thing is that I’m getting a little bit more done.

The bad thing is that I’m totally crapped out by nine o’clock at night.

Tonight is my second date with Mr. Tall, and I’d really rather not fall asleep in his lap by ten o’clock.

That seems to be going well, by the way. There has been a lot of witty, flirty banter via phone and e-mail, and I’m enjoying it immensely. It’s so nice to deal with someone so funny and lighthearted. I’m having a really good time so far.

Now if only I could sleep in like I normally would, so that I won’t turn into a freaking pumpkin at an obscenely early hour.

I think a nap will be warranted today.

In other news, today I go to the BMV to get my new state ID. I’m sure that it will be a fun-filled, enriching experience as always, since government employees are always SO pleasant, and the lines are always SO short and fast-moving.

Righty-O.

In still other news, the new house does not have internet yet. As in, none. Nada. Zilch. Not even dial-up.

This is a situation that must be remedied TODAY, or I will start to steam from the ears.

There is also no DVR at the new house, which is something that pains me deeply. because I have become spoiled and never watch TV when it’s actually on.

Again, something that must be remedied TODAY.

Tonight Mr. Tall and I are going God knows where to do God knows what (No, not That). That’s all I know.

So, that’s my day. What are YOU doing?

Happy Friday.