Dig Duggars

So here's what's been up with the Duggars.  I kind of stopped watching after all of the episodes were about dentist appointments so I caught up this past weekend when they had a mother's day marathon. I haven't posted about them in like a year and in that year they have seriously had two kids that aren't twins.  This is nuts because in the past year most people in the world have had zero kids and some people have had one kid.  So two is really a lot for a year. 

In December or November, J'Michelle had a premature baby named Josie.  Some people are saying this is a little sign from God that they should stop having kids.  I think that's BS though, because plenty of people get pre-eclampsia and have babies when they are young and only on their first and second kid.  If anything, I say it's a sign from God that they should keep on having kids because it is obviously a miracle that 1 pound Josie didn't just slide on out when there was trouble brewing in the ol' uterus.

So Josie is in an incubator and whatnot in Little Rock, but the Duggars live in Bumblefuck, so they decided to move most of the family to a little house in Little Rock so they could be near the hospital where Josie is at.  Two thoughts about that. 1. The house was a historical site. What historical site, interested in actually preserving history, would let a family with 19 kids into their house?! (minus 3 because Josh was tending to his own homefront and John David and Justin (?) were tending to the Duggar homestead). 2. The home was originally built by some lady who was a big supporter of birth control.  The irony was not lost on JimBob, who pointed it out to the kids on moving day.  The house only had 1 bathroom, as opposed to the 8 bathrooms or something that they have in their regular house.  One of the girls pointed out that they had basically been living out of the bus for the past year, because they have gone on so many trips -- presumably to make the show interesting. 

Most of the episodes involved sitting around in the hospital talking about what a miracle Josie is and crying, neither of which I particularly care for.  The Duggar episodes I really like are when they show off their religious fanaticism, which just wasn't as evident in these episodes.  For instance, two of my favorite Duggar episodes are when they go to the Creation museum (amazing!) and when they go to some place where you can dig for diamonds and the proprietor notes that the site where they are digging is a million years old or something and JimBob just chuckles and is pretty much like "haha. She's means 6,000 years old...we all know the earth isn't a million."  Anyway there is none of that in the episodes I watched.  The closest was how JimBob basically forces the oldest girls to donate blood based on some passage in the Bible about blood.  Meh.  The most remarkable part about that was that I was like "wait don't you have to be 16 or 18 or something to donate blood?" Which obviously the girls are, you just kind of forget because their development is a little stunted.

So this whole thing culminated in Josie being allowed to come home.  She was still very little when they brought her home...like 4 pounds or something even though she was already 4 months old.  So, to be honest, she was kind of creepy looking.  Then they put her in this pink crocheted hat that had brown yarn on it that looked like it was supposed to look like curly brown hair.  On this fetus-looking infant.  That whole thing was kind of horrifying. Then they had to take her back because she couldn't poop.  I guess she had to go back to the hospital again after that, too, but I just read about that and didn't watch the episode. Apparently she is still there.

Overall the whole thing with Josie just doesn't interest me.  I don't care for a Baby Story or anything like that.  I like the Duggars because their lifestyle fascinates me.  But, really, all of the specials and things about how much laundry they have and how much food they buy and how they run the household has all been done.  Josie being born prematurely was probably a good coincidence in terms of ratings and maintaining viewer interest, but it just doesn't hold mine.

Their family friends the Bates, who also have 17 kids have made a couple appearances this season.  One when the Duggars went to help the Bates build an addition to their house (which according to my boyfriend was shoddy work. So I would like to see a special about the toxic mold that ends up in the Bates house) and one when the Bates came to visit Josie in the hospital.  In both episodes the Duggars and Bates shared space that at a maximum would be comfortable for a family of 6.  There has been much speculation that the Duggar-Bates unions are essentially forums for arranged marriages.  And that is what I would really like to see more of.  The older kids are in their early 20's and need to get out of the house.  That's too old to still be at home.  And if marriage is the only way out, then get those kids married off!

Who Needs Sleep? Well, you're never gonna get it.

I have a long history of poor sleeping. My whole family does. For the past couple of years it had become part of my sleep pattern to wake up for at least an hour or two in the middle of the night. Moving to this apartment saw a gradual improvement in my sleeping pattern. Not having roommates making full-on meals at 3 am, and no longer living in a neighborhood where night-long shouting matches and large garbage trucks are part of the background noise helped. But the past few weeks have seen a resurgence of insomnia with a vengeance. Case-in-point, now it is 5:15 am. I slept from approximately 1:45 am to 2:30 am, when I was awoken by Linus puking on the bed. I have not been able to return to sleep. Tim's alarm goes off in an hour and a half. That means I will probably fall asleep in an hour, so that I have juuust entered some good sleep when I get to be awake for him to snooze for 30 goddamn minutes. Not that I'm bitter. Then I will sleep until approximately forever, thus continuing a terrible pattern that will destroy my circadian rhythm. And no, I don't want tips for falling asleep or beating insomnia, thanks.

The job-that-must-not-be-named continues. I am doing the actual door-to-door work now in an upscale apartment building. The first day was great, but a family complained because the nanny spoke with me, so they quit letting me up. Their solution was to have the doorman (oh excuse me, concierge...he corrected me the other day) call up to each of the 90 apartments on my list. This is in between his regular doorman duties and he's kind of a dick about it. The other day he did other things and left me standing around waiting for him to call up to apartments for 45 minutes. We have this phony cordial relationship that I hate having with people, when in reality we are loathing each other more by the day.

On Saturday I had a different doorman who actually let me wander the halls, which was awesome. Today, Greg the Concierge was back and he gave me a hard time. First, insisting that I have been more productive when I have called up to apartments (not true) and then saying, well I had more yesterday because it was a Saturday afternoon. But today was Mother's Day. A FAMILY Day! And people were not going to want to talk to me. Also not true. Also? Not his problem. Which is interesting considering he has made it clear that we are not a team, not working together, and that he is basically doing me a favor.  Ultimately though he let me up, when I reminded him of how many apartments he was going to have to call.

All in all the work is ok. People have been pretty cooperative for the most part. Then, there was this interaction:
This kid who is like my age had made it clear that he has tons of money. i.e. "Oh I don't know if this is my primary residence. I have several residences and I'm always traveling. So you could even consider Paris, Milan, and London primary residences." (Totally serious by the way.)

So then I ask him about ethnicity. And he says that he doesn't understand. So I read off a list of possible Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origins for him. And he says "well I speak Spanish fluently." and I said...ok....well...is your family of any of these backgrounds? And he tells me he had an Argentinian nanny who "practically raised him." And then says he also speaks French and "you can see how this is so confusing!"

I was being observed by a supervisor. If I hadn't I would have said "you arrogant jerk. Speaking a language does not make you of that culture. You are a moron and you are clearly rich and white, so why don't we just go ahead and mark that down." In the end I wrote in "Latino" per his request.

He also said that his "power-of-attorney" sometimes stays at his place. Why he chose to identify her first as a power of attorney, rather than his sister (which he said later), is anyone's guess.  I assume it's to make sure I know he's so rich that he requires someone to have power of attorney.

So....basically what we have is a rich white kid, who travels a lot for his rich, white job. In his travels he meets people who have a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds and cultures. He starts to feel lame for just being a boring white kid, so at every opportunity tries to pretend like he is anything more interesting than a trust fund baby.  Blech.  So glad it's not someone I know in real life.

Supervisors keep telling me how great I'm doing though, which is good. I am hoping that once this part is done I can do some part-time office work for them. My goal is to not get a real job until September.

Bill, the guy who lives in my building and wouldn't tell me on what floor, hates me almost as much as Greg the Concierge. I will see him at team meetings and he ignores me. I saw him today and he said goodbye, looking at everyone but me. Fortunately, my life moves on. And it turns out that so many people are refusing to speak to him that it's becoming a problem. That's what you get jack-ass.

Now to try sleep again.  Perhaps my watching the Duggars as research for my next post.

Who Wants to Be a Millanaire!

I am auditioning for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire on the 17th.  I have to fill out an application beforehand.

These are the questions:

. Quirks, rituals, superstitions…What makes you unique?

2. How would winning $1 million change your life?

3. What is one thing you do that makes people laugh?

4. If you could nominate yourself as best-_____ or “most likely to_____,” what would be your vote?

5. What do you do for fun?

6. You’d never believe it but I once…

7. Why do you want to be on Millionaire?  

Any input as to what I could put to make me stand out?

In Which I Make A Trimphant Return to Blogging

Well, kids, you asked for it.  I am back, hopefully consistently.

I took a break from blogging because my most popular posts were about my dating disasters, and now that I am no longer dating I felt like I didn't have a lot to write about.

But the universe has blessed me with a job which I believe will be endless blog fodder, so I am going to document it.  We'll see how it goes.

So for those that don't know, I got a part-time temporary job working for the Man in the capacity of one who will be taking demographic information of those who reside in my community in an event that happens every ten years.  To avoid people finding my blog by searching for the actual name of this operation, I will not be using it.

This week was the training week.  So far training has gone about as expected.  It has been pretty disorganized and I have spent a lot of time reading my book.  The people in my training group are overwhelmingly middle-aged white men.  You work in your neighborhood, and this demographic is pretty consistent with the overall demographic of my neighborhood so I guess I shouldn't be surprised.  But I know I am not going to be good friends with anyone.  I should note here for people who read my blog, but don't know me or haven't been updated since my last post - I have since moved out of the ghetto in Brooklyn  to lower Manhattan in a more middle/upper-middle class neighborhood. 

Today was the last day of sitting-in-a-room training, which is good because if I had to listen to this one obnoxious guy ask one more moronic question my head was going to asplode.

The story for the purpose of today's blog is about one of the middle-aged white guys in my training, named William.  William's MO throughout the training has been to talk too loudly about how no one is going to a) answer their doors to us b) be nice to us when we come by or c) give us any information that might help us.  William also had come up with several nonsense hypothetical scenarios that took up immense amounts of discussion time and would then complain that things were dragging on.  I had decided that I think that William's feelings about how others will act is more of a reflection on how he himself would act were someone with our job to come to his home.  And I was proved right in the following exchange in which I decided for some unknown reason to strike up a conversation with him.

William had mentioned that a local VIP lived on the same floor as him in his building.  During a break I made a little comment about this local VIP and somehow ended up mentioning which apartment complex I live in. William started off friendly and said "Oh I live in that complex too!" And I said, oh really? What building? And he answered that he lives in building X.  And I said "oh that's funny, I've never seen you, I live in Building X too!"  (This is not out of the ordinary.  The building has 35 floors and I probably have only seen a fraction of the people who live there.)

But this is where it turns weird.  It was like I could see on William's face that he was really wishing that this conversation would be over, but I couldn't really understand why. I plodded on and asked what floor he lived on and told him what floor I live on.  William got even more uncomfortable and said "that's secret."  "Ok", I said, "but when I see you on the elevator, I will know."  William just shrugged and it was clear that we both wanted this conversation to end.  I kind of half-continued to conversation with a weak discussion about development in the area, even though I should just have left him to himself, but I felt like I couldn't leave it at his weird rebuffal.

For some reason, I am still thinking about this conversation because it just felt so strange to me.  But, it proved my original assumption - William is expecting everyone else to be weird, cagey, and assholes because those are all true of himself.

There was a brief moment today when I thought I would end up paired up with him to practice going door-to-door, but mercifully that didn't take place because I was almost in tears at the prospect of two hours of that miserable conversation.  I am sure William feels the same way.

Actual door-to-door is on Sunday...updates then.
 In fun news, local VIP lives in my buidling...although I may never know on which floor.

all you wanna do is something good

I often wish I was more creative/talented/dedicated to working on the creative talents I do have. So periodically I will see something that really stirs that up in me.
Recently it has been Lucy Kinsley that link is to her LJ/comic journal which makes me 1. wish I blogged more often. 2. had more to blog about. 3. could blog using comics which are expressive in a different way and 4. make me wish i could draw at all.
She also writes about her cat and it makes me laugh. Here are two of my favorites.

Also, who hasn't felt like all they are capable of doing is this:

That is basically all I have felt capable of doing since we got back from Hawaii on Friday (awesome, as predicted. not a lot to say about it, it was great all around). I am not sure if it's jet lag or just general malaise at being back or the gloomy NYC weather or my stupid job. Who knows. But mostly I just want to lay on the floor and snuff the cats.

I'm not big on social graces

So the new thing that really annoys me is being polite. Specifically, polite conversation...things that you're supposed to say that no one really cares about wanting to say but does anyway. Today I noticed that this woman at my work had on two walking casts. Now, I don't really ever interact with her, she's perfectly pleasant, but honestly she knows I don't care how she hurt herself and she doesn't want to explain it to me. However, when I passed her I asked her how her feet were and she said that they were getting better (from what? how long have they been hurt? guess what!? i don't really care!). As I was rounding the corner I overheard another coworker ask her, verbatim, the same thing I just had and she gave, verbatim, the same answer. So I get that you have to ask it...how bad would I feel if I was limping around all over the place and no one said anything. But, I would really only want people I actually care about talking about it with to ask me. I hate the small-talk kind of polite inquiry.

Last night I took my laundry to my boyfriend's because he has laundry in his building. I spent the night so I brought my duffle bag full of laundry to work (yes I realize that when all is said and done it is actually less convenient than just going to the laundromat, but I am trying to break the addiction). Anyway I have a duffle bag in my office so people keep coming by and then asking me where I'm going. So then I have to explain how and why I have a bag full of my laundry in my office. Uuuugh. But people have to say it...otherwise it's rude to just ignore the fact that I might be going on vacation.
I also hate when I see myself asking small-talk questions and all I can think about is how I don't really care and the person doesn't want to tell me. The other day I rode my bike to work and I had my helmet in my hand while I was waiting for the elevator and another coworker noticed and asked if I had ridden my bike and then asked how far. I scoffed and said, "like two miles"...not like she would have any idea where I live. And then there was this weird silence where it was like I could fill it with some dumb talk about how I don't live too far and it's faster to bike than take the train blah blah blah. And she'll feign interest and then I'll talk more than is necessary, but it would have filled up the elevator time with something other than that pause that ends with an intake of breath like you're going to start talking but then don't. Is that what is called a heavy pause?
That said, when people don't make polite conversation they end up in this blog labeled with Asperger's....so no one can really win I guess.

In other awkward news, the situation with Mute Guy is really getting out of hand. I bought a new bike right after mine got stolen because I needed one right away for the five borough bike tour. So I saw Mute Guy shortly after that and he seemed to be pleased that I had gotten a new bike, and I kept it in the downstairs hall, but locked to itself this time. And then it was going to be rainy for like a week so I went ahead and moved it upstairs, and Mute Guy may or may not have asked me about it and I told him that it was upstairs. THEN I moved it back downstairs. So one day I was going to take it and he came up from his basement and started going on and on and I have no idea what he was talking about. I don't know why he thinks I can understand him and it's getting increasingly unpleasant. I kept saying "I don't understand" and "I'm confused" but I am beginning to think he may also be deaf. As far as I could tell, he may not really trust the people who live in the apartment on the 1st floor...they may have been smoking marijuana...possibly having sex, or looking through the peephole, or he saw them having sex through the peep hole. It may have been an orgy because he seemed to be indicating that he heard people coming and going while he was sleeping. Maybe they are drug dealers? Anyway, the gist seemed to be that I should keep my bike upstairs, even though I have been locking it to itself. So then I spent the next several days being really bitter about Mute Guy telling me to keep my bike upstairs because I live on the third floor and it's a pain in the ass. So finally yesterday I locked it to itself back on the first floor....and if I run into Mute Guy I am going to have some paper handy so he can write down whatever the hell his problem is. And if he was just making polite conversation, I am going to push him down the stairs into his basement.

Updates and Thoughts

1. In one month and three days I will be on my way to Hawaii with my boyfriend, his brother, and his brother's girlfriend. How excited am I?! Especially since all I have to pay for is my airfare...and, you know, everything else...but no hotel!

2. I am working on getting in bikini shape for the next month, which will be good. Apparently when I decided to postpone my duathlon, I also gave myself permission to binge eat and nap excessively and it's gotten out of control.

3. As part of bikini-shape plan, I have been riding my new bike. Which I am very excited about. It's a road bike, so a lot lighter and faster than my old bike, which is fun.

4. Bea Arthur: Ok, so it's too bad that she died and all, even though she was 86 and it's not really that surprising, but for some reason keep acting shocked...but I kind of think the outpouring of grief among people I know and in blogs I read is kind of ridiculous. Seriously, look at the imdb...except for a few guests spots she hasn't been in anything since Golden Girls ended. So, it's not like it's going to be a big loss and that her career has ended in its prime and the tv world is now going to be bereft of all of the new and amazing works that Bea Arthur would have produced. So, if for some reason you were some huge Bea Arthur fan, she will still be on Lifetime for an hour a day in a mediocre show from the late 80's about single middle-aged women that for some reason has become a cult phenomenon in the 21st century. Plus, Maude is actually way cooler. She had an abortion! Like, only a few years after they quit having couples on tv sleep in seperate beds!

5. When I was little we watched MASH as a family a lot, and I always liked the character Radar because he was gentle and nerdy and had a teddy bear. Big Bird's teddy bear was also named Radar, and because I watched both shows around the same era I always associated MASH Radar with Big Bird's Radar. Turns out, that wasn't a coincidence. From the Sesame Street Wiki: The stuffed bear was named by Big Bird's performer Caroll Spinney as a tribute to actor Gary Burghoff, who played Walter "Radar" O'Reilly on M*A*S*H.^[2] The two met at a taping of Hollywood Squares, and the bear's name is a dual tribute, reflecting Burghoff's Radar character, who brought a teddy bear to Korea, and the fact that in his private life, Burghoff is known as a painter of birds and an activist for bird preservation.
Fun!

6. I also learned from the Sesame Street Wiki that this is what the original Snuffy looked like:
Scary!