I just love Lucy

There is something utterly soothing about the black and white universe that is Lucy. It is a world of aprons and house dresses and baggie pants and ties. The pace and tempo of the Lucy world relaxes me and causes me to momentarily put aside my worries and stresses. I can buy a new hat and put on my gloves and visit a charm school so my husband will notice me more at smart dinner parties. You gotta love that!

At the end of a long day of dealing with a stressful job, menopause, and worrying about bills and bankruptcy and selling the next painting, I can escape not into the oblivion that is lorazepam but in to New York City circa 1952. The effect is the same. Lucy never makes me laugh. To be honest, I'm much more interested in the smarmy slick chauvinism that is Ricky. I fast forward past his God-awful singing though. OK...so sometimes I take a lorazepam too but you get my point here.

So here's the deal......bear with me because this is a new awareness. As long as there's a stability, I'm perfectly content to cruise along a la Lucy and worry myself over why my newly purchased socks already have holes in the heals, and how to manage the stink bug problem, and how much I'd love to have new furniture. La la.........yeah........thats about it. I'm not compelled to push forward.

I start dangling over the cliff a little bit and suddenly I'm possessed by ambition and compelled to push myself beyond what I know I'm capable of, and on to what I hope I'm capable of. I'm willing to network and talk and sell and negotiate. I'm willing to risk failure on a grand scale. I really hope this is a good thing because I'd hate to be a poof of dust on the canyon floor like Wile E. Coyote. Now that I think of it.....what the hell.....I'd just get the fuck up again. I can poof. It won't kill me.

No matter what the end result of a long day, there is always Lucy and the gray world of poofy q-tip hair-doos and permanents and large button ear rings to remind me that death and illness and goodbyes, not to mention toilets, penises, farts and that embarrassing feminine itch can all fade momentarily to black in favor of demitasse cups and damask table cloths.

The God's customer service line

As we all know too well by now. There is nothing so stupid that I can do that can ever be done without witnesses. The Gods are determined to hold my feet to the fire and not allow any wiggle room anywhere in that regard. I have a few issues to address with the Gods by the way, but I'll get into that later. For now, I've been keeping the neighbors entertained with my trash habits.

Remember I was telling you about the final bag of remnant leaves I had gathered over the weekend? I set the bag curbside for Monday pick up of yard waste. Yeah........no. There the bag sat in the rain, un picked up for 2 days. When trash day came today, I put the bag in my regular trash can with a big bag of dog poop on top of it. I figured no self respecting trash guy would pick through the poop to pull out the leaf bag right? Wrong.......the bag was waiting for me in my front yard, sans poop, when I got home today. Such is the story of my life. If there is any wool to be pulled over any eyes or any small infraction to be "gotten away with" you can rest assured that I am nowhere in the general vicinity.

OK Gods.......like it's not bad enough that I'm broke and overweight and have all the physical grace and prowess of a three legged beached platypus, must you amuse yourselves at my expense? Setting off the automatic air freshener just as soon as my face passes close by is just un called for! Not having to pee for several hours at work is fine but must my bladder go from comfortably empty to bursting in the time it takes me to get from the car to the front door. do you enjoy watching me clench and lambada while I try in vain to keep a little pee from sneaking out?

Must I receive debt collection calls from freakin' Namibia?! ......"haaaallow.......mey I spik to Namcy Houtomom.......dees ees Narghali calleen far Cheese manhttaman beesa" "Tank yu meese Houtomom.......hab a beery nacen dey" Are there seriously no living people who speak English that would take a job as crappy as a bill collection caller? Hell!!......pay me well enough and I'd do it! "Hi Joe..it's Nancy.....I'm calling about your Visa. You just tell me what you can do honey. How's the wife and kids?........really?? pre-school already??.....nice talkin' to ya Joe" Why can't I get calls like that?

"Thank-you for calling "The God's" customer service line. Your call is very important to us so please listen to all options as our menu has recently changed: If you are lower middle class with an unholy tax burden and can't pay your bills please press 1. We will answer your call in the order it was received: you are currently number one trillion sixty seven gazillion in line. Your approximate wait time is............allowing for the expected oncoming ice age and the shifting of the polar ice caps.........1.6 millenea. If you would like to leave a message, please press 2 and we will return your call as soon as possible. Beeeeeeeep "Yeah....this is Nancy Houston and I want some goddamned answers.....call me back!

"Haaaaaallow........mey I spik to Namcy Houtomom? dees ees Narghali calleen far da gads......

A beautiful day in the neighborhood

So here we are. Spring has arrived and it's time to shake loose the winter blahs and get some serious work done. Today, I cleaned the debris out of the front yard. I have one little poofy pink blossom tree in my front yard. I don't even know what it's called but every year, my neighbors watch me rake obscene volumes of fallen leaves. That's because my yard is party central for every easily wind blown bit of trash in the neighborhood. It all stops here people. I get your newspapers, bills, love letters, and candy wrappers. I get your cigarette butts and beer cans. And I get your leaves.......all of your leaves. My little ornamental who-haw produces upward of 12 large bags of leaves every year ( she said sarcastically). The bag I removed today was the final remnants of everyone's un raked leaves from shortly before the first snow.

On the positive side; snow melts faster here on the sunny side of the street. So take that shit. There is an evil little aspect of my personality that enjoys watching the snow plow push the snow back in to your parking place. In my mind....it all balances out. It's not that I dislike my neighbors. I will always be as nice as I can be. I may reserve the right to silently speculate as to your seeming aversion to name brand anti-perspirants. I may wonder why you choose to step outside for a smoke without a shirt on. What is it with men and bare chests!? are shirts really that uncomfortable?? I might quietly envy your ability to walk right past the "no pets allowed" sign at the playground and put your dog in there for a romp. If I were to try that with my history of being "ye of perpetual witnesses" I'm sure the local police would arrive along with backup and a camera crew from channel 5.

The truth is that for the most part, I'm entirely too engaged in the train wreck that is my own life to really notice you much at all. I can honestly say without fear of contradiction that police helicopters have flown over head.....arrests have been made......sting operations engaged in and gunshots fired much without me even noticing. I tend to hear about them after the fact from friends and co workers who can't believe that I'm really that oblivious. Believe it folks. In my house......I'm in my own world where I find comfort and peace. I don't even willingly let the mail come in to my burrow. It sits in the box until my very nice postal carrier puts a post-it on my door asking me to empty it. Bad things come in the mail.

My neighbors are mostly nice, hard working blue collar types who happen to occasionally run afoul of the law. Hey!....no neighborhood is perfect after all. In the long run it matters not because my capacity for oblivion far out matches yours for drama. I'm happy to paint and post and watch I Love Lucy while the lawmen conduct a thorough search for that escaped convict. I may or may not notice. Mostly not.

Lunch with the fam

Once weekly, my family gathers for a lunch out. This has become a tradition since my parents passed away. We gather and talk about our week and the events of our lives and our successes and failures and joys and struggles. All are informed of the meeting place and time and those who can come....do so. We support each other and listen and encourage, but more than any one of these wonderful things....................we behave badly. We laugh loudly. And nothing makes us laugh louder than when one of us makes a complete idiot out of him or herself. OK....so mostly it's me, but all of that aside..........yeah........it's mostly me.

Location: Olive Garden. Nancy enters and sits next to Hilary. We are at the big table. There are 9 of us today. Drinks are served and questions are raised about an "optional" 15% gratuity that "will" be applied to every balance. Hmmmmmm....wherein lies the option?? We may be loud but we tip very well. We have a little fun at our waiter's expense regarding his gratuity option being 15% or our standard 25% to 30%. He laughs and promptly forgets to bring us our bread sticks.

Our bread sticks arrive among apologies and I pick up the basket to hand it down the table. Hmmmmmmm......he's only brought one basket. I comment that these should go to the "soup people"meaning those who are currently eating soup. I notice Jennifer red faced and laughing as she points out the second bread basket sitting directly in front of me which I somehow managed not to see. Ted pipes up at this time in a deep booming voice; "I am Darvon of the soup people......your ways are very strange to me" Jennifer is laughing hysterically in to her napkin. "Soup people" is the catch phrase of the day and a source of much loudness and comment. I'm afraid this one will live long past lunch at Olive Garden. It reminds me of the night many years ago when Jennifer commented on the stunning full moon....which turned out upon closer inspection, to be the Burger King sign. To this day, Jennifer cannot pass Burger King without someone saying "My....the Burger King sign is particularly lovely tonight!" these things assume a life of their own in this family.

As the meal ends and the individual contributions are tallied, Nick requests the bill be passed to him for a quick perusal. This is a bad idea because the bill.....and everything else not nailed down on the table is passed or thrown in his direction. Nick quietly studies the bill as napkins and splenda packets land on and around his person.

Hilary is too full. she stands and moans and bends and moans again. "Oh...I ate too much.......oh I'm too full" "Would you please just fart and get it over with!" I say. "I would love to!....does this window open?"she asks.

Annie is driven to distraction by the cockeyed light fixture. She is requesting that every person closest to the offending crooked bulbs please make an effort to straighten them. This seems oddly out of place as objects continue to pile up on Nick and Ted has once again slipped in to his "Darvon of the soup people" character and Hilary has left in search of a good place to loose the offending gas ball making her so uncomfortable.

We all go our separate ways for another week. Olive Garden and humanity are once again safe and secure.......until next Saturday when we may come to your town.

The thing about new tires

So here's the deal on tires: nobody really wants to ever have to buy them. In my perfect world, tires are just perpetually rejuvenating entities, as are oil and filter changes, and tax returns. I want to know they're taken care of without ever having to really deal with them. I've often said that if I were independently wealthy, I would have a large staff made up almost entirely of automotive experts and accountants. I actually wouldn't mind a personal trainer I could screw with. You know......tell him I want to pole dance or something and demand that he make it happen. Then I can laugh at his efforts to train the hopelessly uncoordinated.

What was I saying?

Yes.......tires. I recently had to purchase 4 of them. Keep in mind that normal people rotate their tires on a semi regular basis. My plan usually consists of not dealing with something until it becomes critical. Such had become my tires. Smooth as a baby's bottom they were. I had known for quite some time that they were fading like the fall light, but hoped that they would get me through the winter. That was the kiss of death right there. I should have known that I would bring in to existence the worst winter in recorded history. Sorry fellow residents of the Northeast. Yup....it was all me.

So here I am, attempting to get through the snow with bald tires and a panic attack on board. As other neighbors were busting through a 5 or 6 inch plow wake at the end of the driveway, I was scraping away the ice smear flush with the pavement that my poor, rose petal smooth babies simply could not overcome. It was hugely embarrassing. Fortunately for me, my life is such an endless parade of embarassment......well.......quite frankly, I'm freakin' immune.

The time had come to buy new tires. To all of you that always have an emergency stash of money for such completely foreseeable eventualities....please sit down and shut the fuck up. This is me we're talking about here. My brain is much more geared toward wrapping said tires in duct tape in an attempt to prolong their usefulness....so bite me.

.........anyway.......I called around for prices which was all together depressing. I did learn in the process to always go local. Stay away from "jiffy" this, and "express" that. "Well Ma'am...your combobulated hoo haw fluid has become entangled with your auto immune flux capacitor digi-wad and we can fix it for you for $279.00" thanxkbye. Your local neighborhood garage will remember who you are ( who really can forget me anyway.....the duct tape lady?), they will drop off your car at the vet clinic where you work and when you stop back in to pay, aaaallllll the mechanics will come out of the garage to meet the lady with the tires. Stories will be told around camp fires and bar stools for eons to come.

I wish I could say that this is an exaggeration but unfortunately........this is in fact, my ridiculous life. Watch and learn grasshoppers.

Stress food

Working in a busy veterinary hospital like I do, the days can get a bit.......well.........whooshy. By that I mean, you look up and it's 9:00 a.m. then you look again and it's 4 freakin :30. WHOOSH!! The hours in between that slight whirring sound in your head seem to fly by like maybe at some point you just took a little mental health nap and forgot to wakey wakey. Let me just tell you that forgetting is never a really good idea in the medical field. I would recommend avoiding it.

It is a constant battle for me to remember every little thread that needs to be followed up on. I have taken to continuously writing myself little notes, otherwise......yeah.......gone. When you work for a doctor and he says, "Nancy....blah blah blah blah, and then remind me to blah blah blah.....then e-mail......blah blah....and fill in the rest of the pertinent info before you send it", he's done with it. From that moment on whatever the list of tasks has become yours to chart, follow up on, download and submit for analysis. It's usually best to stop trying to figure out why the chemistry analyzer has decided not to print out the results the doctor is waiting for, and take a moment to write it down, otherwise...........you guessed it.....gone.

To say that I don't forget things would be ever so slightly inaccurate. I forget the stupid shit....the little shit. I forget to do the things that I do a thousand times in a row, then forget to do once. OK....so maybe twice. My point here is that in the medical field, you can rest assured that the little thing you've done a gazillion times and have suddenly missed WILL BE FOUND AND CALLED TO YOUR ATTENTION!!!!! I am convinced that the world would fail to spin on it's axis properly and the moon would fall from orbit if I were to ever in my fucking life manage to do something stupid without witnesses.

I have found the answer to this job related stress. The thing that makes it all bearable some days. The thing that gets myself and Trish, the office manager, through those long brutal shifts full of crisis and emergencies and attempting not to forget something crucial. It's french fries people........hot, crispy, steamy, salty, french fries. Is it on my Goddamned diet?......nope. Do I care?........nope. When we can slip away and unrepentantly nosh on fries......it's a good goddamned day. Most often we are grabbing a bite on the fly ( always carry high quality snacks when working in the veterinary field. You may break for lunch anytime between "whenever" and "never") To actually leave the office and eat french fries without interruption, without ringing phones, and without simultaneously typing with your free hand is simply too super fabulous for words.

So there you have it people.........My name is surgical assistant and I eat fries.

and I try not to forget shit.