ammogirl

Hmmm…well I have had this window open to post for an hour now, but then got caught up in a very serious IM conversation with Miss Devylish. As a result, I…hmm. Actually, there is no result. Quite honestly, I just wanted to throw in the part about IM-ing with Miss D so I could say that whilst we were IM-ing, she was conducting a simultaneous conversation with her friend Blake from American Idol, and by default, this means I am famous. Get your autograph requests in early.

Anyhow, the other day Jane randomly stated that instead of a puppy, she should get a hamster, and it wasn’t in that actual context, but I’m paraphrasing for you, and anyway, I’m only telling you that to segue into my OWN story about hamsters. So.

Shortly after I got back in the military (you DID know that I had gotten out at the ten year mark, right? and that I, for some reason, decided to come back in? and that I’m sometimes prone to bad decisions?) John came down to visit (we were stationed in entirely different states at this point) and on a shopping trip with the girls, bought them hamsters. Now. Let me emphasize: John was VISITING at the time. As in, his house was far, far away from MY house, which was the house the hamsters were calling home.

…okay, actually, one of them was a mouse, but that one doesn’t really feature in this story since it died like, immediately, so for continuity, they were both hamsters.

Oh, did I mention I’m completely alone tonight, due to various functions that did not include either moms or wives? And that I’m totally fine with that, because INTERNET AND WINE, and…wow, I am…depressed for myself.

Christ, I really love to ramble, don’t I?

Anyway! Hamster! So, this particular hamster was a Teddy Bear Hamster, and he (I know it was a he because of it’s ginormous mutant testicles)(and no, I didn’t LOOK, but they were sort of OBVIOUS) had one red eye and would stay up all night chewing and digging and running in his stupid wheel, and occasionally the stars would align in his world and he would escape from his cage and we would find him under Taylor’s dresser, but not until he had rummaged through all the drawers and crapped in every single one of them. Well, since I was Over It, Right Now approximately 186 years ago, in regards to having rodents for pets, this was just too much for me, but…god. Seven year old girls and their pets. You just TRY to get rid of a pet with kids that age. You have to be VERY CREATIVE. Trust me on this.

Once a week I would clean the cage out, and I hated this so bad. I hated touching the hamster to put it in his mobile play thing, I hated smelling the hamster crap, I hated scrubbing the cage, I hated the cage itself. Eventually, it got to the point that when I was cleaning the cage, I hated EVERYTHING. Flowers. Chocolate. Baby Chicks. That stupid hamster, with it’s red eye that glared balefully into my very soul, was ruining my entire existence.

We continued along in this way for some time. Weeks. Months. Eternities. Eventually Taylor had had enough of nightly wakings by rodent wheel, and the hamster was moved to the spare bathroom. I forgot to feed it, occasionally. Yet still, he lived. And lived. And lived…and then. THEN. One day, I broke. Or, rather, the cage broke, while I was cleaning it, and used hamster litter flew everywhere. You guys. This was The Day the Hamster Caused Me to Lose My Damn Mind. I cried, and sobbed, and threw things, and swore like a sailor, and yelled, and then, thankfully, my sister called, right at that very moment, and upon hearing me sound like a raving lunatic, immediately drove one hour to my house because HI, I was having a HAMSTER INDUCED BREAKDOWN.

I am totally not making this up. That fucking hamster.

One day, months later, I walked into the bathroom and the hamster was just lying there in it’s cage. I poked at it a bit, and then some more, and then stared at it’s one red eye and considered poking THAT, just to see if maybe he was taking a really deep nap, and then I sat there wondering how to tell Taylor her stupid hamster was dead. In the end, I just said “Your hamster is dead.” Then I threw the whole thing away, cage and all.

There’s no good end to that story. I mean, the story is done, I just can’t think of a way to end it with something funny or some sort of moral…wait. Yes, I can: the moral of this story is don’t buy hamsters.

Learn from this, I beg of you. Read, and learn.

Tschuss!!

So, today I was walking to the gym for mandatory gym time and I totally missed a dip in the road and almost tripped.  Like, my foot was going down in slow motion…going…going…going…and in my head I was saying "oh crap dropoff" and then finally my foot hit the ground and I did that weird step thing people do to catch up with myself.  Well, that’s funny to me when I do that, and I invariably smile and laugh at myself, because it’s amazing to me how much of a klutz I am.  Yes, I am easily amused.  Anyway, today I realized something that’s even funnier than my klutziness:  watching people watch my klutziness but pretending they don’t see it.  This guy today totally watched me almost trip and then when I made eye contact with him to say something totally stupid like "that came outta nowhere!" or "two left feet", or…okay, honestly, I really wasn’t going to ACTUALLY say something, but you know what I mean.   I was going to convey it silently.  However, I couldn’t because he totally snapped his eyes forward like I was Medusa and my hair was a thousand spitting snakes and no matter how hard I tried to make eye contact (seriously!  short of grabbing him and staring into his eyes…I tried that hard) he would.not.look. 

Now, two things:  first of all, hmm.  Maybe you had to be there, for it actually to be funny.  Second, you guys, if you trip and NEARLY fall in front of me, I will laugh at you.  There will be no pretending I did not see.  Actual falls will prompt a brief period of concern in which I ascertain your well-being, but once I have established that no injuries have occurred, I will laugh at you.  Actual falls resulting in injuries…well…I’ll probably wait awhile, until you’re okay again, but eventually, I will laugh at you.  Just so you know.

Work is just completely insane this past week.  One day will be absolutely dead.  No emails, no phone calls, nothing…and then the next – BLAM!  The minute I walk in the door, I have a hundred things to accomplish.  Funding for this!  Transportation for that!  Sighhh…it’s so stupid.  I just want to have the same amount of work every day, you know?  I did manage to move desks in between deadlines, though.  Now I have the best desk in the office, right in the back corner, facing the door.  It’s awesome – I’m practically hidden, and unless someone tunnels up through the bottom floor or through the walls, no one can sneak up on me.  Of course, all the moving unearthed…more cockroaches.  Yes.  It was so gross. I was under my desk untangling wires when I saw one sitting there on the wall.  He was trying to pass himself of as a peanut, I KNOW THIS, but he didn’t fool me, and I yelled "ahhh!  cockroach!"  and quickly got the hell out of there.  Here, however, is where it got disgusting:  I had encountered my cockroach in the right hand corner, okay?  So I was a little puzzled when my co-worker killed it…five feet away, in the LEFT hand corner.  I mean, cockroaches are fast, but speed of sound?  Nuh-uh.  Sure enough, when I peeeeeerred into the right corner, there was the original nastybug.  "ahhhh!  cockroach!!"  I yelled, AGAIN, but THIS time, co-worker killed it, stopped, looked closer, and said "Um…gross.  Don’t go back there."  Why did he say this, do you ask?  Well!  Because, (he said), there were eight more where that one (or two) came from.  Now, seeing as I am a big huge chicken, I took his word for it, so there might have been less, but I don’t really care, because obviously one is too many to me.  As we all know.

And, finally, I noticed something about myself that I found fairly interesting.  When presented with a treat of yummy goodness, i.e. chocolate or anything else equally tantalizing and sweet, unless I am being sneaky about eating it, I don’t enjoy it.  Analyze me…what does THAT mean?

Tschuss!!

Hmmm…wish I had something interesting to tell you.  You know, something besides "Hi, this is my day: study, eat, work, eat, study.  Get an appallingly small amount of sleep.  Repeat." You guys, I am 100% over studying right now.  However, I only have three weeks until my test date, so the end is near.  It’s just, I can only read about Air Force Doctrine and the Tenets of Air and Space Power so many times without wanting to stab my eyes out. 

What else is new…I managed to avoid any new sun-induced mishaps after the crosswalk incident, but only because yesterday I was a bit under the weather, and as a result, spent an inordinate amount of time laying on the couch falling in and out of sleep.  I am blaming this lack of energy not on the fact I only got 7 hours of sleep over the past week, but on peanut butter induced salmonella, for dramatic purposes.  I tried to build a case for Mono yesterday, but it didn’t work.  And let me just say, sometimes don’t you think that having Mono would be a really awesome thing?  I mean, I’m sure the aching fatigue isn’t that great, but you could totally get out of anything you wanted, with Mono as an excuse. 

Next weekend I’m off on another business trip, this time to Utah for a conference.  It’s at Hill Air Force Base, which is outside of Salt Lake City.  I am dreading this because conferences = sitting still and listening to people and we all know neither one of those are my strong points.  God.  Like, I’m getting twitchy about it ALREADY.   The only good thing about it is…well, okay, there is actually two good things.  One, I’ll have plenty of time to study.  Which…hmm.  That’s not really all that good, but we’ll go with it.  And two, shopping.

Okay!  Enough of that!  I’m going outside!

Tschuss!!