Power Trip
Fun was had by all, except for some
Biscuits and Botox
Last Sunday, the 20th, Athennia headed out to do the grocery shopping; and then a few minutes later, she sent me this picture from her parking space at GIANT...
I can totally see how she might've thought that some Home Alone-level hi-jinks were about to ensue!
But in even bigger news, we had a missing person that same afternoon!
Have you seen this woman?
She looks like a bipedal cartoon snake that just ate a capital S, and now it's moving through her digestive tract as a single unit.
Or maybe like a treble clef... if it had two bass clefs in its back pants pockets.
I'd say, if you've seen her, call the authorities.
But then again, is a person really missing if their entire existence is such a dreadful one that nobody's actually missing them?
At any rate, it turns out it was just our crappy next-door (next-wall?) neighbor Hoodrat... and she and her caricaturishly Brazilian-butt-lifted self are moving out!
I'm not sure whether it was the U-Haul truck or her ass that was making the back-up beep sound; but they backed that thing up all the way to the building.
Hindsight is 20/20. (I mean... unless your 75psi asscheeks are so comically enormous that essentially are your own blind spot.)
Anyway, they spent the next couple hours filling that truck to the brim.
And then the magic moment finally arrived, when she drove away forever...
...with her two helpers scrambling to keep up like, "Wait! We gotta hold your ropes, or your moons-of-Jupiter Macy's-Day-Parade ass'll just float off into the stratosphere!"
Just for Kicks
On Monday the 21st, Riley had off for Yom Kippur; so she and Taylor hired a bio-robot to pick them up in a Lyft and drive them off to some stores.
Riley must have like some cat-radar compass or something that she carries around in her purse, because next thing I knew, she'd sent me these pictures of some cats at a witch store they had visited...
Later that evening, Athennia took Taylor back to the train station to catch her ride back to Connecticut.
Somehow Taylor missed her stop and had to get off at the next one (which, fortunately, was largely equidistant to the dog grooming shop—just with a bit of an extra fee). Athennia stayed on the phone with her the entire time, until she got off the train, then hired a Lyft driver, and finally made it back to the shop 15 minutes before midnight.
On Tuesday the 22nd, Joe and I finally moved my entire woodworking-tool arsenal out of his sunroom and took it over to my parents' house to store it in their basement.
You'll work up quite an appetite if you spend most days sitting in front of a computer and then suddenly surprise your muscles with a bunch of heavy lifting and going up and down stairs for a few hours; so we decided to grab dinner at Gianni's afterwards...
On Wednesday the 23rd, I finally finished dealing with all 700+ of my open Firefox tabs—going through each one individually, and filing away bits of pertinent information into my personal knowledge base.
Now my PC's sitting here with like 11.6 gigabytes of free RAM, instead of trying to juggle everything on a measly 100 megs. So many system resources available, it doesn't even know what to do with itself.
Later Wednesday evening, Riley had a test for her first kickboxing belt!
When Athennia sent me a picture of the class, my first thought was the 1987 Nintendo game Punch-Out!!
I mean, look at this—it's like these people were handpicked to ensure that they're all at least three times Riley's size 🤣
But in all seriousness, Riley has been having a blast in this class, and she absolutely kicked ass on the test! Individual technical areas were rated on a scale from 1 thru 5, and she just about got straight 5s right down the line...
Contrast this with Kassie, who got mostly 2s and 3s... and then crumpled up her certificate and threw it at her mom while declaring, "I don't want to do this anymore." 😬
Brotherly Love
Athennia got this offer in the mail on Thursday—from two vulturish fuckwaffles who must've scoured local death records, found Lou's address, and associated Athennia's information to it...
After we cash it, maybe I'll remember to mention that Lou's address is a plot in a trailer park, and neither she nor anyone else in the family has ever owned any part of it except the trailer that was demolished last year.
Dumb fucks.
Spam's better when it comes in a can. At least then we could donate it to a homeless shelter or something.
In other news, Ahlina got fired from the dog grooming shop on Thursday!
Apparently she'd spent the weekend somewhere in New Jersey with some little tart she met on the internet, and then she couldn't afford to put gas in the car to make the trip home 🤣
The shop's closed Sundays and Mondays; but Ahlina called out Tuesday and then again on Wednesday—and this is apparently after the girls' boss had previously warned them that they had already been calling out too frequently and they needed to knock it off.
So, as soon as Ahlina got in on Thursday, she got hauled into the office and Taylor said she could hear Ahlina sobbing through the door: "But, but, but... Taylor this, and Taylor that, and what about Taylor?"
And their boss was just like, "Yeah, no; this has nothing to do with Taylor. This is purely about you and your crappy work ethic. You're done. Hit the bricks."
Hammer Time?
On Friday, MC Hammer had to bring his New Jersey ass all the way over to PA to park at the guard rail and treat the street outside our window as his personal garage...
Granted, I never much got into doing my own auto maintenance; but, if I had, I definitely would've made it a habitual thing to like cruise on over into Ohio or maybe even Michigan, to find a nice quiet cul de sac or something where I could take one wheel clear off my car and just pound on the naked axle for a good three hours or so.
So, yeah; hammer time was from 11:30 A.M. until about 3:00.
Fun was had by all, except for someTM.
Conversely, the animals at my parents' house are silent, and graceful, and picturesque; so we decided to head over there for a change of scenery on Saturday...
Also, there was homemade potato soup and chicken noodle to be had—which may or may not have been a deciding factor as well 😉
I didn't take many pictures; but I got a few...
What are you guys doin' over there, calculus problems just for fun?
Where Are You?
On Sunday the 27th, Athennia called the rehab place where she dropped Sandy off on the first of the month: She was looking for an update since she hasn't heard anything from her sister since.
The first guy she talked to was reluctant to say anything since Sandy didn't seem to have Athennia listed as an authorized emergency contact. Even when Athennia tried to explain that, yes, Sandy probably still has their mother Lou listed from the last time she'd been in rehab, but Lou has since passed away, the guy still didn't want to be very helpful.
He gave Athennia some other number to call but advised her that those people may be busy; so she should give them 10-15 minutes to return her call if they don't answer right away.
Oddly enough, when a woman from that number finally called back, she told Athennia, "Yeah, you're listed as a contact; so I don't know why he would've said that you're not."
And then, Sandy just happened to organically call Athennia—seemingly of her own accord—with news that she's leaving rehab on Friday and heading to a halfway house... where one of the rules is that she has to have and keep a job.
One of Sandy's hallmarks is that you'll only hear from her when she needs something; and so, now that she needs more clothes and some of her other stuff that Athennia plucked from a moldy basement and has had in storage (on her own dime) ever since, her phone makes outgoing calls again—and Athennia has won the grand prize in the "Who Gets to Drive Three Counties over to Deliver My Stuff Personally?" raffle.
There's not a terrible amount to report on at the moment, on the Taylor front. In a nutshell, she's grown understandably weary of living on an air mattress and out of a mini-fridge at a dog-grooming shop; and so she and her boss concocted a plan last week when it became evident that Ahlina would be getting fired:
Taylor is pretending that she got fired as well; and she's using this to curry sympathy from Ahlina and her parents, as a means of cleanly and amicably divorcing herself from the girls' shared apartment (for which Ahlina's mother continues to withhold the landlord's contact information).
I have been promised that, once Taylor is safely down here in PA where Ahlina has no opportunity to do her physical harm, we will finally go nuclear on these people and go after Ahlina for everything from grooming Taylor over the internet when Taylor was still a minor, right up to that stupid Infiniti Ahlina likes to pretend is some limited-edition Ferrari—and for which she only qualified for financing on account of Taylor's stellar credit score.
(Meanwhile, the toddler's cruising around in her Infiniti and beating her chest like, "Look how tough I am: Everyone's too afraid of me to do anything!")
It's absolutely infuriating.
Know what else is infuriating?
When Keith keeps getting new cars, but he has to keep his janky white Mercedes SUV permanently parked in the first space while having no intention whatsoever of driving it... but then when my wife gets home with a trunk full of groceries, we'll have to walk twice as far in the rain just because Keith wants to collect a whole fleet of cars, park them right outside his window, and not drive them...
Phillipshead, or a Flat?
On Monday, Fat Caucasian Smoker's dad (that guy really needs his own nickname) went outside to find himself with a flat tire...
I can't say for sure; but my money's on Hoodrat having snuck back in the middle of the night and stolen the air out of his tire to pump up her asscheeks some more.
Later that afternoon, I happened to be standing next to the open living-room window and overheard our maintenance guy Ralph knock on the Caucasians' door and say, "Do me a favor and call me if you see PECO show up. [something something] generator, [something something something] about two hours."
But I spent the next four hours in fear that PECO was going to show up and do what they do best: Use their anti-Midas touch to turn everything to crap.
Power Struggle
Imagine my complete lack of surprise when I woke up Tuesday morning and looked out the back window to see this...
Yep. Here we go. The sky was already foreshadowing my mood for the day...
There was absolutely no job that needed doing. But PECO was on the job anyway.
And clearly these guys are paid by the hour, as you can see by the laziness of their gait as they stroll blissfully through this beautiful Morrisville meadow...
It became clear that we'd be losing power; and thus, Riley would be missing some school.
Athennia reached out to me and urged me to "try to get pictures!" like it's just that easy to prove that your power's out 🤣
Like, honestly, is the power really out in this picture? Or did I just turn my lamp off?
Are these real work trucks? Or did I just pay Joe to duct-tape some cones to the front of his bucket truck and park it in the middle of the lot?
—probably someone
He probably has a bucket truck sitting around somewhere.
But here, Kitten; here's the proof—or the closest thing I can offer to proof...
Also, Austin Powers was inside this one making a K-turn...
And then Spool-Man came to save the day...
Does this dude think he's on the Autobahn?
So, yeah. That's Spool-Man. He seems like a pretty big deal.
Definitely a moderately-sized cheese in the electricity world.
I'll bet he has like a thousand connections on LinkedIn.
If you know the song "Spoonman" by Soundgarden, you'll find this next pic delightfully droll; otherwise, you'll... probably not understand it at all 🤷♂️
The power was out for about two hours, just as I'd overheard Ralph say the afternoon before. But then they actually hooked the entire building up to a generator, and the clouds parted, and we had power again!
The landlord even borrowed a page from Stephen Hawking and said, "How about we have PECO come out and do the work first; and then we'll send out a notice about what's going on after the fact. That way we'll be able to see if any of our tenants are secretly time-travelers, because they'll have had to receive the notice first and then go back in time to act on it."
Later that day, Fat Caucasian Smoker's dad had to call AAA out again for some reason.
Imagine being the kind of assclown who plasters a passive-aggressive "SLOW DOWN, MOVE OVER" on your rear window in all caps, and then just parks your fat ass right smack in the middle of the road...
I mean, really, guy? You couldn't find a space anywhere? I just took the most casual of glances, and I counted a good 15 or 20.
Ah, who am I kidding?
That's all we deal with around here...
And then the electric guys returned yesterday to finish The JobTM... whatever that job was.
They brought another dozen vehicles, drove back and forth all over the grass for a few hours, and then cut the power for 11 minutes while they disconnected us from the generator and spliced us back into the power lines—which, again, had been fully operational before they had ever even come out. 🤷♂️
I caught a glimpse of the parade as they finally left...
Finally, Riley was super excited when she got home from kickboxing class last night: The instructor specifically asked her to come up in front of the class and give a demonstration for some of the newcomers, basically in the sense of this young woman isn't even 17 yet, and she's only been here 2-3 months, and look how good her technique is already.
Then the guy she partnered with for the night turned out to be a really good sparring partner, which is always a plus. (While she's certainly had her share of good partners, she's definitely had a few duds and oddballs as well.)
Cat Pics: Now with 30% More Cats Per Cat Pics!
So, we had to sit the kiddies—and the kitties—down earlier this month and break the news to them...
...Mommy and Daddy were gonna be having a baby, and they were about to get a new little brother.
Lucky and Odin were furious...
Penny was too, though a queen doesn't conduct herself as transparently as a rook and a bishop...
She tried to act like she was playing it cool...
...but really, she was just waiting for the right moment to transform into her alter ego, the assassin Darth Meow...
She vowed that this new rumored "little brother" would not survive his first night if she had anything to say about it!
Of course, she didn't have all that much to say about it right then, because this happened just before dinner time; and she was famished from a long day of napping, and would not be assassinating anyone without some food in her gullet...
While she waited patiently for dinner in our bedroom, the rest of us adjourned to Riley's room and welcomed Mochi to the flock...
I made the mistake of gloating about it when I returned...
...so Penny swiftly reminded me that she could easily kill me any time she chose...
But first, dinner?
Odin had by now declared a hunger strike, and Lucky was mere moments from death by starvation...
So, we fed them and they all reverted to being fat, dumb, and happy...
Those food comas hit hard!
But the next day, Mochi made it his mission to find the best sleeping spot in Riley's room—which of course could only be done by sampling all of them...
Found it! It was right here under this ratty blanket all along 😆
Odin thought a long nap sounded good...
...So good that, after the first one, he moved out to the living room and took another...
Even Darth Meow likes naps...
But she sleeps with one eye open 😉
On Day 3, the boys decided to go hunting for sunshine.
Odin spotted some while looking out the window; and then he was promptly shunted aside so Lucky and Mochi could channel some inside and onto the carpet...
Aw, yeah; that's the good stuff...
Some of it got into our bedroom as well, and Penny's assassin persona soon melted away...
Then Taylor arrived, and Odin inspected her luggage for drugs...
He seemed kind of disappointed when he didn't find any.
Taylor appealed to Penny's sense of decency to request clemency for Mochi...
Penny eventually relented and agreed that Mochi can stay as long as she still gets to be the queen...
And finally, here's a clip of Odin enjoying a reprieve from his cone...