Self-Compliment

Men, this post is on hair. Feel free to move on.
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I like compliments, I won't lie. Well, I like compliments coming from an individual. The kind you get when someone in a group loudly gives you a compliment so everyone kind of turns and examines you makes me squirm. Still, a compliment's a compliment. And today, I needed one. It's only a little past noon and it's been a crappy day. I'll spare you most of the details, but to refer to a recent blog, that headlight I used to strong-arm to blink on every night has now steadfastly refused to shimmer, so I'm worried about meeting my friendly neighborhood cop on the way home from Shop-n-Smile tonight. We'll leave the bitching of today to just one.

It was just lunch and I had parked on the road and ran into the big University Center to get my lunch and buy a one-day parking permit. I was playing that game you play with the parking checkers here, since they're notorious here for handing out parking tickets like pediatricians hand out lollipops. I needed to buy the permit, grab my lunch, and get back to my car before it got a shiny new parking violation. Universities are always such a colossal pain when it comes to parking.

So, I was in the salad bar line, trying to turbo-make my salad, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see the woman next to me giving me the body language for, "Hurry up, move over. I'm making my salad too!" So, I moved over politely and continued building my masterpiece.

Then, I got the signal again. So again, I stepped over and continued. When I felt it a third time, I suddenly heard her exclaim, "I'm so sorry, I'm just starting at you! Your hair is so beautiful!"

I looked up, both startled and flattered, into the face of a woman about my height, also with blue eyes, and with hair about the same length as mine. Her hair was a bit blonder (mine's kinda strawberry-light-brownish) and a bit curlier. I thought it was beautiful. It wasn't exactly a doppelganger moment, but it was close enough.

"Oh, well it looks just like yours!" I said smiling.

"Oh no," she said, "Yours isn't as curly. It's more wavy and nice."

"I wish mine was more curly!" I said, and then began to feel self-conscious about this salad bar line mutual admiration society. "Thank you!" I added with some enthusiasm.

And then we continued on with our lives. But I felt a little zing of happiness with the compliment.

It's funny, I always hated my natural hair. Being wavy, it unfortunately isn't Rapunzel-like cascading waves either, it has always been dry, frizzy, and basically bumpy. You know, the one side flips up the other side flips under kind. I blew it straight several times a week for years and years until when living in NYC an instructive and insistent curly-hair salon stylist and the overwhelming number of lovely, curly-haired heroines at the Jewish organization I worked for inspired me to go natural. Plus, with all the curly hair products that have exploded onto the market, I can help to "enhance" my hair's waviness into something more controlled and appealing. I have now fully-accepted and have even come to love my hair just as it is (well, enhanced as it is). It feels good.

Well, let's just hope I'm still as self-loving after I chop off about a foot of it in the near future. I'm not self-loving how long it takes to dry hair that goes to the middle of my back.

On another note, oOoOOoh, I just ate three pickles! The day's getting even better. Now, where did I put those Sugar Babies?

Things That Annoy Me About Myself

This could be a long list, but for now, I'll just list one...

I hate how I do that nervous, polite laugh thing. Like, with someone I don't know very well or with a supervisor or something. I use it to fill up space, as a reply, whatever. It sounds stupid. I need to stop.

Psycho Kitty - Qu'est-ce que c'est? Part II

HAPPY SPRING!!!

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Sabina's zaniness intensifies. It's Beau's fault; he's making her evil, and she's loving it.

Beau and I have very different views on pets. Being a country boy, and spending a large chunk of his life breeding and working with horses, to him, they're utilitarian. Horses in the pasture, cats in the barn, dogs running around scaring potential bad guys or other varmints. Pets are animals.

I love having pets! As a city girl, they were companions who we kept inside (for the most part) and loved and stroked and were happy to share our bed with. They were gentle creatures, family members of a sort.

I've always treated Sabina with kidgloves. I stroke her and scratch her and carry her around like a doll. She sleeps up against me at night, and gazes out the window by day. She's my baby kitty. So, when Beau started messing with Bina, pushing her around, stepping on her (in jest), picking her up and jostling her around like a washing machine, just basically being pretty rough with her, I was alarmed.

"Hey careful! You'll make her mean!" I'm always afraid of cats going mean. I remember two cats from my childhood that "went bad." Not their fault. They both had been abused. I'll never forget the day when I was 13, arriving at a neighbor's house to babysit their son, to walk into the living room and find him swinging his new kitten around the room, helicopter-style, by a long string tied round its neck. No blaming that cat for hating people.

So, when Beau tosses Bina around, smooshes her with his foot, and being who she is, reacts rather dramatically with protest mews of great volume, and claws and teeth bared, I get nervous. It takes a bit of pushing to get her to respond, because I have taught her that to bite Mommy is a VERY BAD IDEA, so it was some time until she would go into immediate attack mode at the obnoxious probing of Beau. No need for probing anymore. I always know when he's messing with her, because a great whiny howl will just rise up out of nowhere, a sound I'm just not used to coming out of this cat. I used to get mad at Beau, thinking he was always instigating things. He protested. "She's a cat! She loves it! She starts it, really!"

"Oh sure, she starts it. What are you, five?"

"She does! You have to watch!"

Sure enough, Beau and Bina have developed a sort of sick game between them. He sits down at the computer to email or play Civ IV, and Bina will nonchalantly walk up to him and slowly lay down across his foot. There she waits. As soon as he moves a single toe --- ATTACK! What makes it so funny, is that while she is attacking him, she cries out in her "mews of protest" voice, as if she's the one being assaulted. I didn't even believe Beau, but have now seen her do this on a daily basis. Sabina the Psycho Kitty now lives to bite Beau's feet. And there is no holding back, teeth and claws dig in until I start hearing Beau howl himself. And the more he tries to pull his foot away, the more aggressively she attacks. He must remain perfectly motionless to prevent a confrontation. Of course, she doesn't dare do this to me; I would drop kick her across the room, baby kitty or no. With me she is still a gentle, soft cuddler. With Beau, she is all tiger. Well, that is, unless they're taking a nap on the air bed together.

"Now she's finally acting like a cat!" Beau proclaims in smug satisfaction.

A crazy, schizophrenic cat.

On the bright side, her lick-herself-til-she's-bald disorder has lessened, though not disappeared. Maybe getting out her frustrations on Beau's feet is a sort of therapy.

Lord help this family.

Nobody Move, Nobody Get Hurt

Since I began driving at 16, (18 years ago). I've been pulled over by the cops three times in my entire life. All three times were on major interstate highways amidst a long, laborious road trip of some kind. All three times I was speeding. The one that killed me was on my return from NYC - Madison, non-stop 14 hour trip, where I was JUST reaching the exit to my home at about 3am, exhausted and relieved. Then, flashing blue and red lights! Fucker.

Beau and I have lived in Missoula for 2 1/2 months and we've each been pulled over once already. Cops are everywhere here and though I've never found myself having strong feelings one way or the other about cops or tickets, I find myself growing more and more upset. Big surprise, it's Missoula!

I first started getting irritated, naturally, after Beau got his $81 speeding ticket for doing 35 in a 25 mph zone. It's hard to argue with a ticket when you're speeding. You just are. Doesn't stop me from being annoyed by all the circumstances surrounding it though. For one, we live in a nice apartment, but basically in a pretty depressed area of small, unkempt houses where the front yards often feature a doberman, rottweiler, or something else large-jawed and fear-inspiring. A somewhat major (busy) road road runs along the outside of these neighborhoods near where we live. The other side of the road consists of industrial lots, or just dirt lots, or the cemetery. On this road to our home, right before you pass these neighborhoods on the right, you have to cross a short, yet surprisingly steep bridge, since underneath it runs about ten lines of railroad track. I have to kick our little Honda into high gear to make it up the little bridge, and then of course, to keep me from getting a ticket by going over 25 mph, lean heavily on the break the whole way down. That's where Beau got nabbed, coming off that bridge.

Nearly every single day when I'm driving to and from work, I see a cop and some unfortunate victim pulled over on the side of the road, right in this area -- I did again just this morning on the way to work. You can imagine how that inspires a stately crawl every time I enter the neighborhood. I guess it just seems so unfair that again and again I see people getting that $81 ticket, and I KNOW these are, for the most part, blue-collar families in small homes with not much money. Whenever I've been in the wealthier sections of Missoula (like where I park my car every morning for work), I have seen ZERO cops. Not one. $81 is a LOT of money to pay when you don't have it. Trust me on that one.

And though I've been driving through this area for about 11 weeks now, and have seen daily police pull-overs in this tiny area, I have never seen anyone racing by me in their car. I've never seen an accident, I've never seen anything even remotely reckless or strange warranting such blanket attention. I don't get it. It's not even that busy of an area, traffic-wise. People here tell you that the police are so rabid because of Montana's no sales tax law. I hear this as an excuse for anything that is ridiculous or expensive. We haven't gotten a new car title yet, but we're afraid to, since we hear "It'll cost SO much money, hundreds of dollars, since there's no sales tax and this is how they get their money." I've already mentioned how angry people are about their sky-high property taxes too. Yet, every time it's put to a vote, people want to keep their no-sales-tax way of life. Okay.

The only thing I've seen that should stimulate police action, are the idiots who drive their stupid trucks up the side of a very steep hill lying underneath I-90. These idiots deserve a little Cop Smackdown, or to just die from their dumbassness. It's either teenagers or men in their 30's or 40's who drive their cars straight up the hill, like they're just taunting the hill and the laws of gravity to fling them off. I watched from my window in disbelief as a man went slowly up up up the hill in his Bronco, and then began to slowly slide back down. The teenagers in the station wagon didn't even make it up that high before their car stalled. I'm waiting for the day when something truly tragic happens. Of course, though this is about a half mile from the speed trap area I mentioned -- the hill is literally in view -- I have never seen a single cop nab one of these brain surgeons. I guess you can't get a ticket for being crazy.

It also bothers me since it just rips up the ground. This must be some kind of common pasttime here, because there are several paths just chewed out of the hillside shooting up and down and circling around. Those are not real roads by any means. They're just guys driving around in the dirt. I took a picture of this guy last weekend. I was pretty bummed that the photo doesn't allow you to really see the dramatic angle this hill (and car) are on. Maybe it's because I took the picture from where I live on the third floor. But just use your fantastic powers of imagination to picture this hill as very very steep.

As for myself, changing gears now to a different story, I had MUCH better luck, and an experience that somewhat redeemed my opinion of Missoula cops. After coming off an eight hour shift at Shop-n-Smile, exhausted and just DYING to get home, I get pulled over. JUST GREAT! It couldn't be a worse time to get a ticket since, as usual, we're broke, and our Shop-n-Smile and my university paychecks haven't started rolling in yet. I thought, maybe he'll see my Shop-n-Smile dork nametag and take pity on a poor, working slop like me. He had this giant, bright headlight on the side of his car that he kept shining into my rearview mirror rendering me paralyzed in fear and confusion. He did this about three times, rolling the light around a bit. I felt like there was something I was supposed to do, but had no idea what. Finally, a young male cop came to my window and said, "Could you please move your car farther off the road so I don't get hit."

- 'Oh, oh yeah, sure" *sheepish*

Then he walked over to the car, leaned down and said, "How long has your headlight been out?"

Oh crap.

Now, that stupid headlight has been going out for about a month now, but like a bad sitcom, what happens is this: Beau turns the car and headlights on, only the left headlight will shine, he then gets out and smacks the right headlight forcefully. The right headlight then obediently snaps on in cheery brightness. He gets back in the car and we drive off. I had punched it on myself two weeks earlier and it had inexplicably just kept coming on every time I turned the ignition thereafter without my Mafia-like ass-kicking persuasion. So, since it had been working for awhile, I had forgotten to threaten it that particular night.

I looked at the cop and said, "Um, can I get out and show you?" He said yes, I got out and timidly stepped around to the front of the car. I raised my arm and brought down the side of my fist onto the light.

*bam*

Nothing.

"Oh fuck oh fuck," I thought.

I hit it again, a little harder.

Nothing.

I hit it about five more times. "I can't BELIEVE this!" I thought in rising panic. Like he was going to believe me now! I gave it one more smack.

*blink* *shine*

I muttered under my breath that the light was DEAD, you hear me, DEAD, when we got home. Okay, that just went on in my mind. In reality I looked up at the police officer with hope and triumph in my eyes.

"What, is it just loose?" he asked.

- "Um, I don't know," I said. "It's stayed on for the past couple weeks so I thought it was fine now."

"Okay, let's see your license and proof of insurance then."

So, I got back in the car, frantically digging through the glove box (the overhead light in the car wouldn't turn on EITHER!), and gave them both to him. Again, snag. My license is still out-of-state and the insurance, though totally valid, is under my mother's name until April. And of course, like previously mentioned, the license plate and registration itself is still Wisconsin.

"You new to the area?" he asked.
- "Yes," I replied cheerfully, "We just moved here two months ago."
"You work at Shop-n-Smile, do you?"
- "Yes, I just started there."
"M'am, once you are gainfully employed, by law, you are required to get a driver's license from Montana."
- "Well, you see, I have a story about that..."

Which is true, I do, and it's a totally honest story. I can't reveal right now what it is. It's nothing that interesting. Still, even though everything I had said to the cop was true, even to my own ears it just started to sound like story after story, excuse after excuse. I braced for impact.

"Well, you make sure to get that new license and fix that light. You have a good night."

- "Oh. Oh? Oh! Thank you! Yes, okay!" I spluttered. I was stunned. I had never been let off of a ticket before. The three previous cops had all been big fat meanies to me. I was so relieved that I teared up. He went back to his car and I sat in mine. What made this comical, is that I didn't want to drive off before him. To add to all the other problems, the muffler on the car had just recently started to go, and though it had not yet reached epic noise pollution levels, I'm sure he would have noticed it, and the only "story" I had for this one is that we didn't have enough money yet to get it fixed. So, I sat there for a moment, nervous, but it was obvious he was waiting for me. So, very.....slowly....I began to drive off. I heard the engine growl, not too loudly, but still louder than normal. I bit my lip and continued on, my eyes darting to the rearview mirror every few seconds. No more flashing lights.

I drove home like a senior citizen. In one piece. No ticket.

Glory hallelujah!

Now I Really Do Live in Bizarro World

Okay, it's 7am, I'm exhausted, I turn on the TV, and I see Ann Curry interviewing the President of Sudan.

WHAT THE FUCK?

Ann Curry? The Strawberry Shortcake of the world of journalism is interviewing the leader of Sudan's large-scale genocide?

I can't take this. My mind is reeling. Why is it getting dark in here?

*thump*

Shop-n-Smile!

The J-O-B situation is slowly getting better.

I started working at the university. It feels real real good to be on a university campus again, and the University of Montana is very pretty. At least, I see its potential to be pretty. We are just crawling into Spring and Montana does not leave winter too willingly. It will still snow here, totally unexpectedly (to me), in the middle of the day. And not necessarily snowflakes that I am familiar with, but these tiny little pellets of snow, similar to hale,...but not.

Anyway, it's no wonder it feels so good to be here since I spent such a large chunk of my life on two university campuses. Of course, this time it's different. I'm not an undergrad or the youngest student in my graduate program anymore. I'm just a 30-something temp who isn't wearing jeans and sneakers or carrying an enormous bookbag anymore. At least it's a temp with the university and not another agency!

Oh, and I got ANOTHER call from another university department, but I told them I'd already made a commitment to the department I'm in now and I couldn't do it. It was kind of a bummer since it was a pretty nice job, but despite what happened at my PREVIOUS temp job, I don't really like doing things like that. And there will be other jobs...I hope.

These temporary positions feel like you're always at the casino rolling the dice. It's all about timing and impressions. You're trying to do a good job so you can make it to the NEXT job with a favorable recommendation, and of course, the NEXT job has to start right around the time your present job ends. It's maddening. You feel like you're gambling with your own life, which you kind of are, since it's your rent, fuel, and cat food that are on the line. You don't want to piss off your present employer with your new job search, taking off for interviews and such, but you don't want to wait TOO long since nowadays so many positions require long application processes and multiple interviews.

The job I'm at now only lasts until June (with the "possibility" of an extension). I know how it goes...funding and the "we'll see if we really like you" factor kicks in. And this university, though a state school, seems to really struggle with funding in a way that surprises me. Back during my time at the Univeristy of Wisconsin-Madison, the university itself always bitched about not having enough money and needing to raise tuition, but if you spent some time at the university and used its wide array of splendid services, you'd see that they were doing very well. I guess each state is different in how they treat their universities.

What I think I haven't mentioned either, is that about two weeks ago I started a job at a retail store. Not Target again, but let's just say it's a VERY similar place. How 'bout we call it "Shop-n-Smile." I work there nights and weekends. It's a LOT less intense than Target, but it's also a lot less structured and polished, which can be annoying. And they make me tuck in my shirt, which I HATE. *cough* Anyways...

It was a weird experience, because I got to the interview, and I was asked to sit in a row of chairs facing three supervisors. There was one from apparel, one from hardlines, and one from the cashier section. There were already two other applicants sitting in the row with me -- an attractive high school student (female), and a somewhat shady-looking male with a bald head and tightly folded arms. The three interviewers would ask questions, and we'd have to answer them in turn. It was an odd experience, especially since the three of us couldn't be more different. I think each of my answers was about 3x longer than theirs. I try to be talkative in an interview without turning into Gabby McChat.

I thought the teenager did a good job, though she was very obviously nervous. The shady male kept making comments about his disgruntlement at his past jobs. Idiot! Don't you know you to ix-nay on the riticism-cay during an interview?? When they asked me where I would prefer to work, I quickly said "hardlines" which basically consists of anything that is NOT clothes/shoes or the registers. I learned from Target how un-fun it can be to work apparel, especially working the infants/kids department *vomit* And though cashiering can be fun, a shift where you just stand in place hour after hour can be excrutiating.

After a few more questions, they asked the three of us to go and sit in the breakroom while they conferred. Of course, they gave us the 5-minute "even if we don't hire you now, we'll keep your application and maybe we'll hire you later (yeah right)" speech, so I knew at least one of us didn't make the cut. After an astonishing 20 minutes cooling our heels (what could necessitate ALL that conferring?), they called us back in, each directed to a different supervisor. I sat down with the hardlines guy who said, "What area do you like to work in best?" So I told him honestly, housewares and domestics (furniture, bedding, kitchen stuff, basically everything for the house). I think it's one of the more interesting and least frustrating areas to work. I would work anywhere, but I was praying he wouldn't tell me "Toys," since that section is just about as nightmarish as you can imagine.

He smiled and said, "That's exactly where I have an opening." Score! So, all he had to do was wait for my background check to come back (do felonies count against you?) and then I could start.

So, a week later I was sent to training. Though the trainer was a very nice woman, it was one of the absolute worst training sessions I have ever been on. I felt myself appreciating Target more and more, despite all the things that had annoyed me about them. The majority of the training consisted in us watching fantastically boring videos. The trainer would often push play, and then go and disappear for awhile. Often the tape would end and the four of us would all stare at our shoes for several minutes in polite embarrassment. There were three other women in training with me. A pharmacy student who would intern in the pharamacy, a woman who would be a cashier, and the teenager from my interview who would work in apparel. Apparently Joe Dis Gruntled didn't make the cut.

So, here I am a couple weeks later. The job is easy, and Shop-n-Smile, though a nice store, gets very little business, though of course I'm comparing it to Target during Christmas, which was INSANE. But all the biggies are here in town (Wal-Mart, ShopKo, Target, K-Mart, Stein Mart), so there's lots of competition. I spend hours and hours each shift very.....slowly.....walking through the aisles straightening candles and picture frames, re-rolling the rugs people lay out on the floor to try, and folding aisles of puffy bath towels. It's hardly brain surgery, and sometimes I think I'll go mad from the boredom, but it's a job, it's easy, it's inside, and we could damn sure use the money.

Of course the only drawback is working all day at my temp job (8-5ish) and then racing over to Shop-n-Smile to work from 5ish-10pm. Since I'm one of these freaks who needs like 9 hours of sleep a night to feel even remotely functional in the morning, I've been waking up as a cast member from Night of the Living Dead. I know I can't keep this up forever, but who knows what will happen with the day temp job? I need this night gig to keep some checks coming in for awhile.

Ohhhh Missoula, one day my ship will come in, and I will feast and feast upon that fat bounty!

Until then, I'm knackered.

Funny Sign I Saw in the Coffeeshop Today

"Unattended children will be given an espresso and a free puppy."