I do not understand something and maybe you can help me:

When I do laundry once every seven days, we usually have three loads of laundry

When I do laundry after eight days: we have four loads of laundry.

when I do laundry after twelve days: we have five loads of laundry.

I do not understand how waiting so long to do more laundry does not result in way more loads of laundry unless I decide to toss in extra stuff that only needs to be washed rarely like blankets.

Thoughts?

I have a new door!  And you know what?

Like hell it was only supposed to take two hours.

According to the notice we got, the team needed two hours to take out the old door and put in the new door and at no time during that process would our apartment be left unattended. You know, in case we were both out of the house like normal adults are on a Thursday morning and afternoon.

Can I just say?  It is a damn good thing that I was home while they installed the door.  Because? Those jerks got the new door up and took off for lunch–leaving it with no door frame, no deadbolt and–wait for it–no doorknob.  That’s right.  Apparently not leaving the apartment unattended meant leaving the apartment unattended and wiiiiide open for whoever passed by.  For an hour.

And then it took them three hours after they got back from lunch to install the door frame, the door knob, the lock and to drill a new peephole which I have absolutely no hope of ever being able to see out of unless I drag a step stool over to the door first.

Honestly, I shouldnt’ complain too much.  I have a new door.  It has weatherstripping on the bottom to keep the heat in.  It’s made out of stronger stuff (I think) than our old door.  And? the lock? Now actually turns.  Even in cold weather.  Without my having to push or pull my entire body weight against the door to get the thing into just the right position so that the lock will turn.  The lock now? Like butter. Love.

But still.  Thank god I was home otherwise any old person could have waltzed right in and taken whatever they wanted and nobody would have been the wiser until Will or I had gotten home.

In other news, I don’t really have a lot of other news.  It’s the best television night of the week.  The cat just walked across my keyboard and accidentally wrote “i 8 u” which is kind of funny because Will and I often debate on just how badly Poppy wishes she could, in fact, eat us.  I’ve spent most of the day in stinky pjs because I wasn’t sure when the door guys would show up and then, well, there were door guys here (or I had no door).  Will brought my chicken fingers from Fred Meyer for lunch and I’m trying to decide if I want to make Chicken Alfredo for dinner or if that would be too much chicken in one day.

About a month and a half ago, we found a notice from our landlord that all of the front doors in our apartment complex were going to be replaced with fancy new titanium doors that would help keep the heat from escaping (the ill fitting old doors weren’t so great about that since most of them had ginormous amounts of space between the bottom of the door and the door frame–our feet would feel breezes, that’s how big the space was).  Will and I are extremely glad for this development since it is supposed to cut down on our heating costs and it doesn’t raise our rent (as far as we know).  So, since we live close to the back of our complex, we’ve spent the last few weeks watching the new door installations get closer and closer to our apartment.

Our new door gets installed tomorrow.  Today, they are working on the doors upstairs.  And? It is loud.  Reeeeeeally reeeeeeeeally loud.  Impossible to work, impossible to nap, impossible to think and impossible to leave since they have the stairwell blocked with their equipment LOUD.

Thankfully, they’re supposed to be done working by four every afternoon so I only have a few more hours of the sawing and scraping and banging and equipment noise and, after that? I’m totally taking a nap.

I am sooooooo tired—the work on the upstairs doors made it impossible to go back to sleep this morning after Will left for school.  If I wasn’t off caffeine I would TOTALLY be making myself some chai right now.  E-gad.

At least I get a new door out of it, right?

Target did not help us save any money today.  At all.  Why must they have such awesome sales (she inquired in with a banshee-like cry)?

We went in because we needed some stuff like soap and shave gel and dress shoes for Will and, okay, Star Trek.  And the best place to get all of that without having to make a bunch of trips or pay too much is Target.  But Target, it was having one of its massive DVD sales.

How massive?

Try Grey’s Anatomy season 4 for $18.99

Try Scrubs season 8 for $14.99

Try Gilmore Girls for $14.99 for each season.

Yowzers.  We were powerless to resist (especially when Grey’s and Gilmore Girls both usually cost up in the 40-60 range for a season)!

We might have gone in for just one DVD but we came out with that one DVD and then Season 4 of Grey’s Anatomy, Seasons 4 and 5 of Gilmore Girls (the two I was missing), Season 8 of Scrubs and the Life on Mars (American version).

I’d say oops but I’ve decided that it wasn’t a mistake, we were victimized by Target’s awesomeness!

And now we really aren’t buying anything for a while because we can’t afford it.  Target has sucked us dry.

I made roughly a kazillion pounds of dinner for myself tonight (Will is in class) and ate two plates full of it and you know what?  I think I might still be hungry.  Except I can’t tell if I’m really hungry or if it was just so darn tasty that I don’t want to stop eating it.  I’ve decided to take a break from stuffing my face to blog and lay down and let the food settle.  I read somewhere, I can’t remember where, that it takes twenty minutes for your stomach to tell your brain that it’s full.  The last thing I want is to be in pain from my yummy broccoli and beef dinner (used a recipe I printed out forever ago, and can’t remember the website or I’d link to it) and fried rice.  I am getting REALLY good at fried rice (I use the recipe in the Taste of Home Cookbook as a base but have added corn and broccoli).  I know I’d like to have some of it on hand every day just in case I was in a fried rice mood.

Today was a good work day.  I got a lot done and was very pleased with myself for getting as much done as I did, especially since I accidentally slept in until almost 11:30. Oops.  Can’t do it tomorrow though!  Will has some big dinner thing for his major at school (though it involves driving to Corvallis, weird) and we need to get him dress shoes and stock up on stuff at Target so I’ll be pulling a split wiiiide apart work day.  A little in the morning and a lot in the evening.  Should be interesting.  I wonder if I can squeeze in a nap.

Hot damn, isn’t my life exciting?

Tonight I told Will “even though we’ve failed at the whole no spending thing, I’d like us to really put an effort into the eating healthier thing.”

His reply?

“Want to get dinner at Taco Time?”

Damn him.  He knows I can’t resist Taco Time–especially when it is in the same shopping center as the Beaverton Powell’s satellite store.

Oh well, the healthy eating can start tomorrow.  I think I will make something involving chicken.  Mmm. Chicken.

Or maybe fried rice.  I seem to be in a Chinese Foody kind of place lately.  Mmmmmm.  Veggie fried rice and beef with broccoli (sans broccoli).  That sounds excellent.

I love it when I have my dinner planned in advance!

Sometimes a trip to Panda Express and then Best Buy (to buy the Glee CD of course) is just what you need on a Saturday evening.

Today has been pretty run of the mill… slept in, talked to my Mom on the phone, watched some television, did some crochet and then had dinner and went to Best Buy with Will… with a side trip to look at a used car because a certain husband of a certain blogger who owns this here certain blog is jonesing (JONESING) for a new car.  He actually got out and talked to one of the salesmen at the lot and for a few terrified minutes I was afraid that he was actually going to buy the new car. Yikes.

Thankfully we left without doing any significant damage to the amount of debt we owe or our credit scores but for a little bit there, things were dicey!

In a way I’m kind of glad that NaBloPoMo forces me to post something that will move last night’s post down.  I don’t get mad and vent very often, I know and after a day I was looking at that and thinking “whoa nelly, slow the eff down.”

I know that everybody is entitled to their own opinions.  Heck, if you hate the President that’s really none of my business and you are certainly entitled to hate him, that’s what makes this crazy country awesome: we do not have to genuflect to those in power.  We’re allowed to dislike and speak out against those that we think are wrong.  Heck, I certainly did a few times during the last administration.

My general beef is when a dissenting opinion is based on nothing but lies and hate mongering and the manipulation of the facts to give yourself an excuse to continue the hating.

I get irritated when rumors, terrible rumors, get spread because people are too lazy to check facts or deem any actual facts presented to them as a liberal agenda–even when it comes from a conservative source.

Plus, I really really like our President and got a little defensive because somebody was saying hateful things about him.  And about a perfectly legitimate and worthy faith.

But yeah.  So yay for NaBloPoMo and moving down the irateness.

After I hit publish on my last (on my god, totally boring) post, I clicked on over to Tweetdeck to read some tweets and Facebook stuff (that thing is such a time waster but I love it).  I was scrolling down and came across a post made by one of my in-laws and seriously, it PISSED ME OFF.

It’s no secret that I married into a (mostly) deeply conservative family.  That is something that I came to terms with long ago.  And hey, I know that we (talking about all humans here) aren’t always all going to get along or agree about everything.  Different opinions are good.  They’re healthy.  And usually I’m totally up to discussing politics–with civilized people who will allow other opinions to exist. I have no problem sitting down with someone whose opinion is different and discussing hot button issues or saying “so why do you think that [whatever] is better than [whatever]?”  Or “I heard about [this kooky thing] and thought you might know more about it.”

But here’s the thing:  some people in this ultra conservative clutch aren’t really conservative.  They’re just….haters.  I think that’s the best way to describe them.  Liberal Haters.  They don’t necessarily subscribe to the actual tenets of the Republican party or conservativism but boy, do they hate the liberals. And anything associated with liberals. Or endorsed by liberals.  And boy do they hate anyone who doesn’t agree with their views.  And boy do they hate doing their research and learning facts.  But boy, do they love to spout off about politics and current events and things where, really, you should do some real research before going off on the liberals or the president and I’m sorry, but Fox News does not count, simply because even by their own admissions (according to the Daily Show, the only source of current events revelations that doesn’t make me want to punch a baby) they don’t actually air much real news.

[pausing to take a deep breath before I accidentally go off an a whole other rant]

One of my in laws is regularly posting stuff on Facebook.  And you know, he’s entitled to his opinion.  I don’t ever comment on his posts because, well, I don’t want to get into an argument with someone who is likely to simply say “you’re just not smart enough to understand how the real world works because you have a liberal brain!” (no kidding, a different in law actually said that to me once and if I wasn’t so damn mad at the time I probably would have laughed).  But today I look over and I see his post about the “holiday” tree and  a crack about “Obama’s god” and… well, let’s just say something involving Mohamed. And I wanted to scream.

First of all:  “Holiday Tree” is actually far more accurate a description of the thing we decorate each year since there is no actual “Christmas” tree.  There is no goddamn evergreen or fir tree in the Christmas story. It actually has pagan ties and, given the symbolism of the evergreen tree (lasting life, or something to that effect), it would probably make more sense to have it up at Easter. But Easter is in the spring and green trees are wintery, so there you go: we put it up at Christmas time–which, in all historical accuracy was probably not in winter.  But whatever.

Second of all:  President Obama is a Christian.  He got into a whoooooollllllllle lotta trouble during the election because he wouldn’t denounce his CHRISTIAN pastor (at least at first) and instead talked about going to that same CHRISTIAN church for years.

Third of all:  President Obama is not a Muslim. See my Second of all.

Third and a half of all: Every faith has extremists and jerk-wads who make the entire faith look bad.  Even if President Obama was a Muslim, who gives a frack? Islam is a peaceful religion.  If you don’t want people to judge Christianity by a some of the crazy wahoos that give it a terrible name, don’t do the same to Islam.

Fourth of all:  The idea of a Muslim trying to create a holiday called [racially slurred joke about Muslims and Christmas]  is utterly offensive to pretty much everybody across the religious spectrum.

Fifth of all:  This is just my opinion but I think  that all of the monotheistic religions worship the same God.  They just call him/her/it by different names.

Sixth of all:  Even if they didn’t, since President Obama is a Christian (see Second of all and Third of all) that means that “His God” is “your” God too sparky.

Seventh of all: If memory and my limited knowledge of the bible serves me correctly, Jesus and the God that Jesus called Dad were all about the love and not using them as excuses for being assholes.  They were all about the tolerance and being kind to others.  They were not at all about trying to force people to believe in them or condemning others who chose a different faith to subscribe to. So… suck on that.

I don’t post about stuff like this very often simply because I don’t like the damn drama that will undoubtedly be wrought by those who hate my opinions and now are part of mykids’ family tree (when I have kids).  But every once in a while I just…. it’s so….. arrrgggghhhhh.

Methinks I’m going to regret publishing this but…..

I got sleep.  And it was glorious.  And I let myself sleep in until 11:30 this morning.  And I’m really hoping that doing so doesn’t keep me from sleeping tonight because that would be really really frustrating.  I was so tired that I slept all the way through the night, something I almost never ever do, so I have no idea if the neighbors turned into water wasters again.

I really am about through with apartment living though.  Dudes, I have had people on the other sides of my walls since kindergarten.  I do not know what it is like to not share walls, or have my floor be somone else’s ceiling (or have my ceiling be their floor).  And while I love my neighborhood, I’m so over it.  I’d like to get the mail without having to put on a happy and pleasant face in case I run into a neighbor (or five).  I’d really like to have a washer and dryer in my dwelling.  Will wants a big yard a a huge garage but those things don’t matter as much to me (mostly because, no matter what Will says, I know that I will be the one to do all of the yard work).  Mostly I just don’t want to have to smell what somebody else cooked for dinner.  I don’t want to know how often my neighbors use the bathroom.

I never used to mind the whole apartment thing.  I like that its cheaper and that when something breaks it gets fixed without that money having to come out of my pocket.  I kind of liked the community feel to apartment living for a long time but now I’m just… maybe I’m too old.  Or too picky.  Or too tired.  Or just have some crappy neighbors. I don’t know.

In completely unrelated news:

So has anybody else been walking around singing “Defying Gravity” today?  I know I have.  Glee really is the little show that could.  I am so glad that it has survived as long as it has, even though I have a really hard time believing that the guy who plays Will was the non-Making-the-Band-reject in LMNT.  I just cannot reconcile the two performers into the same person even if it has been almost eight years since those boy band days (do not judge me for my O-Town or LMNT knowledge.  We all have our musical skeletons).

Incidentally, if you want to buy me a present, I wouldn’t mind Glee Volume 1!