Caterwauling

It’s official: The house is SO messy (how messy IS it?) that I cannot for the life of me find the vacuum cleaner. And yes, it’s been THAT long since I’ve gone looking for it.

I bitch mightily about not having the time/energy to have a life, but there’s something to be said about avoiding reality. If only one’s oblivion were a lucrative endeavor. …

Confidential to those who decide on my compensation package, after Thursday’s commute from hell, Amy raises a point of consideration:

And as my female readers will tell you, when you have to pee you HAVE to pee. It hurts and it drives you to the point that you do desperate things to relieve yourself. Now, I’ve never found myself in the despearate situation dear Dawn did, but she gets major huge props for talking her way into a secure mental hosptial to use the facilities. That, my friends, is pure brilliance. …

And as if all that weren’t enough, she survived this episode only to get back into traffic and almost be hit by a truck. Dawn, we salute you. Your dedication to your commute to get to your job either qualifies you for one hell of a raise or you really should go back to NIH permanently.

Thanks girl! 🙂 I’m surprised NIH didn’t keep me there for observation. …

Thanks to the cleaning crew for throwing out my dinner for tonight. It was in the freezer and clearly marked, but when we were told to have our crap out of the fridge by the time we left work today, they clearly assumed that we would be out before a certain time. Hah. So now I’m hungry AND cwabbers.

OK, let me explain “cwabbers.” My friend’s 2-year-old gets crabby, so we call her crabby. Crabby evolved into “crabbers” and now that she can talk, it’s “cwabbers.”

So I’ve got a good three hours ahead of me and 10 hours-plus (and a 90-minute commute) behind me, and PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD do not say the word “Monday” to me. Just don’t. Because you’ll want a pot of drawn butter with THAT level of cwabbers! 😉

Updated to include music!

The new Girl Scout cookies suck (the Cafe cookies). I think they aim to be snickerdoodles that nobody can chew. However, there’s something satisfying in gnawing ona whole box of some cookies as a stress-reliever. Although I am highly tempted to bake some of my own to erase my memory of these evil bastard wonders.

In other news, my publisher caught me sobbing today. But a vice president caught me rocking out (with headphones on, thankfully, lest I have to explain the two-decade-long Bon Jovi fetish). Yeah, I think it’s time for a weekend. …

At least they didn’t hear me singing Winger’s “Without the Night.” Well, I HOPE I wasn’t belting it out, anyway!!!

OK, who wants Friday tunage? (Warning: Depressing as all hell. But appropriate for me today, anyway.)

Sorry, Jesus, but the Girl Scout Cookies? They are calling. And I? Am answering.

Subtitle: ‘Jesus Take the Wheel’

Apparently the traffic jam from hell made national headlines. I’m surprised I wasn’t the one making headlines — if there had been shots of me on a traffic cam, howling and crying and screaming, y’all would’ve known EXACTLY who it was!

Anyway, I could tell you about all the existential pondering I did during that three-hour joyride, or I could tell you the funny side of it. Because like my one colleague said, I don’t just have stories — I have STORIES.

I was calm for the first 90 minutes. I had trouble merging onto the Beltway, but going from a two-lane GW Parkway to a five-lane Inner Loop of the Beltway usually alleviates the waiting in line thing.

Usually.

So I got on the Beltway and immediately merged behind a lumber truck. And it scared me so I shot over to the far left lane as efficiently as I could, given the gridlock. But hey, I’m only on the Beltway for four miles — I figured it wouldn’t be THAT bad.

So an hour and a half later, I’d gone MAYBE two miles. I’d been listening to my headphones so I figured, hey, maybe I need to turn on a radio. So I flipped on 99.5-FM, just in time to hear the DJ saying that she hopes everyone’s having a good day, unless we were in the mess leading up to 270 ’cause it was closed, in which case we were screwed.

And thus, I was screwed.

And I really, really had to pee. Like, hence the howling and pleading with the universe to throw a girl a bone or a catheter or a miracle or something. Mercury went into retrograde with a bang today, I say. Jeebus H.

Anyway, I started debating pulling over to the shoulder and just voiding my widdle bladder on the medial strip, but I feared my big white ass in the air would start redirecting satellite traffic. And I really didn’t want Cingular or XM’s waves bouncing off my butt, so I thought better of using the highway as my toilet.

Unfortunately, I’d just scarfed down a huge bottle of water during my captivity, and I was miserable. Like, psychotically miserable. So, armed with the knowledge that NOBODY was getting onto 270, I had to figure out an alternative.

So, I hopped all the way back across the Beltway to the far right lane. Local yokels know that the left lanes go to Rockville/Frederick (where I was headed) and the right lanes go to Bethesda/Baltimore (and all the way back around the Beltway). I figured, nobody’s going to be going THAT way, right?

Wrong again.

So I headed up the way I don’t know very well and could see the mess on the 270 spur (the overturned truck and cop cars and the last remnants of the wreckage), as well as the mess in the other exit that leads to Rockville. The line was about five miles long. I sat in it for a minute before driving ON THE SHOULDER and merging left again, bypassing all of it.

We’re at hour two-and-a-half-plus at this point, and I’m jaundiced.

I took the Wisconsin Avenue exit — seemed safe. No one was in line for it anyway. I figured, just get me to a powder room and maybe I can figure out where the fuck I am and try to either get to work (which was just a couple of miles away) or just pack it in and go home and work from there.

So, I figured, Bethesda is a pretty urban area — there are grocery stores and gas stations and toilets everywhere, right? How hard could it be?

So I saw a sign for the hospital and I think, yay! Hosptial! Hospitals have bathrooms! They treat crazy people like me who have mascara and tears streaming down their cheeks and the onset of psychosis from the claustrophobia of sitting still on the Beltway in a tiny sports car for three hours, no?

This is where the story gets good (yes, finally — shut up).

Read the rest of this entry »

Three-hour commute today. 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., people. For 35 miles!!! I drive from Pittsburgh to Alexandria in that kind of timeframe, and that’s 25o!

I’ll elaborate later, because I need TIME to craft the story of “why I had to go through a metal detector when I stopped after Hour Two and a Half because I had to pee.” Never stop on Federal property. A mental hospital, no less. Because they will ask you if you are a patient. Especially if you are in tears and threatening suicide if you are kept from emptying your pathetic little bladder for 30 more seconds. Just sayin’. 😉

Although, a rotten day on the way to (and/or in) this office is exorbitantly better than a good month at any other job!

AbsolutKravitz.com

You can download the song that’s playing there (“Breathe”). Oh, the naughty thoughts I’m having right now. … 😉 (*quiver*)

I’m just shy of 60,000 words in my NaNoWriMo novel (upward of 200 pages). I’ve tried to sneak back to it here and there, and I’m always thinking about it. Writing books is my first love, and I hope that this coming November’s endeavor is equally exhilarating!