Everything I Tell you is Hearsay

I promise…

Watch

major life changes underway. they have affected my work schedule, and as such, we needed more hands on deck at the clinic. dr anne hired a young college grad in her waiting year before med school to come and run the front desk since i wont be around to do it all the time anymore.

we’ve been training since tuesday. within about 20 minutes, i knew this was someone i could work with. she’s sharp and funny, witty and laid back. ideal traits in a coworker, if i do say so. catherine is the bees knees, if you ask me.

so wednesday morning we get right back to training. we are elbow deep in learning how to schedule an appointment when a client comes through the front door…

“how much for the lenses?”

what i noticed first, was how unequivocally fucking CRANKY this guy was. obviously he had been hard done by (at least to his mind) and he was going to make someone pay for it. trying to communicate with someone who is angry in advance is never a treat, when you add to that the clear case of English not being a first language. well. it’s pretty much my favorite thing.

after sussing out that he wanted:

a) to bitch about Sears (and who doesn’t, really)

b) attempt to haggle with me over the cost of his lenses

c) have me reassure him that the hideously trendy bvulgari frames he had in hand were “hot”

i was willing to play along. one does this frequently in sales, as it turns out. and then. right in the midst of our haggling, bitching, reassuring session, he turns to catherine, gives her a long up & down look, and says huskily

“i like you.”

i am instantly defensive. i use my most scolding tone to say,

“yes, she’s lovely, isnt she?”i hope this will dissuade him from further comment. vainly.

he agrees with me, then goes yet further

“i like the boobies.” gesturing helpfully in case we missed his meaning amidst the morass that was his accent. he then turns to me. “what with your belly? why are you so skinny? do you take the skinny pills? my wife she takes the skinny pills. she’s still fat, but now she also fucking crazy. she get them from the tv.”

i am so taken aback by this turn of the conversation (not least because he didn’t say anything about MY boobies, which are in fact prodigious) that i rather fumblingly answer “no, i go to the gym 3 times a week” rather than a more customary response like “go fuck yourself you fat dickless assmonkey.”

this seems to be the extent of his need to sexually harass us for the moment, and so he returns to discussing the cost of “the lenses” suffering from a little social whiplash, but still attempting to focus on my job, i gamely finish making a quote. he then asserts that he has to go and get some money, but that he will be back shortly to pay for “the lenses”

after he clumps out catherine and i look at each other a little tiny bit in shock. what. the. fuck.

as we are discussing the bizarre sexual advances of the world’s crankiest walk-in, linda, our lead optician comes out and happens to overhear our conversation as do our other coworkers and dr bill.  after we relay the whole story linda firmly states that we are going to send him away when he returns. that we do not want his business and we never have to tolerate that kind of treatment from anyone. ever. dr bill heartily agrees.

flash forward 1/2 an hour. Catherine and i are once again focusing on training, when in walks grumpypants mchorndog. catherine and i become even MORE engrossed in our task while Linda comes forward to say to him with the most careful courtesy

“sir, i’m afraid we wont be able to help you fill your prescription, here are your frames.”

and this is when all hells break loose.

he immediately begins shouting at linda, lacey, catherine, and i in random, ill-formed bursts of insult and expletive.

“are you okay?” tapping his head “what the fuck is the problem? are you seriously okay?”

linda continues in a very calm voice to explain that we cannot make his glasses for him and we would appreciate if he left the clinic. he goes on shouting at her and everyone in the line of fire, until dr bill comes around the corner to intervene

“it is totally inappropriate for you to talk to my staff this way. we do not want your business. you need to leave the clinic”

this creates a whole new burst of incomprehensible invective.

“get the fuck out of my face! the fuck is wrong with you!? get the fuck off my face!” and then, mercifully, he leaves.

as we all sit there, vaguely stunned by the vehemence of his response, we are utterly dismayed to see that he has simply made a loop from his car and is coming back toward us. linda steps forward and throws the bolt on the door to keep him from coming back inside. he then proceeds to stand on the other side of the glass screaming and gesticulating for a full minute before he gives up and storms back to his car.

about a minute later the phone rings. i lift the receiver and identify myself only to hear the accented ranting commence all over again. i felt no compunction whatever hanging up with gusto.

lacey points out there seems to be some kind of second day curse. on her own second day a young miscreant attacked someone at the ATM 2 doors down from the clinic and snatched her purse. right before our plate glass windows we saw several bystanders grab the kid and proceed to deliver upon his ass a well-deserved beat down til the cops arrived. another employee of ours was jumped by an ex after her second day of work. the only thing that happened on my second day of work was that i turned 30. we all agree that sex trumps violence in terms of excitement, so catherine wins this particular horse race.

and so i turn to her and say,

“welcome to the clinic! way to go getting sexually harassed! what’s say we go to the strip club to celebrate?”

she readily agrees. i knew i liked this girl.

and so off we go to jiggles.

jiggles is, for many reasons, about my favorite strip club. it isn’t for everyone, i will happily concede, but for what i prefer in a club, it simply can’t be beat.

variety! i am a fickle beast. i like novelty in my life, and this is Jiggles’ strongest suit. every shape, size, color, and flavor of girl can be found in this place at some time or another. and if you sit still long enough, you’ll get to see them all. there are 3 stages, and the rotation is one song & gone. the last thing i want to do is have to stare at the same naked girl for more than 2 1/2 minutes at a time. if i like the look of someone, i know she’ll be back in a little bit to cover one of the other stages.

lap dance anyone? some clubs really don’t encourage this as the primary draw of their establishment. some places really want you to sit at the rack and tip, others want you to hang back and buy the dancers drinks. at jiggles, they provide all the means for the best lap dances i have ever had in this whole town. from the high backed and perchable chairs in which the dances are administered, to the floor to ceiling mirrors arrayed behind the dancers; all the details of the setting are perfect. as such, the girls who specialize in lap dancing tend to like to work there. frankly, it’s where the money is, and the women who work there have learned to hone their craft.

but, there’s no BOOZE!! this is true, but as everyone who knows anything already knows, the drinks you get at a typical strip club are overpriced and craptastic. i personally do not believe my well G&T should cost $8.50 and taste like gnawing on a juniper bush. i don’t really need to drink to have a good time, and even if i did, i know how to carry a fucking flask and so should you.

my hopes for a wednesday night were fairly modest. we got there at about 8:30 which is prime time to see the end of the early shift and then welcome the late shift at 9. plus also the cover jumps from $10 to $15 once 9pm rolls past.

i did see some ladies i was sort of stunned were up to the challenge. one dancer made me worry about what pole tricks would do to her arthritis. another that the lopsidedness of her breasts (at least they were real…) would induce some kind of limp if they were left unfettered too much longer.

then there was some speculation about who picked the songs for each dancer. it seemed a little too trite that the latina picked Santana, the black woman Barry White. but to amuse myself i decided we should try to guess what the dancer about to mount the stage was going to look like based on the song selection.

“ok… Gun’s n’ Roses. i’m voting for a buck toothed Liv Tyler type”

(dead on)

“Lifehouse? really?? um. methed out bleach blonde?”

(fail. fairly robust sandy brunette)

“Al Green. its the lopsided lady again.”

(yep)

then the late shift came on. after this there was less laughing, and more drooling. friend jason looked meaningfully across the table at catherine, who was a charmingly apparent newbie in the strip club scene and says

“do you need a lap dance?”

i turn to her and await her answer expectantly. she demurs and says she hasnt come prepared to spend the money on a dance. i assure her that if that is her only reticence, it is easily remedied.

“jason, you’ll sponsor catherine to have her very first lap dance, wont you?”

of course he will.

and she had a candidate even sooner than we could possibly have imagined. not necessarily someone she chose, so much as someone who chose her. this dancer was the most aggressive persistent piece of ass i have ever met. with leg warmers. usually a dancer will ask you if you would like a dance, take you at your word, maybe chat for just a bit, and then wander away. not this girl. no way.

leg warmers came by the table no less than a dozen times over the course of the 2 hours we were there. catherine had started looking around for someone to administer her lap dance and even had one sort of picked out, but she came back to say goodbye with her clothes on, so the search began again. meanwhile ms. persistent panties simply would not go away. she escalated her approach over the course of the evening to sneaking up behind catherine, once without her top on and rubbing up against her. she at one point asked if she could see catherine’’s breasts (it was a good day, popularity wise, for her boobs) and finally, worn down, catherine agreed to get a dance from this eager and determined lass.

and holy mother of god, she got the works.

at one point i looked over to see the topless dancer rotating at the waist with her bare breasts pressed firmly against either side of catherine’s face. catherine is clearly a little overwhelmed by this experience, and is trying to politely avert her head from the treatment. to no result.

however, she came away from her experience in excellent humor. and there are not enough points to give for how many points this earned her. the boys were deeply impressed with her being so very game. and so was i.

frankly i think this should be the routine on EVERYONE’S second day on the job.

my child is full of intellectual curiosity. she likes to know how stuff works, why things happen, and when dinner is going to be. and i have made it my policy to always be honest with her. sometimes this results in my saying

i am not comfortable talking about this with you, so i’m afraid i have nothing to say

but last week i dodged a bullet of gargantuan proportions which then managed to hit someone else full force. poor Gramma…. respecting the wishes of myself and her son, she tackled a topic i would have been squirmy, but resigned to address myself.

you see, hodie was surfing around the internets on Gramma’s unfiltered internet connection and, well, she saw some things. and these things prompted the following series of questions (as recounted by Gramma)

so, after 4 fine years at MLC hodie will be going transferring to our neighborhood school Bridlemile in the fall. we decided this for a host of reasons, and we’re pretty excited about it, although i must admit i’ll sort of miss the bragging rights associated with being the parent of an MLC childling.

turns out though, that the academtic rating on this neighborhood school is actually better than MLC (which is a magnet) and more than one of the parents i met today had actually pulled their kid out of montessori/private school and applied for transfer into Bridlemile since it’s such a good school. sweet!

so, sacrificing nothing in terms of quality of education, we are gaining the following:

1) neighborhood kids & activities. the nature of the magnet is that the kids come from all quadrants of the town and usually don’t live near one another. nice for a varied demographic, not nice for playdates.

2) more “authentic” school experience. as much as i loved the touchy feel-y child centered education model for her when she was a kindergartener, the older she gets, the more structure i think she needs. not to mention the concept of grades (which they don’t do at MLC) and a less insular social model. moreover they are getting ready to stick her class into 2 years of split grade, which we did not love the last time we did it.

3) SCHOOL BUS! WOOT! i have been driving her back and forth to school for 4 years. i’m tired.

so, on the whole, we’re happy! and today was the open house for the school so they could come over and meet their new teacher. i thought after being so used to MLC, the least i could do was let hodie have one day to look around the new school and meet her new teacher so it wasn’t completely overwhelming come fall.

and so i sat in my sub-adult sized chair in the library while she went off to meet her new teacher. i spoke with a whole new set of highly-entitled snarky parents (not leaving them behind apparently), and waited for her to come back and give me her impressions.

they had the whole experience set up to try and ease the kids into the transition. one step in this process was each of the outgoing 4th graders from Miss Good’s class wrote a letter to an incoming member. you know, give them a little inside scoop, some insight into the 4th grade experience. well, what follows was the letter for hodie. (spelling and tense errors are those of the author and reproduced faithfully)

June 6th, 2008

Dear New 4th grader,

HI! My name is (not actually going to post the name). I’m 10 years olf and I was in Miss Good’s class. I don’t know how I did it but all I now is that it was torchure with Miss Good.

When I found out I was in Miss Good’s class I was freaking out!!! I didn’t kno what it would be like. I heard so much thinks about her like “she is the worst teacher ever!” or “She is SO Mean!!” And alot more.

Just to be nice I’m going to give you some tips on how to survive Miss Good’s class. One is do NOT I repet do NOT turn in eney thing late!! She hats that. The second one is if you arnt paying attention she will get MAD!!! And the last one is never LIE!! If you do sometimes she knows it. Thank you for reading this note.

Sincerely, (not actually going to post the name)

bwahahahahahahaha. ahem. not exactly the most reassuring note. one must consider the source i suppose, but hodie is now totally paranoid that her new teacher is a tyrant with a lie detector embedded in her head. so, that’s awesome.

can’t wait til fall!!

so, after 4 fine years at MLC hodie will be going transferring to our neighborhood school Bridlemile in the fall. we decided this for a host of reasons, and we’re pretty excited about it, although i must admit i’ll sort of miss the bragging rights associated with being the parent of an MLC childling.

turns out though, that the academtic rating on this neighborhood school is actually better than MLC (which is a magnet) and more than one of the parents i met today had actually pulled their kid out of montessori/private school and applied for transfer into Bridlemile since it’s such a good school. sweet!

so, sacrificing nothing in terms of quality of education, we are gaining the following:

1) neighborhood kids & activities. the nature of the magnet is that the kids come from all quadrants of the town and usually don’t live near one another. nice for a varied demographic, not nice for playdates.

2) more “authentic” school experience. as much as i loved the touchy feel-y child centered education model for her when she was a kindergartener, the older she gets, the more structure i think she needs. not to mention the concept of grades (which they don’t do at MLC) and a less insular social model. moreover they are getting ready to stick her class into 2 years of split grade, which we did not love the last time we did it.

3) SCHOOL BUS! WOOT! i have been driving her back and forth to school for 4 years. i’m tired.

so, on the whole, we’re happy! and today was the open house for the school so they could come over and meet their new teacher. i thought after being so used to MLC, the least i could do was let hodie have one day to look around the new school and meet her new teacher so it wasn’t completely overwhelming come fall.

and so i sat in my sub-adult sized chair in the library while she went off to meet her new teacher. i spoke with a whole new set of highly-entitled snarky parents (not leaving them behind apparently), and waited for her to come back and give me her impressions.

they had the whole experience set up to try and ease the kids into the transition. one step in this process was each of the outgoing 4th graders from Miss Good’s class wrote a letter to an incoming member. you know, give them a little inside scoop, some insight into the 4th grade experience. well, what follows was the letter for hodie. (spelling and tense errors are those of the author and reproduced faithfully)

June 6th, 2008

Dear New 4th grader,

HI! My name is (not actually going to post the name). I’m 10 years olf and I was in Miss Good’s class. I don’t know how I did it but all I now is that it was torchure with Miss Good.

When I found out I was in Miss Good’s class I was freaking out!!! I didn’t kno what it would be like. I heard so much thinks about her like “she is the worst teacher ever!” or “She is SO Mean!!” And alot more.

Just to be nice I’m going to give you some tips on how to survive Miss Good’s class. One is do NOT I repet do NOT turn in eney thing late!! She hats that. The second one is if you arnt paying attention she will get MAD!!! And the last one is never LIE!! If you do sometimes she knows it. Thank you for reading this note.

Sincerely, (not actually going to post the name)

bwahahahahahahaha. ahem. not exactly the most reassuring note. one must consider the source i suppose, but hodie is now totally paranoid that her new teacher is a tyrant with a lie detector embedded in her head. so, that’s awesome.

can’t wait til fall!!

So,

the child has been after me to let her get a pet. i have been opposed to this because generally i am not in favor of:

cleaning up poop
small rodents in my house
creatures without advanced limbic systems in cages
pet based aromas

all of which tend to accompany the pets she is suggesting she become the owner of. i have encouraged her to make friends with the pencils who have all manner of pets furry and reptile, swimmers and scamperers alike. she views this suggestions with skepticism.

then, apparently inspired, yesterday she said the following: mom, what i really want is something other than a pet. how about instead of a HAM-ster, i get a SIS-ter!!

because a sibling really is the ultimate pet

if you are what you eat, it’s better to be a potato than spaghetti. because potatoes are still kinda cute but spaghetti is not. plus it’s totally not huggable but a potato pretty much is.

unassailable logic, that.

Current mood: amused

so hodie and i were talking about my tattoo next week

(she)”what kind? i mean besides emotional“

hahahahahahaha
she knows me so well

Current mood: amused

so hodie and i were talking about my tattoo next week

(she)”what kind? i mean besides emotional“

hahahahahahaha
she knows me so well

is being caused by my ovaries. My toublesome, pesty ovaries.

It is not being caused by the need for actual food. Because I had some. Ok, I had a lot. Since waking up this morning I have eaten the following:

2 Black Cherry and Almond Clif Bars
3 handfuls of Chocolate Covered Pistachios
2-4 handfuls of Trader Joes Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips
1 6″ Spicy Italian Sub
1 small bag Sour Cream n’ Onion Lays
3-7 Wild Fruit Savers

And the morning ain’t over yet. Jesus.

Plus also, that other hunger I am too much of a lady to mention here. The one in my pants.

Later:
Green Tea Frappucino
Nuts
Goldfish crackers

Someone may need to tackle me to stop this madness…