Life and other disasters
This week has been blessedly short. There's something about a Monday off which always seems to make the week go by faster, no matter what it brings otherwise. On life's agenda for this week: customers who can't pay their bills, teenagers who party all too frequently for my old-lady tastes, my father's inability to deal with artistic nudity (which leads me to wonder how he would feel about my art, were to ever show him a meaningful example of it), another bout of insomnia, and nightmares about Sarah Palin.
The first thing is far too common to really go into, but I will make a note that I find it humorous, annoying, and generally unsettling the amount of people who seemingly cannot process the concept of "we cannot sell you further products until you pay for that which you've already 'bought.'"
Despite my fetus-status (in-joke nickname from a group I belong to, for those who just friended me), I often find myself reminded of just how much an "old lady" I am in thought; nothing does this more than the (mis)adventures of the Kid. (As a short recap for the new people on my f-list(s), I currently rent living space from my second-cousin, J, who is my mother's age. J has two children of her own, L (a college student only three years my younger), and the Kid, who is a fifteen-year-old pest hell-bent on driving us all bonkers. )
He's taken to hosting "raves" in the backyard, every few weeks. At first, my issues with this hinged primarily around the fact that they were happening on week-nights and running until two or three in the morning. But, with school begun and my firm disapproval of such nonsense voiced to J, they've become a week-end only event. As I have a huge bottle of ibuprophen ready for bass-induced migraines, J has begun staying home to supervise said parties, and mass living-room-based sleepovers are no longer in the game plan (though he is allowed to have them in his room, which I have no objection to), we thought that everything was copacetic. The last couple of parties went by without a hitch, and everyone was happy.
However, we've run into a new issue: Kid wants to hold this week's rave inside the house.
At this point, I'm a little torn. On one hand, I believe that my views on this may be bordering on unreasonable. After all, people have parties--this is apparently "normal." On the other hand, there are reasons why I do not go to parties such as the type the kid holds, the least of my reasoning for this being that his type of music makes me physically ill. I wish I were kidding on that point, but I'm not.
No matter what the cause, I cannot seem to negotiate with the fact that this makes me distinctly uncomfortable. I don't particularly care to have twenty-to-thirty teenagers and young adults (the age range tends to vary between 14-25, and the grumpy part of my brain wonders why the hell people my age are at a party being thrown by a child) dancing, whooping and hollering directly outside my bedroom door, nor do I care to have to wade through them any time I want to leave my room. Or to be essentially prohibited from getting any sleep on Friday night, before three in the morning, even though I don't have anything pressing to do Saturday morning.
The only alternative to this, as the party has already been agreed to by J, is for me to run away to my parent's house (a two hour drive in both directions), or to rent a hotel/motel room for the night. The former is likely, even though I hate the drive and dislike the idea of leaving my bedroom unguarded in a house full of strangers. The locks in our house don't actually work, you see, and I have several items of considerable expense which aren't exactly portable.
I wonder if a bike chain and padlock might work, if rigged correctly...
Speaking of the parental units, they came to town on Monday. It was a random visit, but one surprisingly unmarked by fighting or uncomfortable silences. We went to Golden Corral, where the bread rolls were awesome, and then to the Fine Arts museum. The last turned out to be an amusing mistake, at least for my mother and I. While the art was gorgeous, as usual, (there was an exhibit of African and South American statuary in) we learned that my father is stuck in juvenile land where nudity is concerned. He spent much of our time there pointing out penises and "boobies" wherever possible, with much finger pointing and barely contained giggles. Yes, my six-foot-two, balding, construction worker father giggles.
I'm pretty sure he came close to being thrown out several times, as well. He kept wanting to touch everything--from paintings, to the marble statues, to the small collection of experimental sculpture. Not that I blame him--I'd love to be able to run my hands over a real greek statue, just to really get a good sense of the texture. Still, you just don't do that in a museum, a fact he can't quite seem to grasp.
In the end it was a pleasant few hours, and then they left and I spent the rest of the day hermiting as always. Good times, good times. In fact, I got so much sleep on Monday night that it almost makes up for the two days of insomnia that followed. What I didn't expect, though, was to dream about Sarah Palin.
Really, brain? Sometimes I think you hate me. Involved in the dream, what I can remember of it, was a margarita machine my company was installing in her house (which actually is what our company does, just not in Alaska), my delivering her cake and ice cream, and her being a generally nice, wholesome person, wherein "wholesome" is not a veiled insult for "fundy." The entire time, the back of my mind was screaming that it was a trap.
Which it probably was, but I thankfully woke up before she either turned me into stone or shoved me into an oven.
Originally posted at The Mouse Hole.