PMSing.

This will be half rant/half regular old sarcasm. Fair warnings are good, right?

I'm pms-ing. My belly's bloated, the tell-tale two-by-four to the back feeling is present, and the ever-clear attitude from hell is here with fury. This is good...it means that surgery is still on, and life can progress the way it's supposed to. Well...it's only good for that.

The bar was dead as hell tonight. I pulled in a whopping 575 bucks in sales for the entire night. For a Saturday night, that's not piss-poor. That flat out sucks. The reason for it was the 4 (or more like 7) inches of white shit that is currently being dumped on our fine little city right now. For those who haven't become familiar with the term "white-shit", that would be snow. Loads and loads of snow.

I know how to and actually like to drive in the snow. Most people around here...not so much. You get an inch or so and you can actually watch their knuckles turn white just thinking about climbing behind the wheel and braving the roads. And...to be fair, it's not really your own driving you have to worry about so much at 2:30 am on a blustery night, it's the drunk fuckers to the left and right, behind and in front of you that you really need to beware of.

So, on nights such as this, we don't get a whole lotta business. Thursday night was the same way. It pretty much sucked. I played strip-poker over the bar for about 3 hours with my patron (yes, that's one patron) for rainchecks that he'll never have a prayer of cashing until we actually had a second patron come in and made the party really happen. Then, the three of us sang karaoke (because, when you have 2 patrons, you SHOULD pay a DJ...I mean why wouldn't you think it's a good idea to cut your losses and send the poor guy home??!) for the remaining 5 hours of our time, whilst playing sleazy card games. I actually had a lot of fun that night.

Anyways...what else?

Jas and I are still fighting, though he did get hired at Target. He starts Tuesday. That's good news at least. I asked him how long he and I were going to keep fighting and he said "I'm not fighting." I said "Huh...well...I AM. Keep up the shitty comments and we're going to cease fighting and start boxing." I also explained how I felt about the house, and Roselly...I used I words LOL, and I got a "Well. I'll clean the WHOLE fuckin' house from top to bottom. Don't you worry about that!"

Just FYI...house is trashed. Though, to be fair, he did do the dishes this morning, which I'm grateful for.

Went down to see the birds today. I walked in to find three baby African Grey's sitting on their perches in a row, with one bright green anomoly sitting in the middle flipping his head upside down, cuddling, preening and playing with all three of them. That'd be Mr. Marshall. Little shit. He was all about those babies! They were so damn cute. The babies still have fuzz just above their beaks. They're ten weeks old, and you can manhandle them and hug em and kiss em'...I better quit. I'm so not getting an African Grey. They talk too damn much.

Rio lunged at my face today. He has figured out our new contraption to keep him in his cage. It's one of those twisty-loopy-screw deals where it's like an oval with a screw in the middle to fasten the cage all the way shut. We used a damn wrench to pull it tight so he'd quit escaping. Well, he did this, got down, and crawled up the kitten cage to irritate and scare the crap out of them. So, I walked over to him and said "You get off the kitten cage! Step up!" He responded by dropping his head and charging at me. I got on eye level with him and told him again to step up. He shook his head. I said "I'm going to get the glove." He HATES the glove. It's his scary motivator. If the glove comes out, he's all about finding someone to rescue him from it. I went to go get the glove and thought he'd come running...uh huh. That happened alright. He came running to beak my eye out. So...after a stern talking to, finally, FINALLY, he stepped up. I put him straight away in his cage, and after a 10 minute time out, he was very apologetic and needed several redemption hugs.

Little bastard.

If you want to see what Marshall looks like, go to Yahoo and type in Male Eclectus Parrot and look up images. That's exactly what my boy looks like. Females are red, males are green. He's green.

Did I tell you that pretty much everything I own nowadays is green so that they'll think that I too am a bird? LOL

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So...

The last two weeks have been THE most fucked up two weeks, I think, of my whole life. But, you know what? It's ok. I'm ok. The kids are ok. In the overall scheme of things...it's all gonna be ok.

Uncle Russ died last Sunday. On Sunday of this week, my Uncle Earl died. So, a quick tally will tell you that I attended two funerals in two weeks. That's always a pleasure.

We fired Dave, the asshole bartender. We also fired Brandon, the not-so-asshole-fill-in-bartender. Because I seem to be the only person with enough...oh what's the word? Gumption? Integrity? Fuck. Honesty? to say something to the owner when I see something is wrong, I had to be the one to be present for the firings. Dave was drinking behind the bar, overcharging customers to pad his tip jar and was a general asshole to the customers, and Brandon liked his friends so much that he didn't think they had to pay for alcohol. To the tune of about 600 bucks worth.

Long story short on that is that where they aren't working, I am. So, my hours dramatically increased last week. Which is cool...holidays are sneaking up on me like a bad virus and I like money.

I'd like to tell you that Jas and I have been fighting like cats and dogs. But, to be fair...I've seen cats and dogs get along better than we're getting along right now. Matter of fact, my cats used to cuddle up and sleep with my dog, and for Jas and I...there will be none of that in the near future.

Here's the things I'm freakin' irked about: I work a lot of wierd hours, all of the time, every day. I don't WANT to clean the house or do laundry on the time I should be sleeping or hanging out with my kids or my birds. Right?

Yeah. Jas is laid off. Again. So, he's home, with plenty-o-time on his hands. Do you think I can get some help around here? Hell-effin-no. I spent 8 (yes, that's EIGHT) hours at the laundry mat today. That's how much laundry has piled up around here. There was laundry coming out of every crevice of this house, it felt like. So, I took it all to the laundry mat and did it all.

I had to hire a kid to come help me with some odd chores. I shouldn't HAVE to hire ANYONE to do shit, when I have a perfectly good husband sitting here on his laurels watching re-runs of Charmed and Judging Amy on a schedule every God-forsaken day. Yet, there goes bird money, right out the door so that I can come home to a house where I don't feel postal.

Tonight, I come in and what does my eye behold? Beer bottles. And plenty of them all over the place. NOT COOL. So, again, lemme tally this up for you: Shannon works 12 hours today at a paying job after spending 100 bucks at the laundry mat for 8 hours worth of hard labor, and I come home to my house trashed with beer bottles? That's asking to be woken up with loud screeching, high pitched bitching from your wife.

But, I'm not going to do that. Nope. Instead, I'm going to sit here, write to you fine folks, and go to my happy place.

Where is that happy place? Oh yes. The birds. GUESS WHAT?! Marshall is mine all mine. I'm bringing him home first. He'll be home by Christmas. The chick who was buying him decided she couldn't afford to finish paying for him, and the second Kelly called me to tell me, I rushed down, and transferred all but 100 bucks of the money I've paid on Rio to a contract of purchase for him. So, now, I physically have money down on both birds. They are both mine. Well...technically, Marshall is the boys bird, but...you know how it goes. That little bastard is so freakin' adorable. And the boys are SO excited about getting him!

So...that's the gist of this week. There's more of course, but that's all I'll bore you with tonight!

Have a good night all!

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