Friday, February 26, 2010

There Is A Price To Pay When You Borrow My Vehicle

Once upon a time, Mr.Misha went up to Sacramento to see his mom.  Since his car was in desperate need of tires, he took the Mishamobile.  With his iPod hooked up in the car, a bottle of fizzy water and a pack of smokes...he took off for Sacto.

At one point, he encountered heavy traffic.  So, he rolled the windows down, opened up the sunroof and turned his music up.  As he cruised along Hwy 80 at 5mph, he noticed a couple of hot, young chicks checking him out.  He didn't think anything of it and kept driving.  A few moments later, the girls were even closer to him and they were waving and smiling at him.  He looked around to see who they were waving at and was very surprised that it was him.

They played cat and mouse in the bumper to bumper traffic. The girls would fall behind for a while and then would catch up.  Each time, the girls were waving and giving him the thumbs up.  Each time they passed, it puffed Mr. Misha's ego up a little more. 

Then the traffic started to break up and everyone was able to accelerate to the speed limit.  Mr. Misha could see the girls coming up from behind him.  As they flew by, they waved and smile at him one last time.  That was when he saw it.

The girls had one of the same bumper stickers that I do! It's pink and it has one simple statement:

I SUPPORT PERINEUMS

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Yo, Yo, Yo! Forget The Four Horsemen. Yeah, Boyz!

Of all of us in my little family, Mr. Misha, Mimi the cocker spaniel, Harley the girl pug and me, I am the tolerant one.  Mimi doesn't like anyone or anything in HER backyard and she has no problem telling everyone about it with her little bark.  Harley, while she may snore, snort, burp and snarfle loudly, is quite disturbed and offended by the farts, burps or stomach growlings of others.

Mr. Misha, although he is getting better, has little patience or tolerance for anything. He yells at the remote control and throws it went it doesn't work.  He gets road rage, yelling and cussing when some injustice is done while on the road.  When clients started calling with Vista related computer problems, I thought he was going to have a stroke or punch Bill Gates in the nards. His bellows are quite scary to someone who doesn't know him. I know that he is really a big softy, but the dogs still run and hide between my feet when their daddy starts yelling.

I am the one who is afraid to flip someone off on the freeway, because they might chase me down and shoot me or beat me up (that actually happened to me, but that is another story for another time).  I am the one that talks about Karma. I remind him that you get back what you give, so it is better to put the good shit out in order to get the great shit back.  My ever-growing faith in the theory of "What comes around goes around" is what probably keeps me from committing an act of violence a few times a week. I am the one that usually lets stuff roll off my back. I am the patient one in the family.

Usually.

Saturday was a different story.

Saturday, Mr. Misha was the voice of reason.

At least for a little while.

On the other side of our little driveway in front of our home, separated by a honeysuckle-covered fence, is a private school. When we first moved here, I went to the school's website to check out the curriculum. It's a pretty serious school, I mean, they teach the kids LATIN. So these kids are there to learn and are generally a very well behaved bunch. They always holler, "Thank you!" when I toss the occasional stray ball back over the fence.

Every once in a while they do get a little rowdy during their recess, but I figure that if I was ten years old and just spent an hour conjugating Latin verbs, I would need to run around the black top screaming like a banshee. So I don't get to bent out of shape when one of the little conjugators wakes me from my daytime slumber during the week.

On weeknights and weekends, the school allows an Evangelical Church to use the school for services, events, and fundraisers.  These folks are loud. They have loud cars, loud kids, they are all loud talkers. When I take the pooches for walks in the evening, I hear all the gossip about the congregation.  I am pretty sure that my miserable, crabby, old neighbor, Charlotte, has called the cops on them for their loud talking late at night.

Saturday, at the stroke of noon, I heard a roar of applause and a man offering thanks to their creator for supplying the absolutely lovely day.  After the prayer, I heard the familiar clicking of drumsticks and a hearty "One, two, three, four". The music started, incredibly loud, off-key, rhythm deficient, Christian soft rock.  I took a deep breath. In fact, I took several deep breaths.

Then Mr. Misha came out of his man cave. He said he was going out to pick up some lunch and asked me what I wanted. I told him and he asked if there was anything else I wanted. My reply, "Yeah, if you get close enough to the fence, could you pull the plug on the sound system? I don't think I can take this Jesus music all afternoon."

He grinned and threw my words right back at me, "I don't know baby, don't you think it would be bad karma?"  I groaned and nodded. While he was gone, I told myself that it wasn't that bad.  I reminded myself that these people were expressing their joy and faith through song and to get pissed off and bitchy would only have negative effects on me and it sure as hell would not help the band play any better. So, I turned up the volume and went back to watching TV.

The music continued through lunch, adding a screechy girl and changing from Christian soft rock to twangy, Christian cow pie music. I was in hell. I thought the for sure Mr. Misha would crack, but he didn't. Then after a short break, a new group of "musicians" started up.  I was hoping that eventually I would hear some soulful, Gospel music.  No such luck. While Mr. Misha was cleaning out the carport, the most horrible sound blared across our front yard.

As I folded laundry, I waited to see how long it would take for my husband to lose it.  I was amazed how long he held out.  It took a few songs of records scratching and white kids yelling, rather than actual rapping, for him to reach his breaking point.  After four hours, Rap is what finally did him in.

If anyone ever needed to know what sound would signal the start of the apocalypse, it's Christian Gangsta Rap.

Heaven help us all.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

That Is No Excuse

A while back, I was a substitute Maternal Newborn Nursing Instructor for a local college. I really enjoyed it and I am thinking about going back to school to  get my Masters so I can do it FOR REALS.  Here is one of my favorite stories from that time in my life.

It was the night before our ASS CRACK OF DAWN clinical rounds at the hospital. I had just sat down to dinner with Mr. Misha and my phone rang.  I picked it up and this is the conversation I had:

Me: Hello?

Student: Hi Misha? It's ______.

Me: Hi. What's up?

Student: Well, I am calling to ask you if I can be excused from clinical tomorrow.

Me: Oh.

Student: I was hiking in the park with my mom on Saturday and I went into cardiac arrest.

Me: What?!

Student: My mom called 911 and did CPR. You know she is a nurse?

Me: I know your mom.

Student: Well, they had to do surgery and insert an automatic defibrillator in me on Saturday and I am not supposed to lift anything over 5 pounds this week and since the babies weigh more than that, I was wondering if it would be okay if I stayed home?

Me: No. I am sorry I would only excuse your absence from clinical if you had not survived the code (cardiac arrest). But since you did, I am afraid you need to come to clinical in the morning.

Student: What?

Me: You have  a perfect score in class. You could miss the rest of the quarter and I would still pass you. Take the day off, okay?

Student: Are you sure? I mean, I could come, but I wouldn't be able to hold the babies.

Me: Please, take the day off.

Student: Okay, thanks Misha!

Me: You are welcome. I'll see you next week.

Student: Bye.

Me: Bye.

Kids these days, I swear. 

What is the world coming to?