My Petty Life

Well, what I'd rather do is to find a place to sleep. But I have to pay bills, make phone calls, go to the bank, the post office, pick up flea medication for the dog, return some shorts for R, and pick up my new black and pink eyeglasses from the optometrist. When I get home I plan on washing a sinkload of dishes, folding a mountain of clothes, watering my thirsty garden, bathing the dog, and stirring up a mess of dinner, probably steamed cauliflower, broccoli, and carrots and wok some bits of lamb in a hastily invented sauce. I cook on the fly and ad lib like crazy. Now I can go pick lovely herbs from my new garden to toss into anything. Sometimes I just feel so French provincal. Le meu, le purr.

Okay, so you get that I'm a household activist. Whatever. Here I am, sweating being unemployable. There simply aren't enough jobs to go around. That's because the Big Important people have already filled all the slots. See, I think that this entire shipwreck we call the American System of Government is infested with petty little power Napoleons, all of them sucking off the rest of us like lice, taking their cues from the most incompetent administration the White House has ever endured.

[Crackly sound of old newsreel audio]

Well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal. --Richard M. Nixon

In other words, anyone who can throw their weight around does. Take Mr. Fancy Pants I'm So Important Inspector who graced us with his presence this morning. He was real sorry to say that R had cut a few tiny lines in the sidewalk beyond the hole with the concrete cutting machine and he wouldn't pass the job.

Last weekend we had cut the sidewalk in order to pour sand and concrete into the gaping hole we made from trying to access the sewer line lateral. The hole wouldn't have had to be a fraction of its size if when the city repaired the sidewalk over the storm drain last year if they hadn't erased the marks that showed where it was. So this Mr. F.P.I. S. Important arrived late because as an engineer, he didn't HAVE A MAP and got lost on our part of town, the poor, poor man with his six-figure income. He would never visit our "underprivileged" part of town unless it was part of his job requirement. It's only about a fucking half mile from the wanna be white house city hall where he works every day of his life behind a big important desk with his embossed business cards and his corners stuffed with rolled blueprints...

If this morning he'd have turned his important head just six inches to the left and perused the existing sidewalk, he would have seen many little cut lines around a sagging fire hydrant, countless structural cracks, and a general drunken unevenness along the entire length of the ancient concrete that's been patched and repatched since at least the late 1800s. But no, WE had a few little extra cut marks. Some people just love to throw their important little power around. Do I seem angry? Whatever gave you that idea?

ANYway, speaking of feeling utterly ineffectual, I finally got over to read some world-famous dooce. I kept putting it off because I knew I'd feel as limp as a smelly dishrag as I oogled her vast aesthetic wit and creativity. Seems she's a household word with her blog that's been entertaining literally millions since 2001, a blog that gets well over 200 c0mments on each post while the rest of us blog scum hunch over our screens, chin in hand, eyes swirling hypnotized vortices, staring at the phrase "0 comments" or "1 comments" or "2 comments" at the end of every post.

Tap*tap*tap: This thing on? The most comments I've had so far from one post was a double diget with a one in the front. Woo woo. But then I didn't graduate valedictorian in English at BYU and never dated actors and didn't marry a web geek. Plus she has that mobile upward professional attitude and sharp appearance and can afford sexy Euro shoes. Do I sound envious or what? But there's hope. I've only had E.C.B. for less than a month. And anyway, I'll bet dooce isn't adopted...see how easy it is to blame everything on that?