Passive Aggression and Poison Ivy: A Dangerous Cocktail

A lot of things have been bothering me lately.  Like, more than usual, and I think this is precipitated by a combination of stress over still not being able to sell our house, the fact that I’m fairly certain everyone in our neighborhood hates us, and an increasing sensitivity to all things stupid surrounding me on a daily basis.  Without dragging out this introduction that most people skip anyway, I present more stuff that bugs me.

1.  The fact that Trisha Yearwood has her own cooking show.  I find this irritating because Trisha already has a lucrative career called “being married to Garth Brooks.”  I would like to strongly urge Mrs. Yearwood to let the folks who aren’t already rich have a crack at one of those coveted time slots.  I would also like for her to stop making Southern cuisine because, well, that’s MY specialty.  It was hard enough trying to come up with my sales pitch should I run into a random Food Network exec you know, on accident, while standing outside his or her house with my night vision goggles previously used to spy on Betty White, but NOW I have to come up with yet another way to spin our tasty edibles and stupid Bobby Deen has already taken the “healthy approach to Southern food” and his brother, Jamie, has taken on Southern food AND MY NAME!  Now I have stupid Yearwood food to overcome AND all this other crap (and by “other crap”, I mean Paula Deen.  She’s gonna make it awfully hard, I can feel it) before I get my own show.  I hope you’re “in love with the boy” Trisha Yearwood, because this girl’s gonna take you down.  Figuratively, of course.  I’m sure even the thunder can’t roll with the security equipment in that place. 

2.  Also annoying: eternal optimism.  This really stems from the “not being able to sell our house” portion of the introduction you probably didn’t read.  The whole attitude of, “Don’t worry, you’re totally going to sell it” is complete horseshit because it’s been well over two years and we haven’t had a single offer.  And while I get that people are more than likely only doing this out of compassion, it’s annoying because it’s not true.  We will probably die in that place with a huge collection of letters amassed from the fact that our HOA hates us, our attempts at parking, our movie making, and our general overall existence in their stupid community.  I’m a true believer in the “our world generally sucks” with brief instances of “it doesn’t suck as much today.”  Eternal optimism just makes me want to point out things that are wrong with the world and complain about them bitterly as the optimist in front of me stops asking why the glass is half empty and orders a double shot of Jack in what is now a quite tasty full glass that will soon have them hating the world AND simultaneously not caring.   

3.  Our HOA and passive aggressive letters.  I’ve seen a lot of stupid stuff go down at the pool, including a drunk lady serenading us with “House of the Rising Sun,” footballs hitting not-so-happy float dwellers, and one guy who decided it was completely appropriate to talk about how difficult it is to get AND maintain an erection while under the influence of a $700 meth binge (true, however unfortunate, story.)  However, we received a notice the other day that stated something to the effect of “one of your neighbors told on you for being at the pool too late and we don’t like that.”  And apparently they’re not too happy when one has to climb the fence to the pool after hours.  Yes, we got turned in for climbing the fence by the pool.  The fence-climbing, by the way, happened from INSIDE THE POOL as they lock you in the pool fence after the pool closes, leaving you two options:  1. Sit there and drink the rest of your beer in the hot tub until the gate is unlocked in the morning or 2. Sit there, drink the rest of your beer, and climb the fence to go sleep it off in the comfort of your own bed.   It’s like a really low-budget version of “Bait Car” because now they’ve caught you breaking the law and they’re going to keep you there until they hand down punishment, which in this case, involved a stupid letter with the closing sentiment of, “We’re sure this is just an oversight.”  Yeah.  Because the fence accidentally got climbed, stupid neighbors.  Go ahead – leave your dog shit in the yard again.  Because I’m not going to report you, but I might leave it on your front step.  Petty letters get thrown away, but so do dress shoes with dog poo in the treads.  Ass hat.

4.  Poison Ivy: 1 - Jamie: 0.  I contracted a case of this evil plant rash last week while on a canoe trip down the Duck River.  We've taken this trip for several years in a row now, but this year we came home with some odd tan lines, several bruises, AND a case of poison ivy that would drive Van Gogh to cut off his other ear.  Thinking it was a bug bite, I foolishly scratched and scratched until I realized that it was the curse of the ivy and I'd only spread it all over my body with my incessant scratching.  This cued several trips to the store for calamine lotion and the look of "I'm here for poison ivy and not jock itch" to my fellow shoppers in Walgreens.  Finding the stupid rash on my foot this morning then sparked panic at the thought of not being able to wear my collection of awesome shoes and so to the Minute Clinic I drove.  Going to the doctor is an annoyance that I'll save for another (much, much longer) blog as I HATE doctors, but the idea of a dusty shoe collection had me panicked enough to see a medical professional.  I got prescribed prednisone for the dreaded awfulness that is native to Tennessee's flora and I've now been informed that this medicine makes you crazy, unable to sleep, and incredibly hungry.  So now I'm itchy.  I'm bitchy.  And I'm going to get fat.  F'ing awesome, Mr. Ivy.  Thanks for that.
Really.