5.22.04: Squeezing Out the Wormwood ‹ Blog

DO I DETECT A NOTE OF UNSEASONAL GRUMPINESS? said Death. NO SUGAR PIGGYWIGGY FOR YOU, ALBERT.
Death, Hogfather (Terry Pratchett)

Squeezing Out the Wormwood

5.22.04

I realize that this journal seems to have devolved into a rant-log where I bitch about my life and everything in it. I’m not a cranky person by nature, really I’m not; circumstances of late have conspired to make me temporarily insane, hence the constant griping. I promise to write nice, sunny entries from now on. I’ll be like the Paula Abdul of the journal world. But would you please permit me just one more bitchy entry? Because I’m having a very bad day, and here’s why:

1. I’m sick.
NEVER EVER EVER let me eat tacos from Taco Bell anymore—at least, not for awhile. The past two times I’ve eaten there, I’ve ended up sick afterwards. I’m not sure if I’ve still got that lingering summer flu I had a week or so back, or if the food is rotten or what, but something about the weather/the tacos/the world situation is not settling well with me.

2. I nearly burned the building down.
Not intentionally, mind you. See, I have this candle, this thick ol’ vanilla-scented pillar candle that likes to leak wax all over everything. I’ve had it in a saucer for awhile, and that’s contained the drips, but often while it’s burning I’ll hear a sudden splutter-drip-drip and look over to see a waterfall of wax cascading gracefully down into the dish. It’s like the candle’s having an orgasm or something. (Well, it is like that. Stop blushing.)

I’ve learned to keep an eye on this hard-to-handle candle, but today I was engrossed in some computer work and I had my back to it while it was burning. In my defense, I’d checked on it about fifteen minutes before the incident, and the hot-wax level was pretty low, so I figured I had a good half an hour or so before I had to check on it again. Stupid, stupid me. I’m sitting in front of the computer trying to work, and these itty-bitty black specks keep floating across my field of vision, between me and the monitor. They’re not bugs, they’re more like… cloth, like little teeny threads of black cloth floating aimlessly through the air. I’ll just ignore them. Okay, they’re annoying me now. Go away, speck thingies! Go away!

They become so annoying that I give up and rise from the computer, planning to make myself a snack, and here I go walking into the kitchen past the coffee table and the shelves and the CD player and the candle that is dripping a monstrous pile of wax onto the CD player shelf, the shelf covered with my favorite black shawl and OH MY GOD THERE IS WAX ALL OVER EVERYTHING. It’s like a bad porn movie, all this creamy white stuff congealing all over every surface within three feet of the candle. And in the center of it all is the Candle From Hell, flaming like an offended geek during an Apple vs. Windows debate.

I won’t get into the gory details of the clean-up. Let’s just say that the wax is off the surfaces (counter, shelves, shawl) and all over me (hair, clothes, under fingernails). And the little black specks of cloth floating around the computer? Those were microscopic bits burned off of my favorite shawl by the heat. That candle is never being lit again, nummy vanilla scent or no.

3. I just discovered a huge rip in the back of my nice denim skirt.
Aw, MAN. I wore this out in public a few weeks ago! Jeez. Oh well, at least I was wearing clean underwear that day.

4. There is a kid on a scooter who keeps going BACK and FORTH and BACK and FORTH outside my window, the wheels going cla-CLUNK-cla-CLUNK-cla-CLUNK on the cracks in the sidewalk, and you know what, kid? I’m at the perfect level to poke a broomstick through my window and send you flying off that damn noise-maker. And then I will come drip wax all over you and the wreck of your scooter, you squalling little brat.
I’m not being as harsh as you think I am. This kid also likes to swear loudly, scream at the top of his lungs late at night and bounce basketballs off my bedroom window. And I think he was one of the kids who stole all the carefully-hidden plastic Easter eggs before the annual apartment complex egg hunt, so that all the little kids had nothing to find. Now THAT is harsh.

5. Mozilla Firebird is being a bitch.
First it wouldn’t show PHP pages offline, so I fixed that. Now it won’t show my site at all. The title loads in the title bar and on the tab, and then the little Reload arrows just keep spinning and spinning and spinning… What’s up with that?