"I Just Kicked Cat Poo On Her Car!"

For the last three months, I have been feuding with our downstairs neighbors. I am not entirely sure if they are aware of this feud, so it may very well be non-consensual. In any case, this couple (not sure if they are married or not) moved into the building just before Mark and I got married and have been the bane of my existence ever since. The reasons I curse their very names (or at least I would if I knew their names) have been accumulating steadily over time.

It started with them never having their two boxers on a leash, and on more than one occasion they (the dogs, not the people) bounded over to me as I was innocently getting out of my car and harassed me all the way to the stairs. They then had a baby and the boxers disappeared causing me to feel a little guilty that I had ever wished them ill, but that remorse was fleeting.

An ongoing issue is the fact that neither of them even bother to park their cars in the lines of the parking spaces. Now, whoever designed our parking lot was obviously a dimwit that thought they didn't make automobiles larger than a Smartcar and subsequently painted some of the most impossibly small spaces I have ever seen. Still, the rest of the tenants in the lot manage to fit their cars within the lines, but noooooo. Not my downstairs adversaries. I can always count on their two cars taking up three spaces as I drive in and have to park three rows away from my apartment, all the while silently hoping that the ground beneath their self-appointed three parking spaces opens up and swallows their cars into the bowels of hell.

On top of all this, there have been several occasions in the last month of piles of animal crap being left right on the walkway in front of the apartment, which I suspect were a gift from my favorite boxers owned by my favorite couple. After making this unpleasant discovery not once but twice, I finally went to the landlord like a tattle-taling five-year-old and made him aware of the crappy situation (I am very punny). We promptly found notes on all of the doors that afternoon firmly forbidding non-leashed dogs and their inappropriate defecation.

This all culminated to my breaking point. Beevus and Butthead also own a cat, which they recently decided would be more of an outdoor cat than an indoor cat. We see this poor, obviously malnourished cat hanging around the complex, and it recently took a liking to laying right outside our door. Maybe it just needed the assurance that there was a better life out there and wanted simply to gaze longingly at what a loved cat's life looked like, I don't know. But one night last week, I started walking down to my car only to find a pile of cat poop sitting right at the top of the stairs.

As you can imagine, I was outraged. I marched back into the apartment to where Mark was studying Latin and said through gritted teeth, "Just. Come. Look."

I grabbed his arm and steered him to where the pile lay.

"Do you see that?" I ranted. "I can't even believe this! This has just gotten ridiculous! These white trash people have no sense at all and I hate them!"

With that, I brushed the poo off our second story balcony and watched as it landed with a thud...right on the hood of the bitch downstairs' two-space-occupying car.

Mark and I exchanged one open-mouthed, horrified glance before tiptoeing as fast as we could back into our place and carefully shutting the door quietly behind us.

"I can't believe you just did that," he said, shaking his head.

"Oh my God!" I whispered (like they could hear me from downstairs). "I just kicked cat poo on her car! It's not like I did it on purpose! Okay, maybe it wasn't quite an accident per se, but still."

For the next few minutes I was plastered to the window, waiting to see if the neighbors downstairs would realize what had happened. Sure enough, after several minutes the guy came out to examine the gift I had inadvertently left on his woman's car. I watched as he disappeared for a moment then reappeared with a plastic bag to put the poo in.

"Well, I can't go to the gym now," I informed Mark (I will use any excuse to not go to the gym. It was convenient.). "They have me pegged."

The next morning, as I was getting ready I asked Mark, "You don't think they would have keyed our cars, do you??"

This was clearly completely dramatic, and a normal person would have dismissed it as being ridiculous.

"No," was Mark's response. "I checked already."

All things considered, I definitely categorized it as a win for the good guys. We won the battle, and I fully intend on winning the war. So stay tuned.

Who Says You Can't Go Home?

This past weekend, I took a much needed hiatus from the soul-sucking world of ad sales and headed to my hometown of Canton, a glorious mix of country folk and people who want to be out of Atlanta but not be too far out there in case they change their mind. You really never know what you are going to find in Canton- in the same car trip I passed what looked to be a yard sale taking place in the middle of a closed down Save-Rite's parking lot as well as a hand-painted sign in a small shopping center reading "Elvis's Nurse's Book Signing Today!" I only caught a glimpse of a tailgate-style tent set up outside with an Elvis impersonator beneath it before rounding a curve and only being able to think, "What in the WORLD is going on with this town today?"

Mark did not join me in this particular trip, which left me the need to explain several times that things had not fallen apart already and that we, of course, have stood the test of time having been married for a solid almost three months and all. He decided to be responsible (a.k.a. lame) and work on the papers that he has to do for his equally soul-sucking world of graduate school. My dad certainly did not let this go without making a few quips about how "Mark always made the effort to come see us when he was courting you."

The great part about my parents, my sister, and me being together is that we are damn quotable people. This was demonstrated within hours of picking up my sister, Kate, from college. She was explaining how as a freshman she had just landed the understudy role of a character in an upcoming play (she's a music theater major). Referring to the director, I asked "Is it just a rumor or have you heard it straight from the horse's mouth?"

"No," she replied emphatically. "I heard it from him!"

"...He would be the horse in this situation, hon."

Usually my dad is the one that is always saying something completely off the wall:

"Do you see that squirrel there?" my dad quipped out of nowhere one afternoon as we drove through our neighborhood. "That is an evil squirrel."

"How do you know?" I asked him.

"Sometimes you can see their little eyes and teeth and sense the hostility," was his reply.

But one of the most horrifyingly fantastic quotes that has ever been uttered by one of us came from my mother on Saturday evening while catching up with Kate's former high school drama and chorus directors after the school play.

"How have you and Eric been coping with both of your daughters being out of the house now?" one of them asked her.

"Well, Eric and I have recently discovered BJs," mom said.

Now the background on this situation is that I received a call recently from my parents, who told me they were in the throws of their first visit to BJ's Discount Club. They had gotten a free three month trial offer in the mail, and were eagerly buying things in bulk and felt the need to inform me they now had enough toilet paper to last them a year.

These people from Kate's high school did not know that and after a brief pause while we let the weight of what had just been said settle n, the room erupted in laughter as my mom turned a bright shade of red.

"BJ's the store!" she said. But the damage had been done and we were all howling for the next ten minutes.

"Tell Eric I said congratulations," the drama teacher said as we were leaving, starting another round of snickering. It was a glorious moment in a glorious weekend.

Now I am back to the grind of the advertising world. Woo. Good thing I have Grover to help me with my work.

Hunt or Be Hunted

Since graduating college in December, I have not been afraid to work. At one point, I was holding down three jobs- at a Thai restaurant, a garden, and selling ads for a magazine. My resume is going to end up looking like the paper form of A.D.D.

Eventually the magazine gig panned out as a full-time job selling ads for the both magazine and its sister publication, a local newspaper. One of the projects I have somehow gotten tasked with recently is to sell ads for a Hunting and Fishing Guide. Just so that we are clear, I don't like fish and had never even touched a gun before this. Yet I set out with vigor researching taxidermists, deer meat processors, and gun shops that I could pitch the idea to.

This launched me into a whole new world filled with creepy stuffed dead animals and people who clearly were not impacted by Bambi in the least during their childhood: The World of Hunting. Have you ever noticed that there are some things in life that people just don't do half-assed? For example, people that drink Diet Coke don't just enjoy one every once in a while. Diet Coke is like cola crack- its drinkers can't ever have enough and practically don't drink anything else. I have even witnessed people get agitated when they go without it for an extended period of time.

The same goes for horseback riding. Equestrian is like the snobby hobby of the world- if you reveal that you don't know anything about it in the presence of horse people you will definitely get a look of disapproval and feel the judgment of whatever your far less superior past time is.

Hunting definitely falls into this category. In the last few weeks I have been introduced to a way of life, learning all about the lingo, different seasons and regulations, and seeing more pictures of kids with blood smeared on their faces holding the antlers of dead deer than I thought I could stomach. I have held a gun for the first time (the guy at the gun shop excitedly brought me over to a 30-lb monstrosity that he enthusiastically told me was "the kinda gun they have over in Iraq killin' all them terrorists") and have had one taxidermist tell me "I'll have to give you a call later- I am right in the middle of mounting a deer" (took all the discipline I had to not reply with "I bet you are, you dirty old man").

To top it all off, technology and taxidermy are not friends. Trying to get e-mails and ad materials from these people has been like pulling teeth. I gave up on one processing place that did not have an e-mail address or fax machine. I thought by now these were pretty standard when owning and operating a business, but nope. Not if you spend the day with flesh and dead things.

Though I am definitely ready to be out of this carcass-filled twilight zone, it has been informative and I do have respect for the people who are skilled in hunting and all associated practices. Has it made me want to camo up and shoot something? Hardly. For now, I will just stick with my Diet Coke cola crack.

Don't judge me. I control it, it doesn't control me. And I can quit any time I want. ;)

The Fried Okra Experiment

Though I am many things, I never will be Mrs. Suzie Homemaker, queen of domesticity who cooks in heels and has her initially monogrammed on all of her aprons and generally makes all women look bad. I am the girl who hasn't met an oven yet that could resist burning me, actually called the Jell-O company in the tenth grade to find out what I needed to set the stove on to boil water (not one of my finest moments) and generally is a disgrace to all women.

It doesn't help that I come from a family who would much rather go out to eat then cook a meal.We have been to pretty much every restaurant within a 35 miles radius of our house and probably know more waiters/waitresses/restaurant owners by name than it is ever okay to. They even put our picture up at one of our preferred local restaurants because we were such frequent customers. (I was in ninth grade, and my 15-year-old self like so didn't think it was cool. My 22-year-old self, on the other had, thinks it's hilarious. My how I have evolved.)

I think people have picked up on this lack of womanly skills if our wedding gifts are any indication-I got a whole bunch of cookbooks, most of which contain the word "easy" in the title. So lately I have been trying to find the dormant Paula Dean that I am sure resides somewhere deep in my soul. I have had several successful cooking ventures, which Mark either seemed to like or just said he did so that I would stop asking him "what do you think?" every 30 seconds while I watched him eat.

The other day, I decided I wanted to fry up some okra. I looked up the recipe and it seemed reasonable enough, so after getting all of the supplies at the grocery, I got to work. Turns out you about have to have six arms to fry okra- one set to bread them with, one set to put them in the fryer and one to get them into a bowl, so I enlisted Mark's help. While I oversaw the frying process, I tasked him with the breading process.

I was concentrating so hard that I didn't see exactly what happened that led to the thud I heard next. I looked over to see the full contents of a bowl of cornmeal/flour mix on the floor, with Mark standing over the white cloud of flour fog that was starting to rise as he launched into a string of obscenities. I silently handed him the broom, and he swept up the mess still cursing grumpily.

Five minutes and another thud later, Mark had somehow managed to dump a second whole bowl of cornmeal and flour onto the floor. As I looked from and irate and powder-covered Mark, to the disaster on the floor, it took all I had to not burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation. But Mark was still in that phase of not finding it amusing in the least.

"I think...we've made...enough okra," Mark aid through clenched teeth. So in a dust cloud of flour we ate our okra in silence, me trying not to laugh and Mark throwing dirty looks at the pile of breading still on the floor. Luckily I got Mark to laugh about it later, but I think that is the last time we will be making fried okra.

No babies....

...a mantra that Mark and I developed early on in our relationship when we realized neither one of us was remotely interested in procreating. At the time, I was 19 and used to say that I didn't know what person my age was chomping at the bit to pop out babies, but I have now seen enough Maury and 16 and Pregnant to know that there are some teen girls out there that need to calm the eff down.

Not having babies was something that was my plan long before Mark came along. Complete horror of the childbirthing process aside, I never really babysat when I was younger partly because I found young kids really awkward to be around. I know that you are just supposed to smile and agree with whatever silliness they say in a voice that is an octave or so above your natural speaking voice, but sometimes I just don't know how to react when a four-year-old comes over to me, pats my face, and says, "Today is your birthday and you're five!"

I've mentally kept a "pros" and "cons" list for years on the subject, with the con column being pretty extensive and the pro column limited to really substantive and deep reasons, like being curious about what a mini-me would look like. So far, con column is winning by a landslide.

The strangest thing is how many people tell me I am going to change my mind when I nform them about my childless plans. I actually have bets going on that if I have a baby by the time I am thirty, I am going to owe several people some money. No one seems to take me seriously when I say I am happy to be a DINK (double income no kids) with Mark and get to travel and have the flexibility that kids does not allow.

For now, I am totally satisfied to be the cool, fun-loving aunt who gives the best presents at Christmas and when my nieces or newphews start to cry get to just pass them along to their parents. And besides, Mark and our kitty kids (who incidently woke my up at 5:30 this morning- a whole new low. I could have killed them.) are more than enough to keep me occupied at the moment.

A Cat's the Only Cat Who Knows Where It's At

Everyone who knows me and Mark know that we are two people who love our cats, who we refer to as our "kitty kids."

Delia is a gray tabby I adopted from the humane society and a lap cat to the point where she will go completely limp if you try to transplant her off your lap. Grover is rambunctious yellow tabby who adopted us after we rescued him from a nearby road as a kitten.

They never fail to keep us entertained, and we have a special bond with them that only somewhat resembles Mark and I melding together to form a creepy old cat lady. But our cats have one fatal flaw, and that is the fact that while they are not overweight, they are still Total. Freaking. Fatties.

It is only a minor annoyance throughout the day when they start chirping (for some reason neither of them can meow, so they just suffice to making the only weak but incessant noises they can muster) and running under my feet whenever I go within ten feet of their food bowl. We try to keep them pacified by feeding them three small meals a day, but they seem to have a huge beef with an empty food bowl, so it doesn't quiet them down for long. But like I said, we manage.

However, lately they have become used to getting fed at 7:15 a.m. when Mark and I wake up for work. Problem is, there are these things called weekends where a person supposedly gets to sleep in. Or so I have heard. Because cats don't have weekends, and for the past few Saturdays and Sundays I have woken up at 7:15 to two cats pawing me in the face and chirping at me.

Every time this happens I angrily get up and pretend like I am going to feed them, then malevolently shut them in the bathroom with their empty food bowl. But by then I am awake, so I lie in bed for a few minutes thinking about how much I hate them at that moment. Then I get up and let them out because by this point they are hurling themselves at the closed bathroom door like feline battering rams.

This past Sunday, I took it a step further and launched a verbal assault on them. It went a little something like this:

Me: "FINE! I am awake now. Are you freaking happy, you bastard cats?
Cats: *Stare up at me*
Me: "If you think I am feeding you right now, you are nuts. You need some discipline to learn that this kind of behavior is just not acceptable.
Cats: *Stare up at me*
Me: "I mean, seriously, I have two days a week that I don't have to get up at the butt crack of dawn, but do you care? NO!"
Cats: *Stare up at me*
Me: "Damn you, kitties. Damn you."

I am sure I was quite the scene, whispering as angrily as I could because Mark can sleep through anything, telling off these two cats who have no idea what I am saying and wish I would just stop making these strange noises and waving my arms around and just feed them already.

Bu they are hard to stay mad at, so usually by 9:00 all is forgiven and I have decided that we can be friends again. But I sure as hell am looking forward to a day on the weekend where I actually get to sleep in. A girl can dream, right?

Riding in Cars with Boys

Mark and I recently had quite the experience. I have always thought that when people describe something by saying, "It was an experience," it was just a loaded, catch-all, cop-out word for people who didn't have a very extensive descriptive vocabulary.

But sometimes, that is simply the only way to describe something. And let me tell you, buying a new car, is an experience.

Another similar type of word is to say that something has character, which Mark's old car had to boot. A 1993 Saturn with manual windows, no air conditioning and rusted paint that Mark lovingly referred to as "two-toned," that car has been the bane of my existence for the last three years. I tried many a time to threaten him that it was me or the car and I simply wouldn't walk down the aisle knowing that particular thing would be included in the "what's yours is mine" part of the nuptials, but he knew I was bluffing and just cranked the subwoofer louder to drown me out.

But finally a few weeks ago the Saturn met its doom, needing a repair that just wasn't worth fixing. So we starting our adventures shopping around for a new car. Mark had been looking at the Nissan Xterra, so we made that our starting point. After meeting an oddly stoic young salesman named Issiah, we took a test drive in awkward silence, then heard a 30-minute spiel from his boss who stepped in when Issiah didn't know the answer to any of our questions.

The visit culminated in us saying that we would think over all of the numbers they threw our way, and we left.

The next morning (which happened to be Saturday), Mark got a call at 8 a.m. He groggily stumbled over to his cell phone, and a look of disbelief washed over his face as he told the caller, "No, I haven't really had a chance to think about it...We were just in last night..."

And that was the beginning of Issiah the Car Salesman stalking us by calling every single day without fail to ask if we had come to any decisions. On the one day that he managed to call twice AND send an e-mail to Mark (how he got the address is beyond me), I snarkily said to Mark, "Oh, Issiah! You are smothering us. You're not even giving us a chance to miss you!"

Funny enough, we ended up getting a Toyota after being completely turned off by Issiah's intensity. Even though we were completely clueless about how financing worked, we finally got to a point where it made sense and took the plunge. Turns out I had the stronger credit history even though Mark had the money, so after several lame attempts at joking how I brought the cred and Mark brought the dough, I signed on the dotted lines and we drove off the lot with a Corolla that had five miles on it.

And let me tell you, that air conditioning is a beautiful thing. Too bad it is the first of October and starting to get chilly, rendering the air conditioning unnecessary...