Christmas In July

Well, whaddya know? It's Christmas in July here at the Ottinger abode, because the seawall company actually did make it here on Friday to finish the job! Ho ho ho!

It feels hot right now, but be aware that Hell may actually be freezing over. For anyone who's headed there in the next little while...you're welcome. Grab a popsicle at the door.

Actually, it wasn't an entire work crew, but just Stoner Surfer Dude and one of his hired helpers. He was wary of me after a rather heated phone call we had during the winter and then ghosting us for months (again, part of The Rest Of The Story, which will probably/maybe eventually get told). I had to leave for work before they finished up, but Matt texted me at one point to say he'd had a pretty pleasant conversation with S. S. D., during which he told Matt "I thought when I got here your wife was going to be mean to me, but she wasn't, she was real nice."

Hey, what can I say? I may talk like a sailor, but I still believe in kindness and diplomacy. Like the saying goes, you catch more flies with honey. 

But do you really? Hmmm... In my experience, I've seen far more fly-covered turds than fly-covered honey puddles. But maybe I just walk in the wrong places. 💁

Anyway, here are a few before and after pictures of the yard. And now the REAL job for us begins, as we attempt to keep grass seed moist enough to sprout in July. It only took me five hours of moving sprinklers today. And a portion of the yard will become a larger version of the native garden I attempted last year before we realized that, yes, we really really did need to replace the stupid wall, and it all got torn up.

Merry Christmas and Happy Independence Day, everyone!

Wall They or Won't They aka Smoke Gets In Your...

The seawall people are coming today!

Or so we're told.

Actually, we've been told that a LOT in the past few months. But now the truck is supposedly on the road and headed toward us!

The seawall was actually replaced late last year, and THAT is a post (or two or three) of its own. At some point. When I can relate it without experiencing PTSD symptoms and jacking my blood pressure so high that my head pops off and flies around the room going "pffffttt" like a balloon that somebody blew up and released. Because a wildly zooming, farting head is the last thing we need in a year when human rights are disappearing, the former president is being exposed as a treasonous fuck who threw hamberders at the wall and attacked his security detail, and the planet is about to ignite and take the whole sorry lot of us down with full support of the SCOTUS. Oh, and that pesky COVID thing is still hanging around like the drunk uncle who just won't leave when the party's over.

This is the backfill and yard restoration that was supposed to happen, according to our contract, thus worded: 

As soon as weather breaks / ground thaws we will quickly get back to you to make everything look great over there.

I know this is Michigan, and our weather is unpredictable, but the ground has been thawed for some time now. And our contact person there, whom I shall refer to as Stoner Surfer Dude or SSD for now until I decide it's time to blast his name around, has been giving us deadlines and then ghosting us since late April. And that has ONLY been when I have badgered him for information first. If I hadn't initiated contact, I doubt we'd have heard a word from him. More on that particular trait of his in my follow up story that may or may not happen depending on how much my blood pressure can endure.

SSD is piss-poor at communicating and customer service doesn't exist in his world. But, by golly, is he an expert at blowing smoke! I've had so much smoke blown up my ass in the past three months that you could put me on a stage and squeeze me around the middle and I could provide the fog effect for a fairly lengthy rock concert. Hell, feed me some beans first and light a match and I'll provide the pyrotechnics as well.

So the truck should be here soon. Unless the driver sees something shiny along the way. He had better not, because I'm about at smoke capacity.

For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge

 

Let’s jump right in and talk about the word “fuck”.

It’s a polarizing word, isn’t it? There’s no real middle ground with fuck, it’s either a word that rolls off your tongue naturally…or it makes you cringe like crazy.

I’m in the first camp. Those who know me are saying “DUH!”. Or, more likely, “fucking DUH!”.

My first encounter with fuck came when I was five, not even in kindergarten yet, and some older kids were writing dirty words on the sidewalk with chalk. I remember like it was yesterday…grabbing that piece of oversized purple chalk and copying what an older boy had written in front of my house. I had no idea what it meant, but I was certain my mother was going to be very proud that I wrote my first word, so I ran in and dragged her out to witness the miracle. And I suddenly found myself getting yanked back inside by the elbow, going “What the…?” But since I didn’t yet have the vocabulary to complete the exclamation, it just sort of hung there.

And then my mother shoved a bar of soap in my mouth.

I was five. I hadn't been taught to read or write yet. I had no idea what was happening.

But I knew that whatever that thing was that I had created, it had POWER. And I needed to know more.

I also have wondered my whole life why I got my mouth washed out with soap when I didn’t SAY anything. My mouth was not involved at all, until it suddenly had a bar of Ivory in it. I guess shoving a bar of soap into my hand wouldn’t have had the same effect.

But that is how my long love affair with the word fuck began.

I grew up in a family of cussers. We all spoke fluent Construction Worker, even though nobody was one. Even the bird swore in my family (THAT will be a whole other post). My husband, however, did not grow up in such an environment. He grew up in a southern Baptist family in east Tennessee. Most of his family wouldn’t say shit if they had a mouthful. And fuck is completely off the table. At the top of the no-no ladder is taking the Lord’s name in vain, and fuck is the rung immediately below it. I learned that the very first time I went down to meet the in-laws.

Matt’s family loves to play Dominos. And one time during that visit we had a game going and I made a bad move. And everyone suddenly went silent. And they were all looking at me like my hair was on fire. And I thought “oh fuck”, and I started rewinding the tape in my head to figure out what I might have said, because sometimes I don’t even realize I’ve uttered a BAD until it’s out there.

I apologized profusely. And really tried to watch my tongue for the remainder of the visit, but I did have the occasional slip-up. So on our second trip down there, when we pulled up, my husband shut the car off, turned to me and we had the following exchange:

MATT: What’s the first rule of Nana’s house?

CLAUDIA: Don’t say fuck.

M: What’s the second rule of Nana’s house?

C: Don’t say fuck.

M: And if you accidentally spill your coffee?

C: Don’t say fuck.

M: And if you smack your shin on the coffee table?

C: Don’t say fuck.

M: And if you lose at Dominos?

C: Don’t say shit. Or fuck.

M: And if you do slip and say fuck, what doesn’t follow it?

C: Ummm…You. Me. Him, her, us, them. It. This. That. A duck. Balls.

M: Excellent. And in what context do we say ‘God’?

C: Um, in church or praying?

M: Good. And God’s last name is not…?

C: Huh? (Pausing to think) Oh, Dammit. His last name isn’t Dammit.

M: Good. How about ‘Jesus Christ’?

C: Also in church. Or praying.

M: Good. And Jesus Christ’s middle name is not…?

C: (Pausing to think again) H? Horatio?

C: (Sigh) Fucking.

M: Excellent! Let’s go see Nana.

So what do YOU think happened the next time I barked my shin on the coffee table?

Crap·o·la /kraˈpōlə/: Introductory Dump

So why a blog, and why now? I mean, I've made it through more than sixty years of life without subjecting other people to my inner workings...in written form anyway. I've spewed a lot of nonsense verbally over the years. But I've always wanted to write something, I just never really had a concrete idea of what that was. 

Fiction? I kind of suck at character development and actually coming up with plots. I have a drawer full of Great American Novel ideas that I wrote maybe a chapter of before deciding they would never see the light of day. 

Non-fiction? I have no expertise in anything that hasn't already been written about exhaustively, so a how-to or self-help book is off the table. 

So maybe short-form blurbs are where it's at for me. It certainly tracks with my attention span. 😛

I did come up with a lot of material when I decided to try stand-up comedy. But since at my age I'm not attempting to start a comedy career, and I'm NOT going on the road to claw my way up from nothing, that stuff is just sitting around waiting to be deployed in some fashion. Some of it may see the light of day in open mics now and then, but a lot of it can be read just as easily. And it may be better, because I can take all the time I need to make the story come to life.  And you can read it at your leisure.

Most of what you'll find here will be personal musings and anecdotes from my life. Some may be straight-up truth, and some embellished upon somewhat to make a better story. Fact or crap? That's for you to decide. Also, my memory has always been notoriously unreliable, and is not improving with age, so that will almost certainly color the outcome too. 

There may be a serious post once in awhile. I am not immune to the cubic fuck-ton of bullshit the world is shoveling our way from every angle, and, although finding the funny is what I try to do, sometimes I just can't. So the occasional opinion piece or rant will show up. Maybe sooner rather than later, because I do have a few things to get off my chest right now, and I need somewhere to unload. And since this is my fucking playground...well, you have been warned. You may have to step around a steaming pile of cat doo in my sandbox of fun every now and then.

As for the title of this blog...I tried to come up with something clever and catchy, and alliteration is always good. "Claudia's"...something. I tried several possibilities, and most were already taken (and sitting there unused for the most part. C'mon people, if you're not going to actually use the blog title or domain name, set it free!). "Claudia's Corner". Taken. "Claudia's Cafe". Taken. "Claudia's Closet". Taken. "Claudia's Communique". Not taken, but little too self-important with a sprinkling of Unabomber tossed in. I finally threw up my hands in frustration and cried out "Crapola!". And, voila, a blog title was born. After looking up the dictionary definition, it was a done deal. Because there will be a LOT of rubbish and nonsense in here. 

And, yeah, there will be cussin'. Anyone who knows me knows that is a given. If you're not a person who enjoys a good "fuck" once in a while (I'm talking about the the word, not the act), this may not be the happiest place on earth for you. 

But, hey, if you can deal with that...hang around. You may get a kick out of it. I hope you need to wipe your screen off or even change your underwear once in awhile. If I can do nothing more than make you laugh 'til you snork or pee, at least I've made my little mark on this world.

Also, is it just me, or does the word "blog" sound like something you'd do after a hard night of drinking?

Cheers!