Can Anyone Else Feel A Breeze?

Oklahoma weather is insane. I thought the weather in New Orleans was unpredictable. Jeez! Thursday evening the wind began to pick up. It seemed to come out of nowhere.


My baby girl had a Girl Scout egg hunt. The boy was able to participate since he’s been dubbed an official Girl Scout Brother and has been unofficially adopted by the girls…except my daughter; she wishes they’d all take him home so she can be a “lonely” child (I think she means “only”).

During the egg hunt, the wind blew up the dust and made the leaves on the ground whip up into spirals. The air was heavy with the smell of smoke from the grass fires that raged in the distance and a milky haze filled the sky causing the mountains to resemble ghosts. It resembled early morning fog. The evening sun struggled to shine through. None of this stopped the children from their hunting game. They ran carelessly around the fields finding their brightly colored eggs filled with sweets and trinkets, oblivious to any danger.

Later that night, the winds blew violently with gusts up to 50 miles per hour. Many times during the night, I awoke to the howling of the winds whipping through the trees as branches were snapped and thrown against the house. My daughter ended up coming to the door to ask to sleep in my bed. The commotion outside had woken her up as well and probably scared the shit out of her.

The next day as I was running errands, I noticed trees ripped from the ground by the roots and fences toppled over. Branches were everywhere. Many homes were missing shingles but the wind was relentless. It was still bludgeoning the landscape with fury.

After school, I dropped my son off at a friend’s home for a sleepover (is that what you call what boys do??). My daughter and I headed to Wal-Mart in search of a futon to put into Buddy’s old room. The wind was still blowing around something terrible and when my daughter went to get out of the truck the wind snatched that door and nearly flung her onto the pavement. Luckily, there was no vehicle parked next to us or our door would have crashed into it causing some awful damage.

As we exited the truck, my daughter called over to me that she couldn’t close the door. When I came around the truck to the passenger side, I had to jerk the door nearly as hard as I could to get it to become unstuck. I assumed the door had been whipped open further than it was supposed to and had just needed to be yanked back into place. We went ahead into Wal-Mart and I didn’t think another thing about it.

When we returned to the truck, girl child went to get back in and called me over because she couldn’t open it now. I walked over and gave the door a quick tug and the awful sound of metal filled my ears. I looked over in the direction of the hinges and saw that the door was slightly over the corner of the fender. There was chipped paint and I could see where some of the metal was bent. I could tell that the door was crooked too. On the drive home, I could hear the wind coming in through the door. It sounded like I was driving with the windows cracked.

After we returned home, I called the insurance company and they set me up with a local body shop to get an estimate. Today, I dropped by the shop to have them take a look at it. They are going to need to replace the entire fender which is going to run roughly $1400 and once they remove the door it is possible that the hinges will need to be replaced as well. Thank goodness for insurance! I will only need to pay my deductible.

The guy at the body shop was able to make a minor adjustment to try to prevent any water from coming into the truck. Although the great state of Oklahoma hasn’t seen a good rain in I don’t even know how long, I was sure the door was leaking.  Why?  Because being the genius I am I decided it would a good idea to go through the carwash to clean my dusty ass truck.

Each time the water jets came across the door, water trickled down the window. Sometimes my genius shines. I’m telling you!

Now I wait. Apparently from what the girl doing my paperwork told me, I’m not the only person that was lucky enough to get some vehicle damage from the crazy wind. It looks like it will be the beginning of May before they can get me in.

One good thing is we had an existing dent on the fender that I was planning on getting an estimate for anyway. Since the wind messed up the door on the same side, I was told that the fender needs to be replaced anyway.

So although it sucks that I can’t use the door right now, at least, I can kill two birds with one stone. Also, for the time being, I don’t have to listen to my children bicker over who is going to sit in the front seat. Thank goodness for small favors.

Fantastic Friday Five #7

After a short hiatus, I bring to you another Fantastic Friday Five. A post where I share a few topics that really don’t fit anywhere else and/or I just feel like getting out into the blogosphere. Enjoy!


1.) I’m having trouble sleeping. This is common after my husband leaves. During other deployments, I went through this same circumstance. The first night after he left this time, I actually slept on the sofa because lying in the bed made me cry. I’m normally not the emotional type but every so often I get bit by the crybaby bug. Jeez, I hope I’m not pregnant. I just want to sleep again.

2.) During my husband’s visit, my super smart son decided to see what would happen if he held a Kleenex over a lit candle…in my living room. I was laying on the sofa “burrito-ed” up in a fuzzy blanket on the loveseat, in the fetal position, burning up with fever. I deliriously fell off the sofa trying get to the burning tissue ON MY CARPET, which I JUST had professionally cleaned. The blanket was full of static and I couldn’t get it off of me. Luckily, my husband was home. He stomped it out. The look of terror in my son’s eyes as he stood there frozen was enough to restrain me from killing him.

When questioned as to what the fucking fuck was he thinking, he concocted an elaborate story about how he was on the computer, NOT PAYING ATTENTION. He said he reached over to grab a tissue and he doesn’t know why it caught fire because it was nowhere near the candle. Needless to say, he had to say good-bye to the computer. Now, there is a gray spot on my carpet about the size of a stick of butter and there is also a black, burn spot the size of a dime next to it. Can anyone tell me when I can expect my boy child to develop common sense??

3.) The lawn guys cut my internet wire. Of course, AT&T originally rigged it up in way where the wire sticks out the ground and runs through my kitchen window. I pay for this?!?! The reason AT&T had to do this was because for some reason all the phone cords leading to the house were cut. Weird… The AT&T technician that installed everything said the cable companies sometimes do that if the prior occupant had phone or internet service through them. Great! Now those ugly little phone jack boxes throughout the house are truly useless.

Currently, this post is coming to you via stolen internet. Yep. I’m a freaking criminal.

4.) In addition to #3, I loathe calling customer service for most companies. I can even get past the fact that many companies outsource to guys like Peggy. (Watch the video if you don’t know what I’m talking about.)



What annoys me the most is the lack of understanding of the situation at hand. If it isn’t on the cue cards in front of them, they have no clue how to help you. (Read this post by Tricia at Confessions of a Recovering Cynic for some giggles on this topic.) I also hate being transferred all over the place from one department to the next. I think a lot of times when the representative you are speaking to doesn’t know how to help you, they transfer you…anywhere. If I have a technical support problem, why are you transferring me to billing? I don’t work there but that doesn’t sound right to me. The icing on the cake, of course, is when they disconnect you and THEN you get to call back to start the process all over again. Oh, what fun!

5.) Thank you mailman for occasionally bringing me useful junk mail. Well, I guess it isn’t really junk mail if it is useful. I’ve yet to have to write my return address for months thanks to places like VFW. They send me assorted labels, cards, pens, pads of paper, etc. I love free stuff, except the free “keys” the local car dealerships send. I don't love those.  The only uses I can think up for those is taking them over to the local car dealerships and keying that snot out of every car on the lot.

I need one of these.

Don’t forget to check out my new food blog, Shut Up and Eat Your Food!

Oh and by the way, this is for Mr. Cheese.

That'll show you not to be so sassy.  ;)

‘Til next week…

Time To Start Shopping For Helmets and Adult Diapers

Apparently in Nigeria I’m not very smart. To be more specific, I am an idiot. If you haven’t read my previous blog post, Some Nigerian Isn't Getting Paid Today, you may want to read it before you proceed any further. I do not intend to do much recapping...mainly because I'm lazy and selfish.

Today as I pulled out of my driveway to run some errands, I got a phone call from Nevada…a number I didn’t recognize. Upon answering, the man on the other end with the very heavy accent identified himself as “Mr. Smith calling on behalf of his wife, Patricia Smith”. He wanted to know if I had cashed the money orders yet. I told him they were confiscated at the post office. He demanded to know why I took them to the post office in first place.  "Because that's what you do when they aren't real, silly.", I told in my most condescending mommy voice.  You could tell he was getting agitated with me. I was giggling on the inside because let’s face it pissing people off is what I live for.

He yelled and said that he instructed me to take them to my bank to cash them. Gee, all this time I thought I was getting email instructions from his beloved wife. I asked him, "Why on earth would I do that since, you know, they were fake and all?" He played dumb and told me he didn’t understand how they were fraudulent. I explained that the post office has this magical 800 number in place that smart people, like myself, are able utilize so that we aren’t scammed by people like him who are too lazy to get an honest job. Then he called me an idiot. As a matter of fact he called me an idiot a few times and I’m pretty sure he called me a few other colorful things in his native tongue as he ranted and raved over what a stupid thing I did.

I did something “stupid”…by not allowing this con artist to scam me, I am stupid. If you look up stupid in the dictionary, you will see my face and the following: n. person who does not get fooled by phoney money orders and enjoys poking fun at irate con artists (i.e. Ashley Coleman). Yep. Sounds like me in a nutshell. I guess I should try to be smarter next time.

Mr. Smith told me there was a mistake with the verification system and I should cash them anyway.  I couldn’t control myself any longer. I just started laughing. I was laughing so hard I seriously had tears in my eyes. On the other end of this phone conversation, Mr. Smith is yelling and cursing. Poor, poor little con artist. Things not go your way…awwww!

I was slightly tempted to wire him a dollar. Too bad you can’t wire coupons. That’s it! I’m going to collect all the coupons I can find: 10% off your next oil change, $1.00 off of hemorrhoid cream, free month of Netflix, etc. Then I’m going to mail all of it to the two addresses that I have in California and Florida. Apparently, these scammers are hard up for cash so I’m going to teach them how to save money.

I’m also going to blow up their email accounts with links to money saving websites that offer coupons, discounts, and freebies. There is nothing that pleases me more than being a smart ass. Like I said I live to piss people off. What better people to annoy than a bunch of conmen (and possibly women)? Seriously, I welcome any ideas from my readers aka minions. MUHAHAHA!  But, please, remember to use small words because I am, after all, “stupid”.

Hopefully, I will blog again soon unless I get assassinated by the Nigerian mafia or some other equally scary group. You may see me soon on a grainy Taliban-like home video with a sack over my head. Criminals don’t like to be made fools of. No, they prefer to do it on their own.

On a serious note, the postal inspector I spoke to today told me to notify my bank because depending on how good this person (or persons) is there are ways that just by having my name, address, and telephone number they can cross reference accounts to locate banking and credit card information. So just FYI for any of you out there that sells on eBay, Craigslist, or any other online store.

Ta-ta for now, fellow blog addicts. I’m off to ride the short bus where my favorite crayon flavor is blue and the third window on the driver's side tastes delicious.