"Oh yeah, that'll save them like fifty bucks a week."

Greetings fellow friends! I started writing this blog just a day after our power decided providing us with its services was optional, and then got waylaid by helping Mike find himself a new home, and here I am a lot of days later just getting around to posting. Two thumbs down, self, two thumbs down.

About the power outage; apparently a huge storm went through the area that missed our immediate area, but we still lost power. Now, I know losing power at any rate is never fun, but in our case we have well water, therefore, not only do we have no power, we have no water as well. To make this more fun, we are an agricultural zoned area. Because of this we have several animals, and there is a huge horse farm across the street. It easily becomes difficult to get water for your animals without any, and with a lot of animals, it can become unsanitary very quickly.

But enough about that, I have stories to tell all of you awesome people, you. I decided it was time to write another blog about how normal, everyday things find fire and become completely ridiculous when I’m involved. I do not know how this happens, but I'm glad it does...usually.

A few weeks ago my friend Mike and I got together, but not to look at houses, to hang out. You may remember me mentioning Mike in this blog before, because he’s one of the few people I know who has true stories that are so awesome, my creatively spastic mind couldn’t even make them up. More about this later.

While Mike and I were together, we happened to stop at Subway. Please keep in mind that this particular Subway is in an area where there is a high population of both rednecks and white homeboys. They’re totally harmless, but what I’m saying is that they’re asking a lot from these people.

There was a sign at the Subway that announced they were now hiring. This would have been okay, except the sign started out this way. “Now hiring customer friendly, energetic, hard working, responsible...” I lost track after what it said after that, because I was only about three lines down in a ten line sign. I would like to share with you all my interpretation of what the rest of this sign said.

“Now hiring customer friendly, energetic, hard working, responsible, smiling, happy, chipper people who are willing to be yelled at over how much mustard they put on a sandwich and berated by people in their pajamas, scrub the floor on their hands and knees with a toothbrush, put their right hand in, put their right hand out, put their right hand in and shake it all about, know at least four different languages, be able to write in Enokian symbols, be able both do the sprinkler and the waltz, have twelve years of college, have never written a letter to Squeaky Fromme, have great hair, and all while skipping.”

And, of course, you know they’re only paying minimum wage. Two words; dream job.

For the mentally disturbed.

This naturally turned into an entire debacle between Mike and myself. It started out with me commenting that I couldn’t imagine why no one took that job for minimum wage. If they paid me more then maybe I would be all those things, but it just wasn’t worth it for what they were paying. Mike agreed, and said for minimum wage he may come in with the correct uniform shirt on. This quickly turned into Mike saying we would come into the interview with flow charts showing what we would do for what amount of pay. Obviously we discussed this but did not write it down. I will now write it down to share with all of you.

Minimum Wage Chart: I will come into work within fifteen minutes of the time I am supposed to be there. I will probably not wear the correct shirt, if I wear a shirt at all. I will only swear five times during my shift, because I need this mother fucking job. Damn, I’m sorry for swearing. I will only yell back at one customer a day. I will not clean or pretend to. I will take thirty minute breaks and not care if you notice. I will do the Hokey Pokey, but it will not be my hand I’m putting in and out. I got myself a nice ass, you know. Damn, sorry for swearing again. I will draw horribly inappropriate caricatures of customers on company time and claim it’s Enokian writing. I will take care to wear my awesome toupee, and limit my letters to Miss Fromme to one every other day. I also am not allowed to wear a name tag, as, since it is sharp and pointy, it would be a direct violation of my parole. Oh, and none of those damn subs will be made right. Shit, sorry for swearing again.

One Dollar Above Minimum Wage Chart: I will come into work within ten minutes of the time I am supposed to be there. I will probably not remember to wear the correct shirt, and if I do it probably won’t be clean and will definitely be on backwards. I, however, will have showered and will at least attempt a smile while getting the customers orders correct. I will not know where my name tag is ever, and will go about making a new one each time I am there. It’s iffy if the names will be appropriate, but definite that they will never be my own. I will do as little cleaning as I can get away with, and eat the food when no one is looking. I won’t yell at any customers. I will still keep my letters to Miss Fromme to one every other day, but I will try to break the habit. The last line is a total and complete lie.

Two Dollars Above Minimum Wage Chart: I will come into work within five minutes of the time I am supposed to be there. My shirt will not be wrinkled, but definitely will be on backwards. I will have a name tag, but it will not have my name on it. The name, however, will be appropriate. I will smile, but refuse to be energetic while I serve people their orders properly. I will half ass clean, but it will be better than doing as little as possible. I will go to therapy for my addiction to writing letters to Miss Fromme if you will pay for it. I won’t swear, I will do the Hokey Pokey and get customers involved, because it’s fun and annoying all the same. Then, once they are on a roll, I will stop and just laugh at them loudly. Because I just picked on people, I will definitely be smiling. I will consider actually mopping the floor, but a toothbrush is out of the question. I will only eat two subs per shift.

Three Dollars Above Minimum Wage Chart: I don’t like the number three. It’s uneven, unlike one, two, four and five.

Four Dollars Above Minimum Wage Chart: Yeah, okay, I’ll meet your standards, but I’m not giving up the letters to Miss Fromme or eating your food.

Five Dollars Above Minimum Wage Chart: I will do pretty much whatever the heck you want as long as I can keep my clothes on, perform no sexual favors, my shift will end as the schedule permits and I will clean manically as long as it’s not with a toothbrush. I will give up the letters to Miss Fromme. I will wear my shirt correctly, use OxyClean to make sure it’s bright and cheery, make sure there is not a spot on my name tag and that it is actually my nametag, do the Hokey Pokey six ways to Sunday, not eat your food and smile and sing the song of the customers choice while energetically making their sub correctly in record time.

I think Mike’s right, we should fill out an application and go into an interview just to take these flow charts in. It would totally worth the time and effort put into it.

On another note, who in the heck thought it was a good idea to parole Squeaky Fromme? Was there not enough mounting evidence against her? Was it not clear that her tree didn’t go all the way to the top? The light was on but no one was home? The rivers were wide and rolling but the fish bailed anyway? For goodness sakes, life in prison means LIFE IN PRISON! Because it’s totally not like she tried to assassinate President Ford and definitely wasn’t part of the Manson Family. COME ON PEOPLE! Use your brains before making these kinds of decisions, if they’re still even there!

And on another, other note, why do people always try to assassinate others with Colts?

Plus, plus, also AND, I showed this list to Mike and he says, and I quote, that it is “much more awesome than he thought it would be.” Score! Needless to say, it's Mike approved.

The next normal thing that turned into a debacle has to do with Criminal Minds. Two Wednesday's ago, there was a scene with dialogue revolving around how the BAU was doing budget cuts. Rossi brings up that he hopes they don’t take away their coffee. Reid insists he’d quit if this were to happen, and Rossi counters back with how they would save $50 bucks a week in just coffee if Reid did. All totally normal, right?

Then I commented on the quote to Becky, who then started talking about how much money they could actually save if they got rid of Reid. We then sat there, figured it somewhere within a ballpark range, and realized their best bet would be to get rid of the genius kid, but if they did more people would die. So we tried to figure out who they could get rid of that wouldn’t cause a detrimental effect to team. Please tell me we have a life and we just don’t know it. By the way, we decided on no one. Everyone, Becky and I have decided your jobs are safe. I know this means a lot to all of you, and by a lot, we mean nothing at all.

Let’s not forget to mention the fact that I have a Facebook. I always thought this was a fairly harmless, good idea. That was until the past week when conversations about Carole King and her songs broke out via my status. If this were an isolated incident, it would be awesome, except somehow my one friend and I started singing songs back and forth on each others walls. One of us would put lyrics to a song up that reflected how we were feeling, the other would then write a continuation to the lyrics and so on. I don’t know how I end up doing this stuff or why people join in, but I like it.

I would also like to mention that I successfully got stuck under the coffee. How, you ask? I decided to sit down on the floor with Greta, stretched out my feet, and let’s just say that they did not come out the same way they went in. I actually had to stop what I was doing and un-stick myself. This took several minutes. I’m still a little embarrassed, but mostly because I know I’ll do this again without thinking about it, and then find myself with the same amount of stupidity, just days later. And they say you live and learn. Sometimes I forget about the learning part.

Before I go, I would also like to tell that story that came to me via Mike. I kept wanting to send the write up to him to make sure I had it correct, but two things happened. One, I saw him too much in person and the subject of him reading a potential blog post never came up. Two, we've repeated this story enough in person that if I don't get it right I should be truly embarrassed. It's become a punchline.

A few weeks back I was hanging out with Mike. He was telling me he works with a man who has a mentally challenged nephew. The nephew isn't so mentally challenged that he can't be home alone without setting the house on fire, but he sees the world differently than most. His mom leaves him home alone while she's at work, and he's 26 and has never had an issue. One day he calls his mom at work and tells her he found a gnome on their doorstep and wanted to know if he could keep it. The mom was confused, but considering the way her son is, she didn't think anything of it. If anything, she figured he had stolen a neighbor's lawn gnome and she would have to apologize and give it back. She said yes.

A little while later he calls her back and asks her if he could feed the gnome skittles. The mom now knew something was going on and assumed what he had actually done was find a cat or a small animal and bring it inside. Now she really knew she was going to have to apologize to the neighbors, but he loved everything and was very harmless, so she didn't worry.

Then she comes home and he's nowhere to be found. She goes all over the house and finally finds him in the very corner of his bedroom, with his bed pushed up against the closet door, just sitting there like this was normal. She asked him what was going on and he said the gnome was in the closet and he didn’t want it to get away. She started to panic so she moved the bed and opened the closet.

Did she find a pet?

No.

Did she find a gnome?

No.

She found a midget. Let me reiterate.

SHE FOUND A MIDGET!

Apparently the midget was a census taker and was going house to house collecting census from people who hadn't turned them in. He rang the doorbell, the nephew answered, legitimately thought he was a gnome, picked him up, took him in the house and put him in the closet. He didn't want him to run away and leave. When the midget asked why he was doing this, he said because his mom told him he could keep him. We are all still wondering what he told his boss had happened to him for the three hours he was in the closet, and why he was incognito for those three hours.

Best story ever!

In the next blog I shall regal you with stories about house hunting. Naturally, it’s me, so I have them. They include everything from dead deer (do not adjust your eyes, you heard that right), almost unintentionally committing suicide, and embarrassing a Realtor. It’s been awesome.