Little ditty about all kinds of stuff

I am on Day 97 of disgusting throat infection with a side of coughing and fever. Apparently, I've taken so many antibiotics over the past 3 years, my body has decided, "Nah, not so much. Just give us sugar." I have also now infected Smitty, who hardly ever got sick before he met me, Typhoid Mary. So, we are a real laugh riot right now. We nearly came to blows last night over the remote control. He wanted to watch that sword fishing reality show, and I wanted to watch "The Soup," so rather than watch anything, we just bickered for 30 minutes. Being sick makes us both extremely cranky. Good times.

I think that there are two kinds of people, small-town people and city people. You could be born as either one and end up switching at some point, but inherently, you're one or the other. I am a city person. In fact, even growing up in rural Mississippi in Macon, population: 2,500, it's not like I was living on a farm or using an outhouse. We lived in town, both parents had master's degrees, etc...I was quite the disappointment when I moved to Pennsylvania because I spoke proper English and had no idea how to milk a cow.

Growing up in a small town is great, although I had occasional irritation at my dad for moving from Memphis before we were born, b/c growing up in Memphis would've been really cool. Nonetheless, it's a safe way to grow up, everyone knows you, not a lot of crime, etc...Ironically, except for the crime, those are the primary reasons that I do not ever want to live in a small town again. I don't actually want to know what my neighbors are doing. I rather enjoy just waving at them awkwardly when we're coming and going. I don't want them to know what we're doing either. If I want to perform a fire ritual in the back yard with an inflatable sheep and some Pygmies, that's my business.

I remember writing something shortly after I moved to Pennsylvania that began "I left home so I could disappear," and I meant it. With small-town values comes gossip, judgment, hypocrisy, and in Southern cases, racism, which is discussed openly as though nothing is wrong with it. I can't stand that. I can't be an educated 33-year-old with a college degree who hopes to have children and teach them by example and let it be okay hearing bigotry used as a punchline. When I moved to PA, friends of the family basically let it be known that since I was working for John Kerry, that "liberal," (real meaning: sympathetic to minorities), they really hoped I didn't do well, and how could my parents let me do that? Forget that I was 27 years old at the time, how could I forsake my roots and serve the liberals?

I'm sorry, I'll get off my soapbox now, but that has been bugging me for a couple of days. On to something lighter...I have been Emily, Mistress of Destruction, for the last couple of days. In my defense, some of the carnage wasn't my fault. Here is a sampling:

1. My car battery died, I mean died, dead, wouldn't even turn over. This is not my fault, but Smitty did have to come home from work to replace it so I could get to work. Yay, Smitty.

2. In connection with the car battery, when I realized it was dead,  my first thought was to take Smitty's Passat, having forgotten that its battery was also dead. In my hurry to find the key, I apparently ripped a nail out of the wall that was holding up our "key holder," and now we can't re-hang it because of the way the nail ripped.

3. I poked myself in the eye with a pen yesterday while at work. My contact lens came out while I was on the phone, so I had to put it back in without a mirror and with dirty hands, so my eye was a plum-esque color for the latter part of yesterday.

4. Also at work, I had numerous coughing fits, the kind where you can't stop or talk or do anything. I was on the phone when most of these happened, so I would mute my phone while hacking up internal organs. Except that I was convulsing so hard from one attack, I unmuted and unleashed a truly disgusting mucus-filled cough into the poor customer's ear... Gross

This quote kept running through my head yesterday, and I have no idea why. "In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."