Me in a skirt…WTF?

Tonight I get the glorious pleasure of attending a bridal shower for my cousin Juls.

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate bridal showers?

Really. I hate them. A lot. With a passion. They’re an exercise in ridiculous. You want to send me into paroxysms of irritation, just send me an invitation to a bridal shower. It will be impressive.

I feel the same way about baby showers. Showers in general make me uncomfortable. The whole notion behind inviting people so you can play stupid games and open up a cubic fuckload of gifts just shits me to pieces. That’s all a shower is. An excuse to demand merchandise from others. It’s legalized extortion. The worst thing is, even just being invited more or less obligates one to purchase a gift for the bride/mother-to-be. If you decline the invitation but don’t bring a gift, you pretty much get shat upon for months on end. Nobody will forget that You Failed To Provide. Nevermind that you can barely afford to buy yourself a new pair of shoes. Spend all your money on others! Weeeeeeee!

I solemnly promise to all my friends and family that if I ever get married or pop out a devilspawn, I will not allow a shower to be thrown. Trust me, I don’t want to sit through it any more than you do. Not to mention that I’m a grown adult with a steady income, and if I can’t afford the life change that I’m bringing upon myself, then it’s my own fault and nobody else’s. No need to fill in my financial gaps with yours.

Yes, I know you’re saying to yourself “You’ll feel differently when the time comes.” Thank you for having so much faith in me. It’s appreciated. I am, however, soulless, so the chances of me getting my soul back and entertaining the idea of having a bridal shower of my own is slim-to-none. As the saying goes, you can’t put the puke back in the cat…

Up Next…

I love shopping in hardware stores but hate how I get treated there. Men see a woman in a hardware store and immediately jump to the conclusion that she must know nothing and wandered in there completely by accident and now needs help finding her way out. You know, like when a bird somehow flies into your house and you have to spend an hour ushering it towards the door while it beats frantically against every ceiling and window in the place.

I ran to Home Depot last night to pick up some bulk Cat 5e and a pack of RJ45 ends. Took me about twenty minutes to find someone to come cut the f’ing cable for me, since apparently the only time that a dearth of Home Depot employees ISN’T roaming the store to continually harass you into allowing them to help you is when you actually need help. So help is finally on its way. I see the guy coming up the aisle. Behind me is another customer of the penile persuasion who showed up about a minute before that, scoping out the spools of wire. The employee walks up…and goes straight for the guy behind me.

So I’m thinking “OK, the guy will just be like ‘no, she’s first’ like what happens in restaurants, grocery stores, DMV queues…” and I just let the employee continue his approach. He asks the guy if he needs any help……….

….that motherfucker says “Yeah, I need fifty feet of Romex” and plants himself between me and the employee.

OH NO HE DI’NT!

Unfortunately, I was so shocked, I couldn’t get a single word out. My outrage was that palpable. All I could think was “Holy shit, I’ve just been TOTALLY COCKBLOCKED.” I think I might have turned purple, because the guy glanced at me at one point and I actually saw a bit of fear on his face. Damn right. Just you wait until I can move without shrieking, bitch. Your ass is mine.

So there I sat, rotting in my own pissed-off world, waiting for the douchebag to just get his stuff and go. At that point, the employee turned to me and asked if I needed anything. He was nice about it, but it came out in that patronizing “ohhhh, you must be needing directions to the gardening aisle” sort of tone. I told him I needed 150 feet of Cat 5 riser, preferably solid core. He looked mildly surprised, and fumbled around with the boxes of Cat 5 cable momentarily before asking “You sure you don’t need Cat 6? It’s better…” Ah, he’s hoping to upsell to the Stupid Woman. (found out a few minutes later that he was an assistant store manager. Explains a lot) I told him “Nope. I’m just dropping a line through the attic for one PC. I don’t think that warrants the triple-the-Cat 5-price of Cat 6. Thanks anyway for the suggestion.”

He measures, cuts, and rolls my cable for me (“Make sure you don’t kink that” he tells me as he hands it to me. “That breaks the wire and renders it useless.” Yeah, thanks for the tip there, scroat) and then starts to write up the tag. They have this big board showing the types of wiring and cabling and the pricing for each. He starts to write me up for the more expensive cable. I stop him and point out the mistake. He looks visibly irritated that I caught him. At that point I wanted to scream “I AM NOT AN IGNORANT WOMAN, I SHALL KILL YOU NOW, GIVE ME YOUR BALLS.” You’ll be proud of me…instead I just thanked him and headed for the checkout.

I’m not one of those staunch flag-waving feminists who insists on slapping people in the face with her vagina every five seconds. However, even I find it grotesquely archaic that there are still men out there who automatically treat women as though they can’t function on their own without a man’s help. It’s surprising that that attitude still exists. I checked my calendar this morning just to make sure someone didn’t shove me in a wayback machine when I wasn’t looking. Nope, it’s still 2008. When will everyone get with the program? I don’t know how much longer I can hold back before I turn green, split my clothing, and yell “AMANDA SMAAAAAASH!”

And now for something completely different…

Good weather today. It’s supposed to reach like 96 degrees, which should make the pantyhose, skirt, and black blouse I’m wearing to the bridal shower feel especially awesome. I’d go bare-legged but I’m a little too pale to do that to people. I’m just happy that we have a constant breeze going on so that my house cools down pretty quickly when I crank my bedroom window open sometime around midnight. It’s supposed to reach triple digits this coming week. I can’t tell you how excited I am that summer is almost over soon.