If you had a severe case of diarrhea this afternoon, please disregard this letter. As there was no pregnant woman in your car and you did not appear to be bleeding profusely from the jugular, diarrhea is the only justification for your "driving" today. I forgive you, but to be honest, I still kinda hope you didn't make it. My infant daughter, the one you almost killed today, occasionally blows out of her diaper and onto her clothes...I find that OxiClean works very well for shit stains. I hope your day improves. You can stop reading now.
Assuming you did not have diarrhea, as I suspect you didn't, I have a few things to add.
I understand. You're busy. Clearly, you have somewhere to be, and soon! You're obviously extremely important, as made evident by your overpriced car and the Fast and/or Furiousness with which you drive it, and don't get me wrong ...we're all VERY impressed. I'm sure you have an enormous penis, and I'm genuinely sorry that you have to share the road with the rest of us underlings.
If you keep working hard, maybe someday you'll be rich enough to afford to afford your own private highway. Or better yet, your own island! Ooooh, you could invite all the other arrogant, Hummer-driving pieces of shit to your island!!Let me know where I can send a donation to this cause or assist in organizing a fundraising event.
In the meantime, here's a suggestion - since apparently, the police don't scare you, and the likelihood of dying engulfed in flames hasn't inspired you to be a more courteous driver, how about this?...Try to imagine that every car you run off the road has a baby in it. If babies don't inspire any warm, fuzzy feelings in you, imagine dogs. Don't care about animals either? Fine - I know you love your money. I bet you've acted out that scene in Indecent Proposal (however brief and sweaty your version may have been). I bet you sneak dollar bills into your salad and close your eyes in orgasmic bliss as you chew. I bet you own one of those cheesy novelty towels that looks like a giant dollar bill, don't you? Well then, imagine a huge sack of cash in each car you run off the road. The car could burst into flames! Protect the money!!!!!
One more thing - you don't get to avoid my glare when, after all your rushing, mouthing of curse words and overdramatic throwing up of hands, I pull up next to you at a red light. You don't get to pretend you don't see me after you've vehicularly raped my car, finally had your chance to speed ahead obnoxiously loudly, and cut me off one last time. Once I've calmly and safely arrived next to you at the red light, I get to look at you as if to say, "Oooh, look at that...we're in the same place now, bitch."It's my right. You will look at me. Bitch.
Sincerely,
Sharon
p.s. You look nothing like Vin Deisel. Sorry to disappoint you. Maybe Bill Murray with the Gout...
Baby stuff is like the Blob. You put a few toys in a corner and leave the room. By the time you come back, they've multiplied. You barely notice at first. Then you run outside to get the mail, and when you come back inside, you can't even see the floor! I can't take a step without hearing a squeek, rattle, "moooooo" or one of those plinky plunky "kiddie piano" songs. Last night my sandwich was eaten by a herd of My Little Ponies. This morning I body surfed to the kitchen on a sea of cabbage patch kids. It's out of control. My husband, Captain America, and I recently started looking for a new home, as the baby stuff continues to invade every last bit of space.
I remember when I was 19 years old and choosing my first apartment, I picked the first one I looked at. It was a shitty basement apartment with a putrid, mold scented carpet and a line of ants perpetually going nowhere, but it was fine with me. "400 bucks a month and my parents don't live here? Where do I sign?!" The yellow-green flu snot/stomach bile color of the bathroom didn't bother me, just like my first boyfriend's patchy teenage moustache didn't bother me, because I wasn't committed to that place. It was a fling. But it's not so easy to choose a "forever" house.
You would think that the internet would make it pretty easy these days, but we quickly learned the extent to which pictures lie. I imagine it must be like online dating. You get all excited about someone until you meet them and realize that they Photoshopped out their mole cluster. Eventually, you get smart...if the only pictures are of the beautiful view off the deck, you know not to bother. It's the equivalent of a tiny, fuzzy head shot on Match.com. There's a reason. Of course, there's only so much you can do to save your time, because even if there are fifty accurate pictures, they're not going to mention their annoying Mickey Mouse voice/undyingcurry stench seeping from the walls.
I have to admit that the stress of house hunting has been a tiny ripple in the placid sea of my marriage, as Captain America and I have never had the same priorities when it comes to choosing a home. He thinks it's "crazy" that I reject houses because the basement seems haunted, or because I'm turned off by the previous owner's window treatments. He thinks it's "ridiculous" that I don't want to hurt the previous owners' feelings by buying a foreclosure, and somehow he doesn't understand why I can't possibly live the rest of my life on Goat Fell Road.
He, on the other hand, can overlook extensive water damage because there's a tree house.
Another source of anxiety is my moderate phobia of real estate agents. They're just so desperate, it makes me nervous. The way they can make bats in the attic sound like a good thing ("They sound kinda like birds. It'll be like spring all the time! Plus, you're gonna save a boatload of money on bug spray!") is very unnerving. They just come on too strong. They're the guy who calls ten times a day after one date.
This is where Captain America comes in handy. Though he's one of the friendliest people I know, when it comes to making large purchases, he becomes as stone-faced and as a secret service agent (complete with blank stare, sunglasses and earpiece). A realtor circling us like a vulture at an open house is met with a surly eye-roll. Another asks how much we're pre-approved for, and he snaps, "Enough to buy this house, ok?!" The minute the deal is closed, he's asking them about their kids and inviting them along to our celebratory dinner and a movie date.
This attitude becomes problematic when it's time to agree on a price, though. He has what I often refer to as a "negotiating disorder." This is different from frugality. He's willing to spend the money, but he won't be happy unless he got them down one more dollar. This is why it wasn't easy for him once we did find the perfect house - in this market, he wasn't expecting kiddie pageant caliber competition.
When we walked in, I knew right away. I shrieked like a tween, "Oh my God!!!"
Captain America gave me the "Are you fucking kidding me?" eyes (he usually reserves those as a response to a first offer) and mouthed "poker face" to me behind the realtor's back, but I couldn't help myself. I was mentally arranging furniture before we even went upstairs. I wanted to go back and steal the For Sale sign that night, but Captain America wanted to "play it cool" and wait a WEEK to submit an offer.
"When you're in love, you don't wait to call," I begged, "You're lucky you never waited a week to call ME!! We wouldn't be here right now, that's for sure." He finally agreed to put in the offer on the condition that I calm down and watch wrestling instead of the Bachelor.
Waiting to hear if your offer has been accepted is almost as bad as waiting for the plus sign to show up on a pregnancy test - at least that only takes a few minutes! Every time the phone rang, I wanted to throw up. The stomach flip was reminiscent of Hanson mania circa 1996 and the butterflies I used to get when Taylor looked into the camera "at me." After we didn't hear back the first day I started to lose it a little bit.
"Whyyyy haven't they callllled," I wailed dramatically, and laid down next to my daughter on a bed of stuffed animals. I pictured living in this same condo, surrounded by baby stuff, forever. She'd just have to wade through it to meet her prom date at the front door.
By dinner time on the second day of waiting, my feelings were hurt and I felt rejected. I pushed my food (and a few troll dolls) around my plate, pouting. Captain America tried to cheer me up, "It's not personal, babe. I mean, the house JUST went on the market! It's like they've been in a serious relationship for years and years, and they're finally single. Even if it's a great offer, they can't go back off the market just like that."
"Please! They just want to keep us on the back burner until something better comes along!" I cried like a high schooler stood up to the dance.
After almost a week of back and forth, I had finally decided to clear the decks and start looking at other listings, when the realtor called.They'd accept our offer as long as we paid all our own closing costs. At first I was sure Captain America would go into full-on Sean Penn vs. the paparazzi mode and resubmit a final offer of "five dollars and you can go fuck yourself," but he just looked at me and said, "That's fair." I wish I could say that his negotiating disorder has improved, but really I think I was just starting to scare him.
This is where house hunting and courtship part ways, as most people probably wouldn't counter-offer a marriage proposal ("Fine, I'll marry you if you'll stop wearing that funky cologne and get rid of your frickin' sideburns for God's sake"). But it's good enough for us. Maybe the house did settle for us, and maybe it'll always wonder if it could have done better, but we love it enough to make this work. We close next month, and it can't happen soon enough! Until then, the infestation continues...a sorority of dolls has taken over my bathroom and they're starting to whisper about me behind my back...
I am an addict. For years I've avoided facing my problem, but I can no longer deny my dependence. I used to try to convince myself that I have some sort of taste bud disorder which makes everything taste bland, but I need to come out and admit my enslavement to salt. I put salt on everything. Love it.That practical joke where you loosen the top on the salt shaker and a ton of salt comes pouring out all over someone's meal? Wouldn't work on me. It would just save me a few extra shakes of the wrist.
I never really thought I was overdoing it. Everybody uses salt, right? There's a salt shaker on every dinner table in America, right? Everybody sucks the salt off pretzels and spits them out... right?
My husband has always given me a hard time about my salt intake. He likes to tease me about it - jokes that he's going to buy me a saltlick for Christmas, asks me if I'd prefer my engagement ring to have a giant salt rock rather than a diamond. "Could've saved a lot of money!" He makes this joke at least once a month.
One evening he hid the salt shaker and watched me rifle furiously through cupboards and drawers, tearing apart the kitchen as my dinner got cold. I didn't suspect him, as it's not uncommon for me to lose it myself (I often carry it around the house, double-fisting it with a granola bar, my delicious alkaline security blanket).
He only gave it back to me once he realized that I actually wasn't going to give up and eat my dinner without it. The look on his face as I snatched it back from him with my sweaty little hand was my first clue that I need to cut back.
"That stuff's gonna kill you," he said sincerely, as he buttered his corn, potatoes and both sides of his bread, "You'll shrivel up like a slug." He and his brothers spent a great deal of their childhood killing various bugs and, apparently, mollusks.
The next day, as I cheerfully salted my salad, the double-take from the waiter got me thinking. I hadn't even tasted it yet. How did I know it needed salt? I tried to remember the last time I ate a meal and didn't add salt to it. I couldn't.
I slept terribly that night. I dreamt of Lot's wife, her glorious crystallized skin sparkling in the sun, screaming, "You'll shrivel up like a slug! A SLUG!" You'd think in such a nightmare that she'd be chasing me, but it was the other way around. I woke up salivating just before I could take a huge bite of her arm.
The next day I decided to find out just how dangerous salt is. I thought it would make me feel better to read something like, "Excessive consumption of salt could maybe cause a teensy bit of hypertension when you're, like, 100 years old." I should have known better. A paranoid person like me knows: if you really want to freak yourself out, Google it. Whatever it is, there is an article somewhere on the web just waiting to "inform" you of the catastrophic results of whatever you just did/ate/touched.
So as it turns out, health professionals recommend no more than 4 grams of salt per day. I was encouraged at first, because 4 grams sounds like a lot to someonewho doesn't remember a single measurement conversion from elementary school. Another search put me in my place. One tablespoon of salt has 18.25 grams of salt.
Holy. Shit.
Sure, a whole tablespoon of salt (over 100 shakes, per my experiment) is a lot, more than even I use in a day. But still, it became very clear exactly how far over the recommended intake I am.To make myself feel better, I quickly Googled the lethal dose - about 1 gram of salt per kilogram of body weight, consumed within a "short period of time." Once again, that sounded like a lot to a metric-stupid American. More Googling. One kilogram is a little over 2 lbs. So if each tablespoon of table salt contains 18.25 grams of salt.....
I panicked....was Wikipedia seriously telling me that eating 3 or 4 tablespoons of salt in a short period of time could KILL an average sized person?!? My tiny mother, who weighs less than 90 pounds, could be killed by 2 1/2 tablespoons of salt?!?
What the FUCK?!!!????!
I mean, yeah, that's a lot of salt. But at the same time...that's NOT a lot of salt!! It almost seems like you could accidentally eat that much salt! Say my tiny mother was making a pie, which called for half a cup of salt (yeah, I know, that's a ridiculous amount of salt and no pie in the world calls for 1/2 cup of salt, not even a salt pie.....mmmm.....salt pie....). That's 8 tablespoons, thus a lethal dose for even a 300 pound person. Say she keeps her salt in a high cupboard, so she gets up on her step ladder to get it. Say she measures it while standing on one foot on the step ladder. Say she slips and the measuring cup goes flying into the air and she opens her mouth to scream...you can just imagine! I'd better not wait too much longer before warning her about this.
And while I'm freaking out, let's bring my daughter into the mix. My five month old daughter weighs about 14 pounds. Less than half a tablespoon could kill her! My precious little girl! I'm surprised my breast milk hasn't killed her!
The news was pretty sobering. It occurred to me - what if I'd never even picked up a salt shaker in the first place? If only I'd known this information sooner. Surely I'd be smarter, prettier and taller, and I wouldn't have had Dorito breath when Nick Masarrachia finally kissed me in the 9th grade. I wouldn't even have been EATING Doritos, because I would have been turned off by the sodium content.
At the end of the day, I don't really intend to quit salt. The best I can do is cut back, and even that's going to require a little rehab (I need to look into salt gum,or maybe a salt patch). One thing I have absolutely given up forever is Googling.Do you really want to know how many calories are in your Starbucks danish?... I mean, really, that shit is just upsetting. Why do you need to know the long term effects of "new carpet smell" on babies? Don't you know that according to Google, EVERYTHING causes Autism? Googling is way more dangerous than a sodium overload, at least for me. Because once you realize you've been eating more than five times the daily recommended allowance of salt every day for years upon years, every surprise is a potential heart attack.
