Suckeeerrrr!

I just had to share this. I thought about it this morning and it was kinda' funny.  If you didn't know I just moved into a new home, everything is going great and I'm feeling blessed.  Only one problem - I have a 150 gallon bow-front aquarium and nowhere to put it.  You see in my last house the living room and family room/den was combined leaving me plenty of room for my tank.  Well, this time around not so. The configuration of my new home is far different than my last so the tank gots' to go.

Here's my ad on craigslist:

150 GALLON AQUARIUM WITH SOME ACCESSORIES AND SOLID WOOD STAND. I NEVER USED IT. THE OWNER BEFORE ME USED IT AS A FRESHWATER AQUARIUM. CAN ALSO BE USED AS A TERRARIUM IM SURE. EVERYTHING RETAILS FOR ABOUT $1500, I'M WILLING TO LET GO FOR $800, OBO. SERIOUS INQUIRIES ONLY!!! IF YOU WANT TO TAKE A LOOK AT IT, I'M AVAILABLE DURING THE WEEKDAYS AFTER 9PM, BUT ANYTIME ON THE WEEKENDS.

A week later, I get a call Sunday morning from a guy in Gloucester Co. that's interested in buying it.  "Sure, it's still available," I told him, and gave him my address to come out and take a look.  No one is going to drive all the way from Gloucester Co. just to "look" at a fish tank - that thing was as good as sold.

So he and his wife arrived about an hour and a half later and while we're loading his truck with the tank and stand he starts to go on about how rare my aquarium is, and, unless you're lucky, to get another like it you would have to get it custom made.  Honestly, I did the research on how much a 150 gallon tank would retail for, but now it explains why I couldn't find anything on bow-fronts specifically.  And the guy just couldn't shut up soon enough about it, he just kept needling me and needling me with it.

Anyway, I'm glad it's gone and out of my hair.  Plus, the money I got for it is going towards my new 55" LED TV before football season hits.  HEELLZ YEEAH!

112 Days

It's kinda' hard to fathom that its been 112 days since the start of my first semester of college.  Within 2 weeks I was thinking to myself, "What in the hell?"  It has been a rough couple of months of getting used to studying again, actually doing homework this time around, and the dreaded anticipation of wondering if I passed or failed a class.  If I was asked the question, "So if there was one thing you could take away from this first semester of school, what would it be?", my answer would definitely be - learn time management.  Because at the end of the day there's no excuses.  No "my kid is sick."  No "but I had to work overtime at my job."  Nothing that starts with "See, what happened was..." is going to bail you out.  Suck it up, it's only the beginning.

Throw My Mother From the Train...Please

I'm just joking.  I LOVE my mother for life.  But unfortunately I don't like her - let me rephrase that - I can't live with her.  I don't know how I did it for the first 19 years of my life?  My mother is sweet and she means well, but a lot of times her own idiosyncrasies gets in the way of me enjoying being around her .

Despite all this, about a month ago it seemed like a good idea to drive up to Queens, NY to bring my mother back home to Virginia to live with me.  Understand that at the time I was really concerned for her health and well-being up there and plus, there were incidents that made me feel uncomfortable about her living situation.  So the plan was to bring her back to her birth place, help her get readjusted to living here again and help her get her own housing eventually.

That first week I thought to myself, "What the fuck was you thinking?".  I just recently moved into a quiet residential neighborhood filled with old, white folks.  Right up my mother's alley right? Peace and quiet.  Wrong.  My mother is LOUD.  As soon as I turn the corner to go down my street I already know she's on the porch.  She is that loud. For two reasons; first, that's just the way she is, and second, for the last five years or so she's been having to talk over a house full of crying kids.  Even when she realizes she's loud she she gets louder.  She hasn't figured out yet how to turn herself down.

She also, unknowingly, suffers from insomnia and has been that way for as long as I've known her.  I can maybe count on one hand how many times I've actually seen my mother asleep....with her eyes closed.  So it's nothing to find myself awakened at 2:30 in the morning from the sound of someone downstairs rustling through the refrigerator for a snack, or "silently" talking on the phone.  How do you tell your mom, "Will you carry your ass to bed!....please?"

All my mom's conversations start something like this: "I didn't get to sleep 'til about 3 o'clock last night."  Long pause.  Even longer pause now.  You see, this where I'm suppose to chime in and say, "So why didn't you get to sleep 'til 3 o'clock?"  And then, by law, she can continue to explain why.  Honestly, it's the funniest shit ever.  "Ma, why can't you just tell me why you were up 'til 3 instead of me having to pretend like I'm asking?"  No answer.

Well, it seems she's not ready to come down and stay for good just yet (every time I say that I uncontrollably jump in the air and click my heels together).  She lives with my younger brother and his wife and they need her to help out babysitting my three nieces (daycare in NY is a bitch).  A big part of my mother's being is the joy of raising children.  I don't have one yet for her to raise so when she's here she starts to feel a bit unuseful.  So, this Saturday I'll be driving her back up to NY until the next time she gets stressed out and needs to come back home to relax.  I'm okay with that because her short stay allowed me to learn a little about myself, and that is that I'm not ready to deal with my mother full-time yet.  Saturday can't get here fast enough.