Painting Chef – Cheaper Than Therapy

At about 2:00 yesterday afternoon my work friend Sheila walked up to my desk and very calmly and very quietly asked me to take her to the emergency room because she thought she was having a heart attack. Being someone who likes to think that she can remain calm in situations such as these, I, also very calmly and quietly, said alright, let’s go. (However when faced with situations related to shoe sales, dishes in the sink, fertility drugs, and the god-squad brand of militant republicans we grow here in Georgia I go all twitchy and squinty)

We got into the car and immediately I started the running questions in my head… beginning with “Holy shit. I have NO IDEA where the emergency room is.” Perhaps you are unaware of this fact but Augusta, GA has roughly 12 hospitals per person. There are hospitals everywhere. And by everywhere I mean that they are all stacked within a 10 block radius downtown. You also may or may not know (most likely not… unless you are my sister and are still experience post-traumatic stress syndrome and intermittent twitches from that time I was the DD at your bachelorette weekend in Atlanta because I was all knocked up but actually I wasn’t anymore I just didn’t know it and MAN I could have been drinking tequila) that when it comes to navigating city streets I immediately take stupid. The thought of one way streets and no left turns and OH MY GOD PARALLEL PARKING JUST KILL ME NOW cause me to break out into hives. And possibly pee just a little.

The second question that was dancing around in my head was whether this was a situation that warranted the whole hazard lights on and running red lights with the bobbing and weaving in the traffic. I quickly decided that since I recognized Sheila’s distress as an anxiety attack (being no stranger to them myself) I would avoid exposing her to repeated near-death situations and would instead proceed with the whole “calmly and quietly” theme. Breaking theme in the middle of a party is bad form anyway.

I did manage to get us to the emergency room with no wrong turns and only a couple of horn-honking incidents. As this was my first Georgia emergency room event I was unprepared for the events that followed. In a span of roughly three and a half hours I was witness to…

* 7 separate crystal-meth incident sightings

* 1 shirtless child bleeding from the head being held by very unconcerned parents

* 1 infant being fed chocolate milk from a bottle by aforementioned unconcerned parents

* 1 bloody towel abandoned by unconcerned parents when they took their children (one bleeding, one hopped up on chocolate milk) and left without ever seeing a doctor

* 1 woman who called herself “Aunt Francis” and drove her whole brood to the emergency room in their pajamas because her husband had “the thumpings” again

* 2 children (one adorable and one truly unfortunate looking… so sad) ignored by Aunt Francis and allowed to run all over the emergency room waiting area in BARE FEET in close proximity to abandoned bloody towels and crystal-meth incidents

* 1 woman who had just given in completely to gravity and was letting her fun bags swing so low I briefly thought they were an oddly shaped fat roll

* 1 nail-gun incident

* 2 fist fights (I only bore visual witness to one of them, the other was loud and behind closed doors)

* 1 toothless hospital administrator

For those of you keeping score, that covers my crazy quota for the week. All other crazy will be marked “return to sender”. So I’m hoping my mother won’t get offended when I wait until Sunday to return her phone calls…

Men have it so easy. Try and keep up…

While I have been married 5 blissful and more importantly, non-homicidal, years, I only recently legally changed my name. For the most part, this was due to my pathological laziness and avoidance and all things government office related as we’ve all seen how those adventures can go. But a little part of me was unsure of if I wanted to change my name and in a sense sever my single self from my married self and if I did decide to change it, who was I going to be.

Eventually, my sister shamed me into changing my name as she had hers changed within a month of her wedding. But her new last name is fun! It rolls off the tongue like a chocolate covered lollipop with a cotton candy center and I’d never met another soul with that last name. Rest assured my maiden name is nothing innovative, you can find my parents in the phone book among roughly 3 pages of similarly labeled people and my married name of Perry isn’t much different. By no means was an attachment to a cool, one of a kind last name holding me back. I just hate paperwork.

But after much thinking and signature practice reminiscent of those doodling sessions in high school( where you should PROBABLY be learning what a differential equation is but really, aren’t they all different because they each have different numbers in them and whose idea was it anyway to put a damn number right in the middle of a math problem but instead you are staring at the back of the dreamiest head your fifteen year old eyes have ever seen and scribbling his name with yours in your bubbly handwriting with little stars dotting the “i’s” because hearts are SO middle school) I came up with a combination of names that I could dash off quickly when signing a check which, let’s face it, is the main requirement for a signature. (Due to the content and structure of the previous “sentence” the heads of both my father and my ninth grade Honors English teacher have just exploded.)

The problem? During the spans of time between when I got married, changed my name, and right this second, I’ve not stayed locked up in my house never leaving and never signing anything. And there are at LEAST three different “me’s” floating around out there on things like tax returns, driver’s license, bank accounts, paychecks, and other such things that those picky little bureaucrats insist on being correct.

In September of 2006 I renewed my Georgia driver’s license. By mail. Because the picture doesn’t suck and the man at the license office way back in September of 2002 when I first got a Georgia license allowed me to put my married last name on the form because I showed him my marriage certificate. And my left boob. Plus I was able to properly distinguish my ear from my asshole, a requirement that has since been dropped due to overcrowded public transportation.

In November of 2006 I received a very official looking letter from the Department of Picky Shit that politely informed me they had discovered I didn’t exist. Something about a discrepancy between the name on my license and my social security number. I rolled my eyes, giggled a little and filed it in Clutter Stack 7C in the kitchen right between such important papers as those sweet little love notes from Southern Living threatening to deport me if I don’t subscribe to their damn magazine and my copy of the restraining order I had to place on Ryan Reynolds when he wouldn’t quit hiding in the hedges in our front yard.

Somehow the letter managed to migrate to the refrigerator where it has hung dauntingly for several months. I looked at it again last night and was shocked to learn that apparently I am precariously close to driving on a suspended license which after a little research I’ve learned isn’t a good idea and should I ever decide to run for president or hall monitor would probably be more damning than my past drug use and the hazy memory of outlining an entire hotel room with a black sharpie. We won’t even discuss the repercussions of the contents of my closet between 1986 and 1991. I’m afraid you wouldn’t respect me in the morning.

Oh Huddle House, you saucy minx…

Nothing is more telling than the car in this picture. I could NOT bring myself to crop it out because GEORGIA people, GEORGIA! I live in GEORGIA!

I have no doubt that as I was driving home from work, stopped at a red light and snapping this picture, Mr. Two-Tone there was leaving his Huddle House melted three-way in his mirrored sunglasses and redneck spiky hair and heading on over to the huntin’ club for a nice weekend with the boys. Before relocating to Georgia, I had never heard of a hunting club. The phrase, in my head, made me think of a country club. But with guns, dead animals, and domestic beer in cans as opposed to microbrews in pint glasses.

I should have kept my mouth shut. But Adam Sandler warned me and they all did, indeed, laugh at me. Redneck bastards.

One of my good friends and her husband have just started building a house. I am now firmly convinced that nothing is more trying on a marriage except putting the big and little forks in the wrong place in the silverware drawer. Or maybe leaving the toilet seat up in the middle of the night.

In eavesdropping on their many phone conversations, I can’t help but be reminded of the house-hunting trip that Patrick and I first took before moving down here to Augusta. It was, to say the least, a whirlwind. We had three days to find a house, neither of us had ever purchased or even LOOKED at a house, Patrick was still in school and we knew nothing about Augusta (I hadn’t ever even been here before and Patrick had only been here once and had gotten lost in a big white Lincoln in the WRONG part of town late at night within the first hour of arriving). Did I mention the kicker where we weren’t even engaged and Patrick (who will, to this day, deny it) broke out in hives at the slightest mention of the words future, marriage, or engagement?

We arrived in Augusta hungover and desperately in need of showers, having spent the previous night in the back of a Suburban in a parking lot in Savannah, GA after partying rock star style at St. Patrick’s Day. We laughed all the way to Augusta because after a night of beads, bars and lots and lots of alcohol, we were now on our way to a swanky hotel for three days, a bill footed by Patrick’s future employer, where we would be buying a house. It seemed almost too ironic for even us to comprehend.

In between random fits of giggles, we tentatively talked about what kind of house we wanted. We each had our requirements; I wanted a bathtub I could bathe an elephant in and a kitchen that would comfortably accommodate seventy three people. Patrick wanted a 16 car garage and trees. It quickly became obvious to me that my bathtub and kitchen were secondary as we went through the same ritual with each house. Tape measure in hand, head to the garage first. Under 24 feet long? Turn around and walk out. Who knew a boat had so much more pull than I did?

To this day, I still tease Patrick about the whole process. About my breakdown one night after perhaps six margaritas too many where I cried about helping my boyfriend choose a bachelor pad. And about his decision, a couple of months later, to bring his father instead of me to the closing. (Which, no matter how hard I try to say I don’t hold a grudge and that it all turned out just fine, still stings a little) We laugh about getting busted by the next door neighbor slinking around the house again just to take one more look and how he must have gone inside and reported to his wife that there were CHILDREN buying the house next door!

But by god, the boat fits in that damn garage.

Direct quote from the evening news…

“Its illegal to vote if you’re dead.”

Someone pass the tequila please.

It is a bad sign when you find yourself typing a meaningless sentence such as this one just to ascertain that your post title will not be longer than the post itself…