Flashback

I'm 8 years old, sitting in my bedroom reading a book. My mother walks in holding a wooden spoon. The spoon has yarn hair, googly eyes, and mismatched clothing glued to its handle.

Mom: "What do you think about joining the Girl Scouts?!"
Me: pointing to spoon "Is that what Girl Scouts do?"
Mom: "Well, yeah....this is one of the projects. You also get to learn things and earn merit badges."
Me: "No."
Mom: "Are you sure?! It could be fun..."
Me: "I'm not dressing up utensils. Go ask Jessica."

When I think of Girl Scouts, I think of anthropomorphizing spoons. No thanks. Of course, 5 minutes after Mom took Jessica to the scout interest meeting, Dad walked into my room.

Dad: "Not Girl Scout material, huh?"
Me: "God no."
Dad: "Good. Go sweep the kitchen."
Me: "Damn."

I regretted my decision until Jessica came home with that day's project: a pecan with googly-eyes glued to it.

Boy Scout Motto: "Always Be Prepared."
Girl Scout Motto: "Always Be Prepared...to make inanimate objects look like people on drugs."

Unsupervised

My landlady is having the house painted. She's been having the house painted for a month now, and they just finished yesterday. Thank God. For the past month, I've been awakening to the sound of sanding, ladders clattering on the house, and guys speaking some language I've never heard in my life. It's exhausting, and it's annoying. Primarily because I have a penchant for not walking around my house-where I live alone-in a whole lot of clothing. However, there's a window upstairs that's kind of oddly placed, so there's no blinds and no reason to have blinds. Except now there are painters standing at that upstairs window every morning. Everytime I walk from my bedroom to the bathroom now I have to wear pants. Pants! It's a travesty.

Over the course of this month, my landlady calls me all the time and asks me to do things.
8 AM- "Can you open both your doors?"
8 AM- "Are you going anywhere today?"
8 AM- "Can you move your car out onto the street?"

Why she always has to ask me crap while I'm still asleep is beyond me, but such is my life. So, yesterday I left for work early in the morning. The painters were outside my door painting the threshold. I stepped over them, hopped in the car and headed to the office. Later that night, my meetings were over and I was at a bar with some coworkers. My landlady calls.

"Hey Sam, when are you coming home?"
"I don't know, an hour or two? Why?"
"Well, it's just that the painters had to paint the thresholds, so both of your doors are open."
"You opened my doors?"
"Yeah, cause they had to paint."
"So do you need me to come home and guard my stuff? What do you need?"
"Oh no, I would never ask you to do that. I'm here and I'm checking on everything, so no worries."
"Okay bye."

So, I stay at the bar another hour, get home about 3 hours after she called. I arrive home, the house is dark, her car is not in the driveway, and both of my doors are wide open. In my living room sit Tom's computer and various gaming systems. However, nothing's missing, so Tom and I turn on the lights and the Red Sox game and go on about our business. About an hour later we hear the landlady pull up. She's probably left my stuff unguarded for a good 3 hours...I'm sure she was calling to see if I was coming home so she could leave. But, I hate her, I've already renewed my lease, nothing's missing, I'm just gonna leave it alone.

I've been home for about an hour when I walk upstairs to use the restroom. I walk in, and the toilet seat is up. I freak out. You see, in 14 months of living near Tom and even for the year he would come visit me in Alabama, Tom has never once left the toilet seat up. Not once. It's kind of amazing actually. Plus, he hadn't been up to the bathroom since we'd been home and I know I hadn't left it up that morning. Someone had been in my house. Not just in my house, pretty much in every single room of my house because to use the restrooom you have to go all the way upstairs.

So, I run downstairs and call my landlady.
"Hey, did you let your guys use my bathroom?"
"What? No. I'll call them and find out if they used it."
"Fine. I know they used it though- someone did."
"Okay, I'll call them."

So, she calls them and of course one of the painters admits to having used it.
"What? I had to use the toilet!"

She calls me and insists that she was there supervising them all day...oh, except when she went to get her kid. "He must've intentionally waited for me to leave to go in." Yeah, well maybe you should've gotten someone else to pick up the kid, or someone else to watch the house, or NOT open my frikkin' doors without my permission. Cripes.

So, the painter incident, combined with the fact that I wasn't allowed to close my doors til midnite even though it was 50 degrees out (had to let the paint dry) kind of made last night craptastic. If I get robbed this weekend, I think we all know who did it.

The only good thing? On my way out of the bar last night, I found a $50 bill in the street.