The Junk Drawer

Like many high-schoolers my first job was at a fast-food restaurant. I learned a lot about responsibility, working in a fast-paced environment and coping with the public.

I also learned why you should avoid eating there if at all possible. Consider this the next time you pay a visit to your neighborhood quickie-meal joint:

1. Teenagers run the place. The majority of the staff were under 18 years old. Teenagers have zero vested interest in serving quality food to you. They are biding their time until they can punch out and resume the part of their lives they give a damn about.

2. Managers can’t be everywhere. Yes, the good managers will oversee the production line and make sure nothing bad happens to your food. But they are not omnipresent. I once witnessed a co-worker drop a large cut of roast beef on the floor while trying to load it into a slow-cook oven. He picked it up and put it right back in. (I reported him).

3. The sneeze guard over the salad bar is worthless. Understand that salad bar items are subjected to dirty fingers, dirty air, coughing and hacking customers and fluctuating cooling temperatures. Face it. The food sits out all day and God knows what happens to it before you sidle up and help yourself. In addition, if enough of one item is too much to toss for the day, it’ll be put out the very next day to mix with the same environmental pollutants as it did the day before.

4. Cleanliness is not top priority. One day the restaurant’s drainage system backed up and we sloshed around for two hours with plastic bags over our shoes, still serving food, before someone came from the Health Department to shut us down until repairs could take place.

5. Food for you one minute, dog food the next. For about a year, our restaurant entered into an arrangement with the local SPCA. Food that was deemed fit for human consumption was fed to people. After the food was under heat lamps too long, it was dropped in a bucket and picked up to be fed to dogs. We’re not talking quality here. Five minutes ago, it was meant for you.

6. You get what minimum wage pays for. Almost anyone can get hired. The same guy who dropped the roast beef on the floor also cut off part of his fingertip while slicing ham. A week later he was caught smoking pot behind the drive-thru window and finally fired. He worked under the influence a lot of the time. Your best interest was not on his stoned-out mind. We didn’t like to think what else he did that no one caught him doing.

7. Cross contamination is the norm. When things got busy, the same person who just swept garbage off the floor might be asked to perform cashier duties without washing their hands in between. They may rearrange your food on your serving tray, help the food line staff assemble sandwiches, grab cups and utensils, all with their bare hands. What they touched, you touched and you probably put it into your mouth.

Bon appetite! (if you dare)

Because we apparently angered the furniture gods, Dave and I are still having problems with our living room. In this case, it’s a problem with our lamps. More on that in a minute.

I promised an update on the state of the living room. Here it is:

When we bought our couch and chair (the one with the black cat on it), we realized that they needed to be separated by lots of space. It looked too cramped with everything on one side of our small room. The coffee table is now scratched beyond recognition because of the trouble-making cat you see on the couch, so now it serves as our TV stand.

And yes, that’s a teddy bear sitting next to him. It belongs to the third cat, Stinky (not pictured). Yeah, my cats have favorite stuffed animals. Got a problem with that?

With the set now split apart, we needed something to bridge the canyon in the middle of the room, so we threw down a rug and pulled the red chair in from another room.

Yes, we know it looks like we were inebriated when we set it up like this, but it fits our style and we don’t mind that the colors don’t match. We’re choosing to call this look drunken feng shui eclectic.

So what’s up with the lamps? Long story. It involves a set of brass balls.

We bought two lamps (you see only one here) from a place about 20 miles from home. It was a pain in the butt to drive there, but we’d spent weeks on an unsuccessful hunt for a specific kind of brass lamp, and we got it on good authority that this place would have what we wanted.

Turns out they had tons of brass lamps in their showroom, but we ultimately went with a catalog order because it offered brass lamps with pull chains instead of on/off knobs. We insisted on pull chains with brass balls hanging from them. But ordering from a catalog meant a six week wait.

Six weeks finally came and Dave picked up the lamps and brought them home. We ordered two of the same one. And why do I want to kill people now? They didn’t match. One set of balls was smaller than the other set. So we hiked back to the lamp store and plopped them down on the counter.

"Hi. We bought these lamps and they don’t match. See how the pull chains are different? These balls are smaller than those balls. Plus they hang crooked. And when you pull on one, the chain grinds."

"I see."

"And one of the sockets is broken. The bulb won’t light."

"OK."

"And see how the shine is duller on this one versus the other?"

"Uh-hmm."

We expected to hear "We’re sorry. We’ll order another one." Instead we got "Hmmm, not sure what I can do here."

"Say what?"

"They were imported. I’m going to have to let the company know. They might not even know they’re having a problem."

Still taking in the part about "not sure I what we can do here," I almost missed that last little nugget "…they’re having a problem" as in, she didn’t feel she had any responsibility to make things right. Lady, it’s not the company who has a problem. You have a problem. Me.

She said she’d call today and let me know what the company can do for us. Said she’d order another set and maybe they’d come in identical.

What. The. Hell.

"Maybe they’ll come in as a matched set? I don’t understand."

"Sometimes this happens with lamp manufacturers. You can’t guarantee that if you order two, they’ll be identical." She even had the nerve to say "If you hadn’t seen the two mismatched ones together, you wouldn’t even have noticed the brass balls were wrong if they’d both come in with the balls you don’t like."

"But we ordered the lamp with the bigger balls. They look better than the smaller balls. We want the bigger balls."

I asked her to cancel the replacement order. Fine. And why am I still cranky about this? Because we’re total idiots and left the lamp shades at home and now we have to drive another 40 miles to return them. We thought they would just replace the lamps and so we didn’t think to take the shades with us.

So now we’re just hoping the stupid lamp store will reimburse us at 100%. And I’m hoping a place that sells the brass lamps with big balls will come to me in a vision. We are angry and still lampless. Will someone please throw us a bone?

All we wanted was nice, normal furniture and lamps with balls that match. We do not know what we’ve done to deserve this. A friend of mine said he recently had to replace his furniture and he and his wife went to ONE store and picked out things they liked in TWENTY MINUTES. I hate him and I hope all his stuff falls apart the day after his warranty runs out.

UPDATE 11/27: Dave dropped off the shades today and we got a full credit for everything. We’re back to square one again, but at least the nonsense with the lamp store is over!

They can’t say I didn’t try.

Back on October 1st, I made a resolution to stop saying "like" so much. I got tired of hearing myself say it in every other sentence. I vowed to drop a quarter in a jar every time I used it as a filler word. I dropped a lot of quarters, and then bills, as you can see.

I would have had the same degree of success if I’d vowed to, say, drive to work every day backwards at 120MPH wearing big clown shoes. It fast became an impossible task.

Thankfully, resolutions are meant to be broken. So I’m back to saying "like" and what a relief. LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE LIKE!!! Ahhhh, that feels better.

Throughout my little experiment, every time I felt a "like" coming on, I would stall, stutter, and stumble for something else to put in its place. Or I’d just skip the word entirely and replace it with an uncomfortably long pause. But that was unsatisfying, like when you feel a sneeze coming on, but can’t get it out.

I wanted and needed a "like" in there and it felt ridiculous to try not to do it. It got embarrassing, too, because people thought I was having a stroke when they saw that vacant look in my eyes while I searched for a word. She alright? What’s wrong with her?

After a few weeks of this crazy challenge, something really weird started to happen. I developed other speech and gesturing problems when I talked.

Out of nowhere, I began to say "literally" a lot, even when I knew it was stupidly inappropriate. As in, "Jason, I literally forgot my lunch today. Wanna go out for something?" It’s as though my brain was looking for any filler word, no matter how dumb it sounded.

Whenever "literally" didn’t cut it, out came the air quotes.

I’ve been accused of being animated with my hands when I talk excitedly about something, but I’ve never done the index and middle finger quotation marks thing to express sarcasm or anything else. This may be a subconscious gesture due to my obsession for finding pictures to submit to my favorite specialty blog. Or it could be that if I wasn’t letting myself speak the way I wanted, my hands were taking over by force.

So what did I learn from all this? I learned that the likes, the you knows, and the I means are essential in speech. I learned that it’s not a personal weakness to use them, unless you’re a teenage girl who uses "like" every third word. I mean it, ladies. You sound flighty and stupid and you’re giving me a headache. Bring it down a notch, will ya?

Would I try this again? No. Did anything good come out of this? Yes! I have just over $100 in my Like Jar, which I’ll put to good use for Christmas. It was an interesting savings plan, one I didn’t have to think about.

Saving without pain. I like when that happens.

I recently bought my own domain name, JunkDrawerBlog.com, and made the switch from the default Blogspot address (kathyfrederick.blogspot.com) to the new one on Wednesday.

Today I’ll review why you should move to your own custom domain and how I got there with the help of fellow blogger, Blog Bloke. I focus on the Blogger platform, but WordPress, Typepad and other users can benefit from this, too.

There are several reasons why you should get your own domain name:

Credibility: Bloggers with their own domains enjoy a higher level of credibility than those who don’t. Having your own domain shows you’re putting time into your blog and want to distinguish yourself from the millions of other blogs that are created every day. A custom domain says “I’m a serious blogger and I’m here to stay.”

Memorability: For the four months I used my default Blogspot address, I became increasingly frustrated with giving out my blog’s address. It was too long and completely forgettable. Sure, I could send people a link, but if I gave it out verbally, there was almost no chance it’d be remembered. That meant I lost a potential reader. With JunkDrawerBlog.com the recall level increases significantly.

Pagerank: When you use your own domain, your site will be ranked higher in search engine results than if you use the Blogspot sub-domain. Higher pagerank puts your blog in front of more eyes, and that’ll bring you more traffic.

Branding: With my own domain, I’ve essentially branded myself. With my old address, kathyfrederick.blogspot.com, I identified with my personal name (not my blog, where the focus should be), and with Blogger (why should they get all the attention?). With JunkDrawerBlog.com, my blog name is the focus and it becomes my brand and my identity.

How I made the move to JunkDrawerBlog.com

To be honest, there were times I just wanted to pay someone else to do it so I could get back to writing, which is why I’m blogging at all. Just because I’m in the computing field didn’t mean I wanted to spend my time figuring out the intricacies of making the transition.

That’s where Blog Bloke comes in. There are gazillions of blogs out there on the topic of blogging, mostly with a focus on how to make money. That has never been and will never be the reason I blog. What I needed was help with the technical aspects of blogging itself, and not vague descriptions about how to employ certain techniques and methods. I needed detailed tutorials and I hit the jackpot with Blog Bloke.

When I finally decided it was time to bite the bullet and move over to JunkDrawerBlog.com, I used this post as my guide, and it’s what I recommend you study and refer to when it comes time for your move. Believe it when he says it’s proven to work. It worked for me. In fact, it was the only tutorial I found that gave specific enough information to get the job done.

Why I almost had a heart attack

The above tutorial works under certain circumstances assumed to already be in place. The one tweak I had to make for it to work was return to GoDaddy, where I registered my new domain, and “unpark” it. When I first bought it, there was a question during setup that I answered incorrectly, which caused me to almost have a coronary when I followed the rest of the Bloke’s tutorial.

When a domain is “parked,” it means it’s not yet available for public consumption. Domain registrars usually park a domain by default when it’s registered. My mistake was accepting that default option. When I transferred my Blogspot address to the new domain, up came a huge “404 Server Error” and no blog!

I immediately undid the transfer and then spent the better part of Wednesday researching why my blog wasn’t displaying. Once I discovered the concept of parking and unparking, I went back to GoDaddy and unparked the domain. Then I resumed the transfer, as per Bloke Bloke’s tutorial, and my blog magically reappeared. I also started breathing again. When the blog you’ve worked so hard on suddenly isn’t available, it’s a very scary and panic-inducing event. Don’t let this happen to you! It ain’t pretty.

I’m still no expert on the technicalities of blogging, but Blog Bloke is. Check out his blog for everything you could possibly want to know about making your blog a shining star among millions.

Blog Bloke is a class act and I thank him for all the FREE help he’s given me during my blog’s upstart. He just made me a member of the Blokester Network and I couldn’t be more honored.

Well, I finally did it! I bought my own domain name, JunkDrawerBlog.com.

I’m still hosting my content on Blogger, but now I’m redirecting everyone to the new address. It’s far easier to remember than the old one. The good news is you don’t need to change anything to get to The Junk Drawer.

If you’ve bookmarked me, or subscribed to my feed, you’ll notice that only the URL has changed. If you’re sharing my site with anyone (and thanks if you do!), just tell ’em I’m at JunkDrawerBlog.com and they’ll find me.

One final note: If you are considering starting your own blog, listen to me and listen to me good. Before you do anything, buy your own domain name so you don’t have to go through the hassle of switching over later, like I did.

I’ll explain how painful that was in a future post so that you’re sufficiently scared into doing what I tell you.

Until then, Happy Thanksgiving! May your pants still fit you by the end of the day.

News flash: I just learned my old Catholic grade school is celebrating its 80^th anniversary. A call went out to former students to send in a little blurb about where we are now and any memories about the school we wanted to share.

Hmmm. Memories? Share? With the school that gave me the memories I’d rather forget? Tell me, did anyone have a joyful grade school experience? If you did, you’re either lying or you were the kind of student who made life miserable for the rest of us.

I’m going to take a trip down memory lane, but it’s just for the nerds, the shy people, the insecure and the socially-awkward. So get lost, perfect people. You’re not welcome here. Neener, neener, neeeeeener! If you were like me and wonder how you made it through school and came out the other side, hop on the bus. We’re going for a ride!

You’ll see soon there is no rhyme or reason to what I remember about grade school. But knowing a little bit about Grade School Me at least puts things in perspective:

Fact 1: I had to wear a plaid uniform every day, which could be worn only with a white blouse, white or green socks, and sensible shoes. The only thing that made you unique was the length of your skirt. The popular girls always wore them short, short, short!

Fact 2: My skirt was one of the longest of any girl’s in the school. The rule was “Hemlines below the knee.” The only Moms who followed that rule were mine and the mother of a girl who went on to become a nun.

Fact 3: I wore glasses from kindergarten to third grade. To jack up the ridicule quotient, I also had to wear a patch over one eye to improve the strength of the other, though thankfully, not during school. But I was still known as the poor little Pirate Girl by people who saw me wear it.

Fact 4: I had kinky curly hair and tried to wear it as a shag. I have pictures of how this looks, but they’re in a safe-deposit box where they can’t hurt me anymore.

Fact 5: The first four letters in my last name were M-E-S-S, which lent itself to some interesting name-calling by all the mean girls, as in “Kathy, did you mess yourself today?”

With that vision of Grade School Me in your head, perhaps it won’t surprise you what Grown Up Me remembers. Ready?

Day 1: I Hate it Already

By far, the worst memory is of my first day of kindergarten. I felt like my Mom had sent me off to prison. I cried so hard, I almost threw up. None of the other kids was having a problem, and realizing this only made things worse. My mother was called to come collect me. I don’t recall how the second day went, although it’s possible a teacher’s assistant sat with me to make sure I didn’t go AWOL. I really wanted out.

The Bishop is Coming! The Bishop is Coming!

One day in the 7^th grade, our principal got a call from the diocese that the bishop was coming for a visit. I don’t recall why he was coming, but I got the sense that it wasn’t expected. Because as soon as the word got out, I was handpicked along with another student to run outside with brooms, dust pans and garbage bags to furiously tidy up the front of the building for his visit. Leaves, garbage, branches, dog poo, you name it. What said “Housekeeper and Landscaper” about me, I’ll never know.

Roll with it, Baby.

During a 4^th grade talent show, I massacred the gymnastics routine I’d been practicing for days. I’d forgotten almost all of it, so to the tune of It’s a Small World, I did the only part I could remember — somersaults. That, and oh yeah, more somersaults. Roll, roll, roll up the mat, Roll, roll, roll, down the mat. I ended the performance with a fist-pumping ta-DA! I got a round of applause, but only because the audience was happy I’d put an end to my own suffering. Worst. Performance. Ever.

I’ll Cast a Spell on You!

In the 3^rd grade we had the nun from hell. Only one person liked her. God. And we weren’t even sure of that. Her name escapes me at the moment. Let’s just call her Sister Hates-Kids-A-Lot. One day while she led our class down to the gym for an assembly, Sister Hates-Kids-A-Lot fell down the stairs and broke her arm. Then she did something that we didn’t expect. She began to cry real, human tears. We thought we should help her, but we were immobilized by fear and confusion. Fear, because she was the nun with death ray eyes, and confusion, because we didn’t think she had a soul, much less the capacity to feel pain and emotion. After the accident, we still hated her and she still hated us. And we feared her even more, now that she was wearing a cast on her arm and could use it to crack open our skulls anytime she wanted. To this day, I feel guilty for not having helped her, but I’m also not ashamed to say we thought she had it coming.

What’s in a name? Too many letters, that’s what.

I was the last child in kindergarten to be able to print her full name without the aid of a cheatsheet placard. In my defense, my last name was twelve letters long. But being the last at anything is no fun, and I remember that trailing-behind feeling like it was yesterday.

The Agony and the Irony

In the 4^th grade, I received a punishment that did not fit the crime. Painfully shy, I wouldn’t open my mouth unless someone talked to me first. Even then, I was afraid to say anything. One day, as class was preparing to take a quiz, I was turned around in my seat talking to another girl, but never realized the test was starting. The teacher loudly and ceremoniously called me a Chatty Cathy – a Chatty Cathy! Me! The one who never speaks! — and told me to turn around and write a big fat “F” on my paper. She said nothing to the girl behind me who was also talking. I was mortified that day and ruined for weeks after that. Just when I thought I’d finally put it behind me, Geico came out with this commercial. Whenever I hear it, I’m transported back to the 4^th grade and I flop to the floor, start sobbing and my husband has to remind me where I am and what year it is.

Being a bad sport about it

In the 6th grade, I made my first attempt at organized sports. I joined the basketball team and at the first practice got hit in the nose with the ball. I bled profusely and then promptly quit. This would be the first in a long line of sports I tried and sucked at: gymnastics, cheerleading, and softball, among others. If you’re a parent and your kids want to quit a sport, let them. There is no value in making them embarrass themselves in front of their classmates. No value at all.

We Don’t Need No Stinking Child Labor Laws

I recall the weekend one summer that some of us kids were picked for a chain gang, whose job it was to paint classrooms and hallways. I’m quite sure someone volunteered me for this job. I couldn’t have wanted to waste a weekend smelling paint and getting lead poisoning. Catholic schools always drew on slave labor one way or another. If it wasn’t painting the school, it was going door to door selling candy like some hobo begging for a place to sleep. But even hobos didn’t have to meet a quota.

I saved this next incident for last because while it starts out badly, it ends on a high note. You need to know that sometimes there was a silver lining.

She Almost Made a Grown Man Cry

My house was only four blocks from school, so I walked there and back every day. Sometimes I’d walk along with another student, Rob S., who lived in my neighborhood. One day as we were dismissed, I paired up with Rob and then heard my fifth grade teacher, Mr. G., inexplicably shout at us “Kathy and Robbie sittin’ in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g!” It embarrassed me so much I thought I’d die. I didn’t tell my Mom about the incident until the next morning, after stressing about it the whole night before. She made an effort to take my mind off it and I thought “Case closed.”

But what happened next, I’ll never forget. She showed up during recess, and in front of everyone, she marched right up to Mr. G and opened up a can of whoop ass on him. I had never seen my mother like that before or since. She stood there waving a finger at him “How could you say that? What is wrong with you? You ever do that again, and you’ll have me to deal with.” Mr. G. was never more polite to me than after he got a face full of Mom.

Perhaps I’ve triggered some grade school memories that you have. Perhaps you’ll hate me now for doing so. Would anyone care to share their grade school horrors? You’ll find a box of tissues and a shoulder to cry on in the comments section.

The Junk Drawer is here for you.

I’ve just been tagged for a meme. A meme (rhymes with "dream") is a set of questions that are answered by one blogger, who then "tags" another blogger for that meme. That blogger then answers the questions posed, tags another and the process continues. Memes give bloggers an opportunity to write on a subject they might not have otherwise considered.

My pal Mike, author of the Mr. Grudge blog, tagged me for a Five Things About Blogging meme. I was glad for the tag because I thought at some point I might write about my blogging experience so far. What better time than now?

Thanks for the tag, Mike. On with the meme!

How long have you been blogging? I started my blog three and a half months ago. It’s been a highly satisfying experience so far. Although The Junk Drawer is a small fish in a big pond, I’ve developed a decent following in a short time and hope for greater exposure as I get better at marketing it and new readers find me.

What inspired you to start a blog and who are your mentors? Over the years I’ve written some short humor stories just for the fun of writing them. I’d e-mail them around to family and friends and get responses like "You need to publish this," or "Why aren’t you writing for a living?"

I always took these remarks with a grain of salt, until I sent out a funny story about a one particularly hellish tech support experience I had with my 82-year-old father. The response was overwhelming. "Will you please do something with your writing already!" I made a half-hearted attempt to submit the story to some traditional media outlets, but quickly realized that route would get me nowhere. Thinking it’s better to self-publish than not publish at all, The Junk Drawer was born.

While not a mentor in the sense of handing out writing advice, my husband is always there for me and so it feels right to mention him here. He’s thrilled I took up blogging, and the man thinks I’ll get a book published some day. He believes 100% I am capable of it, and his unwavering faith in me allows me to think for a moment that the idea isn’t so ridiculous.

Are you trying to make money from your blog, or just doing it for fun? Without a doubt, just doing it for fun. I see no money from this in my future. Since I’m averse to most forms of advertising, you’ll never find any ads on my blog.

Tell me 3 things you LOVE about being online. First and foremost, I love my readers. It amazes me that I have a group of loyal readers who keep coming back every day to see what’s new in The Drawer. I hope I can live up to their expectations whenever they visit. Second, I love this method of writing — sometimes fast and furious — because it forces me to write with a sense of immediacy and purpose. My goal is to post every day. Sometimes that’s difficult, especially for a humor writer. If I have a bad day, it’s tough to write funny. Lastly, I love the blogging community. I rub shoulders with some amazing and talented writers, and their success helps keep me motivated and challenged to write my very best.

Tell me 3 things you STRUGGLE with online. First, the numbers. There are well over 100 million blogs in existence today, and I’m competing with all of them for attention. Second, marketing myself is a job all its own. In addition to trying to write a quality post every day, I’m trying to get the word out about my blog. It’s a tedious process, fraught with pitfalls and stumbles. Sometimes you cast your line out to various social networking sites and blog directories and no one bites. I wish I had an assistant for just that kind of work. Lastly, it’s a struggle to find useful information about blogging that doesn’t involve how to make money. It seems to be the primary focus of many blogs, and finding help for non-commercial blogs takes a good amount of research and patience.

Thanks again, Mike, for inviting me to do this meme. Now I get to tag someone else. Kev over at Special Kind of Stupid, you’re it! Kev’s is one of the first great humor blogs I stumbled upon after I started blogging. I’d like to read his take on the 5 questions. Now get crackin’!

People are worried about me.

A couple days ago, I was working on a client’s PC in another office installing some software that takes forever to load. Since waiting for software to install is akin to watching water boil, I thought I’d at least be productive and check for voice mail or email messages. Nothin’. I looked around for something interesting to read. Nothin’. I stared at the wall and wondered how I was going to avoid gaining 17 pounds over Thanksgiving weekend and got all stressed out.

And then it happened. I heard a paper shredder in the distance.

Oh, yeah, baby. Now we’re talkin’! See, there’s one thing in this world that is no bigger stress reliever for me than shredding documents. Yoga? Sorry, no can do. Meditation? Not my thing. Visualization? Only if it looks like this. Sending paper through a slotted, metal-toothed grinder and watching it turn into tiny confetti dots? Priceless.

Seems the client whose computer I was working on was sifting through a humongous container of confidential paperwork that her office collects for shredding. The bin was busting at the seams.

I asked her if she really had to shred all that, and she said “Yeah. It’s a big, annoying job. Even our student workers don’t want to do it.”

I started to tremble and shake.

“Raquel? Um, would you mind if I helped?”

Looking up from her 300 lb. paper pile with a seriously confused look on her face, she asked, “Are you feeling all right? You really want to do this?”

“Yes. I know. I have a problem. But I like to shred paper. It’s destructive and productive! And if you don’t let me do it, I won’t fix your PC.”

“You kidding me?”

“No. Now are you gonna keep looking at me like that, or are you gonna let me get this party started? Move it, sister.”

So there I stood, gleefully feeding a few sheets in at a time, while Raquel sorted out non-shreddable items and things that could just go in the recycle bin. She started to realize what a wonderful discovery she just found in my neurosis. She started to think that together we could make a serious dent in the pile. She started to think she found a sucker who might just do this on a regular basis.

She found me. A paper-feeding, paper clip-pulling, confetti-dumping, maniacal demolition machine.

We worked through the bin for about thirty minutes. All the while, her office mates sauntered up to me and asked “What’s going on? Did Raquel put you to work?”

“No! I like it! Now stop bothering me. You’re screwing up my rhythm.”

One guy who didn’t know me asked if I was brought in just for this job. When he found out I was just doing a favor and getting my jollies in the process, he asked if I would come over to his office and do his shredding.

“Listen, dude. Don’t toy with me. If you’re making fun of me, I can take it. But if you’re telling me you have a fresh pile of paper somewhere that needs to be sent through this shredder, you better mean business because if you’re kidding, I’ll take you down, I swear to God.”

Backing away slowly now, he whimpered “Lady, you’re scaring me.”

As Raquel and I plowed through the documents and emptied the receptacle a few times when it got full of glorious confetti, I realized my fun was coming to an end. The software installation I’d been monitoring finally finished. The shredding party was over.

Raquel thanked me profusely, since we’d gotten through more than half of the bin’s contents. She just couldn’t get over how much we got done.

I asked her if I could come back sometime and finish this pile, or even do future piles. And we all know there will always be future piles. Whoever said we’d be living in a paperless society by now couldn’t have been more wonderfully wrong.

She said, “Of course. We can put you on a schedule.”

Happy in the knowledge that I’ll always have a place in her office for shredding whenever I want, I left and skipped down the hall to my own office. When I passed by our reception desk, I noticed a co-worker sitting next to our own shredder with a pile of papers.

“Want some help with that?”

“Kathy, are you feeling all right?”

“Yeah. It’s my catharsis. Now beat it before I have to hurt you.”

I love to shred, I love to shred!

Don’t deny me shredding, or I’ll beat you on the head!

I’m pleased to announce an addition to the Food That Looks Like Stuff collection. The piece, called Carrot Love, was submitted by a friend and colleague who clearly has an eye for art. Study it carefully.

This photograph reflects the highest standards of excellence that The Junk Drawer strives to achieve when accepting items for publication. This is exactly what we’re looking for. You know, pictures that would make adolescent boys snicker.

"Come on, baby! Gimme a kiss!"

I’m blushing because this week I received not one, but two, awards for The Junk Drawer. Applause, applause! Let’s start the show.

Bucky at The WVb (West Virginia Blogger) awarded me with the Be The Blogger Award. This award was created by Mark at Me And My Drum to recognize bloggers who make their blogs their own, give it everything they’ve got, are interactive with their readers and know how to have fun!

I do feel I am my blog. And I’m thrilled that I have a decent amount of loyal readers. I try to make your visits worth the click. It’s very gratifying that people keep coming back to The Drawer, day after day. Thanks everyone!

My second award is the You Make Me Smile Award, given to me by Moonshadow at Kansas Born. She says I crack her up, which has been the goal of The Junk Drawer ever since I gave up giving boring tech support tips. I am truly honored.

I’m spreading the love by tagging a few fellow bloggers for these awards:

J.D. at I Do Things So You Don’t Have To for her laugh out loud funny and for blog originality. I Do Things is my blog away from blog.

Kev at Special Kind of Stupid for Best Blog Name and his dry sense of humor.

Karl at The Frog Bog for his slightly twisted view on life. Karl rocks.

Jeff at View from the Cloud for his creativity and hilarity. Jeff is the brainchild behind our Noises Support Group, and that deserves an award of its own.

Cardiogirl at Cardiogirl: 19% Body Fat 100% Fun for her refreshing, honest and fun blog. Her stories are both heart-warming and hilarious, done just right.

Terry at Bent Objects. Terry is an extraordinarily talented wire sculptor who I predict is going to make The Big Time for his creative, fun and thought-provoking art.

Maureen at I’d Rather Be Blogging for her cozy, comfy mixed bag of a blog. I feel right at home here.

Bethany at The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks for Best Specialty Blog. Her blog is the reason I’m going to get in a car accident because I’m driving around looking for signs to submit to her site instead of watching the road.

Thanks Bucky and Moonshadow for the awards. I’m humbled and happy that my little 4-month-old blog brings a smile to your faces.

I’m going to change out of my designer gown, kick off my shoes and take my hair down now. I got all dressed up for this award ceremony, you know! Roll credits…….

Blogger’s Note: I realize this makes the third post about food in four days. I’m sorry. It’s not my fault.

I blame my pal J.D. over at I Do Things. She’s the woman who throws entire pies away when she and her husband know they’ve had enough and shouldn’t eat anymore. Today, she sent me a note about the time her husband threw away a perfectly good box of chocolates he received as a gift just so he wouldn’t be tempted to eat it. Her note reminded me of the time I, too, had a box of chocolates destined for the trash.

I used to love Cella’s Chocolate Covered Cherries before I bought two boxes and sat down to plow through one of them. All comfy on the couch, TV remote in hand, I opened the box to see that one of them was sporting a full head of hair. I just about threw up.

You can click that picture to get a better look, but I wouldn’t recommend it. All you need to know is the little guy down front needs a box of Just for Men hair coloring and the one next to him isn’t much better off. The remaining others are in the early stages of decomposition, and thus have much less-developed hair follicles. But they’re on their way.

So irritated that I couldn’t enjoy my sweet chocolaty snacks that night, I drove back over to the store where I bought them and informed the clerk of my gag-inducing discovery and that I wanted a refund.

I opened the box to show her the funky confections. She freaked just like I did, then called her manager over to have a look. "Ewwww, look at this," she says.

The manager, strangely NOT horrified, says "Yeah, we got a letter about that on Friday."

"You got a letter? About the hair? On Friday?" I asked, on a Monday I might add.

"Yeah, they said there was some problem during manufacturing. Wanted us to pull them all off the shelves," she explains.

I ponder for a moment why a person would remember reading a warning about a science experiment being carried out in a box of chocolates, and then do nothing about it.

I didn’t have the patience or energy to ask her why they didn’t pull them by now, but I did stay long enough to get my money back and see that she removed them all from the shelves.

After a year-long moratorium on buying boxes of Cella’s, I recently resumed eating them. But I always give them a thorough once-over just to be sure none of them is wearing a wig. Hair is not a good look for them.

Like everyone else, I enjoy kicking back on Sundays, reading the paper, puttering around and generally being lazy. It helps to take the downtime and rejuvenate my spirit before the craziness of another week begins.

I don’t recall where I read the following passage, but I jotted it down and tacked it up on my refrigerator, reading it on Sundays or whenever I feel the need for calm. Be sure to read it slowly and carefully, visualizing it for the greatest benefit.

Picture yourself near a stream. Birds are softly chirping in the crisp, cool mountain air. Nothing can bother you here. No one knows this secret place. You are in total seclusion from that place called “the world.” The soothing sound of a gentle waterfall fills the air with a cascade of serenity. The water is clear. You can easily make
out the face of the person whose head you’re holding under the water.

I love food. No doubt about it. In fact, it appears I also love to write about food, as the Food category in my sidebar is the second most-tagged topic in this blog. Seeing that just scared me a little.

Like most people, it’s a daily battle to count calories, get enough exercise and not feel like a moo-cow every time someone brings food to the office. I’m usually the first in line to inspect what kind of goodies have been bestowed upon us. And whoever thinks fruit cup is a dessert doesn’t know how much better it could be dipped in chocolate.

When it gets really bad and I want to eat an entire family-sized bag of cheese curls for dinner, there is one tactic I’ve used on more than one occasion. THROW ALL OF IT IN THE TRASH. My friend J.D. over at I Do Things has a name for this, whenever she and her husband want to rid themselves of a certain crusty baked dessert they shouldn’t have. It’s called Pie Rage. Yep, just get all insane and throw the stuff out!

Now for all you people that think that’s a horrible thing to do, what with all the starving children in China, I ask you this: How is this bag of orange-colored snacks going to get to China? And it’s not going to be enough to feed everyone anyway, and I’m not even sure cheese curls qualify as food. It’s better off in the trash, and off my thighs.

This week Dave and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary. To treat ourselves, I picked up the chocolate drip cake you see pictured above. I was trying out a new bakery in our neighborhood and that cake looked spectacular in the display case and I just had to have it.

Unfortunately, the cake looked better than it tasted. The cake part was dry as sand, and it made me question just how long it sat in the bakery before I arrived and salivated all over it. The icing looked so yummy and I assumed the cake that it enveloped would taste scrumpdillyicious. But I learned you can’t judge a cake by its icing.

We would have had no problem eating that whole thing over a few days, had it tasted better. You know how it’s tradition to hold the top layer of your wedding cake in the freezer and eat it on your first anniversary? No chance. We ate the whole thing in two days after returning from our honeymoon. I don’t know who thinks you can keep opening your freezer for the next 364 days and not dig into it. People who do that are just not right.

So what became of our anniversary cake? It went bye-bye in the next day’s trash. It felt sad to dump the whole thing out, but at least it saved us about 6,000 unwanted calories. The next time you want to skip exercising for a day, follow one simple step and throw out the food you were about to eat. There. Now you don’t have to burn it off. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

A couple years ago I noticed what looked like a smiley face on an overly-seasoned snack chip. That curious discovery led to an endless search for other food that looks like stuff.

Weeble Tomato Guy
Mr. Weeble came to me in a bag of home-grown tomatoes given to me by a colleague. His bottom began to dimple and he soon was unable to stand on his own. Weebles wobble and they DO fall down.

Yummy Yammy, The Elephant Man
Found this face in a yam from dinner. Random fork stabs happened to
give Elephant Man a set of eyes.

Meatloaf for Brains
Yummy Yammy accompanied this brain-like meatloaf.
As gross as it looks, it was quite tasty.

Kitty Cat Face
Dave found this kitty cat sleeping in his ice cream.

Garlic Knot Mitten
Submitted by colleague Jason Slipp. Taken with a camera phone, so it appears much larger than it actually was.

The Chip with Heart
Long forgotten in a kitchen cabinet (awaiting its submission to the site), this chip is eight months old. It’s remarkable to me that it withstood changes in temperature over the months and never showed signs of wearing down. Preservatives will kill us all.

Carrot Love
Reader Brad Price submitted this shot of two carrots in a loving embrace. Spooning isn’t just for humans anymore.

Bagel #9

Reader Heather Simoneau submitted this picture of a numeric and tasty bagel she found in a package of Thomas’ bagels.

If you were here on Sunday and joined the support group for people who are bothered by certain noises, you’ll know that Jeff from View From the Cloud invited people to join his local chapter, and I invited others to join here at The Junk Drawer. Since Jeff is scary-organized, he took meeting minutes and posted them on his blog.

Head on over and check ’em out. Just knock quietly before you enter.

What amazes me is the sheer number and odd nature of the noises that Jeff harvested from the comments that were left in his blog, my favorite of which is "hotdish ingredients being stirred." Of course, now that someone mentioned that, I’ll probably never make another casserole again.

I had no idea when I wrote my original post about my hyper-sensitive hearing skills that it would spawn such madness. I have Jeff to thank for suggesting this support group because clearly there are a lot of people in need of help.

To supplement Jeff’s list of noises that make our ears bleed, I’ve collected the ones left at the Pennsylvania chapter of our support group. Thank you Jeff, Marie, Regan, Peter, Maureen, JD, Terry, Cardiogirl, Gale, Steve, LindaF, MomThumb, and Bennie, for standing up and admitting your weaknesses.

The first step to recovery is realizing you have a problem. And, boy, do we have problems:

Pogo stick boings
Flyscreen security doors banging
People talking loudly
Cell phones (2)
Silence when trying to sleep
People clicking utensils against their teeth while eating
Snoring (2)
Excessive throat-clearing
Blaring car stereos (3)
Truck beeping while backing up
Clocks ticking
Alarm clocks
Mom’s nagging voice
Christmas tree lights that buzz
Styrofoam or cardboard rubbing against each other
24/7 Christmas-music radio stations

Cicadas/locusts/crickets (2)
Hockers and spitters
Whistlers
Elevator/store Muzak
Gum-poppers
Rap music
People who like to hear themselves talk
Screaming babies (2)
Fingernails on a chalkboard
Squeaky erasers

I’ll notify everyone of the next meeting when the time comes.

Until then, our group needs a name. When you head over to Jeff’s place, cast your vote in the comments box for one of these names suggested so far:

P.A.I.N. (People Annoyed with Incessant Noise)
Sounds without Bounds
S.L.A.P. (Sounds Leading to Aggravated People)
Noise without Joys
H.U.S.H. (Having Unusually Sensitive Hearing)

If you are visiting here for the first time and want to join, be sure to leave the noises that annoy you in the comments section. New members are always welcome, but don’t slam the door on your way out or someone will punch you in the face.

Last week my husband Dave and I called for a plumber to fix a problem in our powder room. The toilet had minor issues, but we worried somehow it would turn major and we’d have a flood on our hands. For the record, we specialize in flooding basements, not bathrooms.

Nice plumber man shows up at our house bright and early and gives us the good news that it’s not a major problem. It costs $300 to fix a minor problem. I can’t help but wonder how much a major problem would cost. I’m clearly in the wrong business.

So he gets to work on our toilet and after about ten minutes realizes he needs more tools for the job and leaves to grab something out of his truck.

Because cats have a sense of humor, my cat Shadow, the one with occasional intestinal issues, decides now would be the right time to have some fun with everybody.

She got up off the couch, walked past my feet and stopped. And then she went pfffftttt. I thought "Oh, Shadow. No. Not today. Not now. We have company!" Well, plumber company. But still, company.

When Shadow passes gas, you know it instantly. She can pollute a whole room quicker than you can say "Where’s my gas mask?"

In all fairness, we were well-warned of her Silent But Deadly propensities by the foster parent who cared for her before we adopted her. The day we picked her up we were given one warning before we put her in the car.

"Shadow sometimes poops when she’s nervous. She doesn’t like cars much."

We thought how funny this was until Shadow let us know just how nervous she was only two miles out from the foster mom’s house. We were still twenty miles from home when it happened.

"Oh. My. God. She pooped. What are we going to do? Open a window! No! Don’t do that! It circulates up front! Air! I need air!!!"

We figured that the lesser of two evils was, believe it or not, to keep the windows closed. So now we were only 90% sure one of us would vomit. And then we hit construction.

We quickly pulled over and I tried to remove the offending deposit, but Shadow freaked out so bad in the carrier, I couldn’t get near it. So we were left with the poop and left with the gag-inducing odor.

The smell in the car for the entire ride home was criminally bad. It would have smelled sweeter if we had worn fully-loaded diapers on our heads and then submerged ourselves in a vat of sewage. The girl has a problem.

So back to the pfffftttt. After Shadow dropped the grenade and pulled the pin, she walked right into the powder room and began inspecting the plumber’s work so far. It almost didn’t matter that she walked in there with the cloud following her. The whole downstairs area was already a hot zone.

The one thing that came to mind as I pinched my nose was "What will the plumber think when he comes back into the house? He’s going to think it was me!"

When he arrived back to the work area, I looked up and said "Brian? It’s Brian, right?"

"Yeah."

"Um, that … um… smell you’re smelling? I have to apologize for my cat. She did it. I’m terribly sorry. You have to work in that small space and it’s horrible. I’m really sorry."

He looked at me point blank and said "I’m a plumber. You think I haven’t smelled anything worse than that? Don’t worry, I can take it."

I could have been no happier to write a check for $300 after forcing a complete stranger to stick his head near my toilet and smell my cat’s ass for the rest of the job. Plumbers are worth their weight in gold.

As for Shadow, she got a bowl of Beano for dinner and I may make her wear a diaper the next time we have visitors.

Last week I wrote about my superhero powers, which include the ability to hear sounds that no one else can hear.

My pal Jeff, over at View From the Cloud, wrote me to report that he also has some trouble with hearing noises that bother no one else. He suggested we may need a support group. Since it’s impractical for us to meet, what with Jeff in Minnesota and me in Pennsylvania, we’ve agreed to hold a meeting of sorts in our respective blogs. You, too, can join the group. Membership instructions follow.

But first, this is the part where you stand up, state your name, and announce all your problems to complete and total strangers. Let us begin.

Hi, my name is Kathy. Here are all the sounds that make my ears bleed.

Clashing radio stations — It’s one or the other, people. There is plenty of static in my head already. I don’t need Rush Limbaugh duking it out with the weather report.

Shiny, happy whistling people — I know I’m going to hell for this, but when I hear someone whistling, I want to shove a fistful of crackers in their mouths and see just how much they can whistle then.

Computer fans – I can hear the slightest fan noise in any make or model PC. I can also hear my external hard drive "breathing." I want to snuff it out, but I need it to, you know, backup my data. And so I allow it to live.

Sitar music or Japanese singing — Kill me. Kill me now.

Squeaky doors — None of my officemates were bothered by the squeak emitted by our office front door, although they did thank me after I blasted the door hinges with a can of WD-40. Seems they didn’t realize how loud it was until I silenced it. See, I’m not entirely crazy. Only partially.

TVs or radios playing in doctor’s offices — Last November I threw my back out and saw a chiropractor a couple times a week in December. All his patient rooms were outfitted with radios tuned to a station that played nothing but Christmas music. The day I had to listen to the Chipmunk song was the day I decided to delay the rest of my visits until January.

Leaf blowers — The only reason I don’t run over the guys who have gas-powered blowers strapped to their backs is because they must be living their own little hell. They are, after all, walking explosives.

Turn signals — I don’t let my husband put them on until he’s just about to make the turn. I don’t know how he puts up with me, and I’m sure if you’re a regular reader to my blog, you wonder the same thing. The man is a saint. Yeah, St. David, Patron Saint of Long-Suffering Husbands.

My neighbor with the RV — Every Sunday when he and his wife return from a trip, it takes him 15 minutes to back it into his too-small-for-an-RV driveway. Because it’s attached to a diesel-powered behemoth of a truck, I have to listen to it shake, rattle and roll as he backs it in while his wife screams at him "A little to the left, a little to the right!"

This concludes today’s meeting.

If you would like to join

our support group, check out Jeff’s post of sounds that annoy him. All you have to do is leave a comment on either of our blogs with one or more noises that drive you nuts and you’re automatically a member!

Meetings will be held on Wednesday evenings in a soundproof booth.

Addendum: The results of our first meeting are posted here.

For 51 weeks out of the year, I pay zero attention to sports. It’s only during the World Series that I even realize sports exist. Because I’m living in a sports-free vacuum most of the year, I was surprised to learn about the new rule that evidently all ball players are required to follow.

They must eject a half-gallon of spit on the field every game.

What I thought was going to be fun to watch on our new HDTV turned into a disgusting salivary waterworks display that I could not ignore and that ruined me for sports for even that one measly week I let myself go.

Every other minute, cameramen zoomed in on one or more players shooting spitwads on the field. And then there’s the manager for the Colorado Rockies, who was chewing a wad of gum the size of a grapefruit and spitting out long, thick, stringy wads that could fill up a shot glass.

What. Is. With. The. Spitting????

After a few days of this, I happened to mention this ickiness to my Dad, an avid sports fan. He understood how I could be so disgusted, but quickly informed me that "Baseball is a spittin’ game." Yeah, Dad, but why?

He shared our conversation with my Mom, who then sent me a clipping from her local paper, The Express Times, with a note that read "Kath, Somebody else agrees. Mom."

She sent me a letter to the editor, written by a woman who is as appalled as I am.

All things being relative, this letter will fall under the category of frivolous. However, I am serious. My interests in and knowledge of sports are limited. I really enjoy the NBA games and watch baseball during playoffs and the World Series.

Here’s my question: What is the connection or reason behind baseball players, and on up to managers, and spitting? The more you notice it, the more you can’t help but notice it. It is a revolting, disgusting habit.

The other night I watched a rookie pitcher for about 10 minutes. He spit nonstop. I gave up watching. Also, what are they all chewing nonstop? Is it gum or tobacco wads or what? These habits really take away from the pleasure of the game.

In what other setting in polite company would they be tolerated?

Shirley Ann Korth
Phillipsburg, NJ

I’d like to meet that woman. She understands that baseball and spitting need not go hand-in-hand. At some point, it takes over the game and all you’re doing is waiting for the next shot of someone dumping their saliva all over the place.

During Game 6, I even took pictures of one particularly lively spit. I don’t know who the player is, but I have to admire his method. His spit sprayed in no less than twenty directions. Kudos. I guess.

I’m not sure I’ll be watching the World Series of Spitting next year. I might be better off listening to it on the radio. At least that way, I won’t get wet.

Always on the lookout for offbeat blogs, I stumbled onto one that pays tribute to the very best of the worst mailboxes. Yes, mailboxes. Check out UglyMailbox and thank God you don’t live in those neighborhoods.

While out and about today, Dave managed to catch a glimmer of a fairly hideous one that I could submit to the site. I’m not sure it’ll make the grade, but we think it scores pretty high on the ugly scale. I’ve never seen a mailbox with fish hooks on it, or eyes, for that matter. Truly awful.