hello hello good morning.

so.. i've been dealing w/some really irritating crap lately at my house. don't get me wrong. i love this huge enormous money-sucking gorgeous lofted townhouse like no other. suuuuuure it's okay that it's 40 gazillion miles from all of our friends. it's fiiiinnne that no one wants to come hang out. really. no, seriously!! the fact that to have a bbq i have to BRIBE everyone and their mothers with free liquor and steaks just to come hang out? hell that's how i get my kicks!! i just looooove to spend money that i don't have.

ahem. pardon the rant. so. a few things that we've been dealing with would be 1)the fact that our association... despite our punctual monthly payments of exactly $152... they don't believe in landscaping. and my friends this is ALL that there is really to do in my development, since we all OWN our townhouses and thus are responsible for every.flippin.thing connected to it.

(oh yeah. uhm, association? telling me to take care of my own security dome light when you can only purchase said replacement bulb from some top secret warehouse in the middle of cow country? yeah. no so cool.)(and no. it still is not fixed.)

so bc my association doesn't believe in, ya know, doin' it's job.. there's a tree(well two actually) in my backyard that are getting severely overgrown. to the point that it curled it's spindly fingers right over the space where the satellite for our tv gets reception. cut to my husband trying his best to fix this issue by repositioning the satellite...

...and yeah. we haven't had cable for who knows how long. and i'm talkin... plasma tv's, so seriously? we don't even get the ghetto bunny-eared reception like in the good ol' days.. we don't get 3, 5, 9, 7... nuthin. not a darn thing.

so i've been renting a boatload of movies and honestly? family video? you suck. no, really. there is no love lost here. i am heretofore severing all ties i have to you and yours bc honestly? dude. you don't even carry ANCHORMAN. how could i possibly rent from you once i learned that fact? and also? almost every single one of your TV Series rentals ... they're missing discs. and really, do i even need to tell you how weird it is that you'll keep it shelved? and not replace it? it's a television series. i'm sorry, but if i miss an episode or uhm a whole DISC worth of episodes of Prison Break? or Heroes? i won't be a happy camper.

so. we(meaning i)have decided that since i now have a sparkly new library card, and it's located seriously walking distance from our house... why not rent from there? we have yet to peer into their rental selections but i'm planning to tomorrow. i noticed when i signed up that they had Nims Island and okay not my first pic but that's a fairly new release, so, ...there's hope for me yet.

and issue #2: the dryer.

when we moved in 2 years ago, the dryer was on it's last legs. it still had wood paneling, for heavens sake! obviously it was the station wagon of dryers. still, as long as i sent each load thru 2 cycles they came out dry and fluffy and smelling nicely.

then one day it made a horrid, bone-chilling brrrzzzzt sound and just... died. we tried to bust out the defibrillators and shock it back to life and for about a week, it worked. and then it just one day flatlined and went silently into the night.

okay. at this point ya'll are thinking, uh, okay, buy a new one. right? wrong. bc i know nothing about that stuff (except the actually using it to dry clothes part) and my husband is a Russian.. and refuses to hire a 'handyman'... we were screwed.

so for about 3-4 months we glided by without a dryer. meaning, either we'd hang out in a laundromat like two starving artists or we'd 'borrow' his parents. which is not fun. bc they expect us to like, hang out and stuff when we use them for their appliances. 5 blinchiki and black bread w/weird russian butter later, i was throwing up and swearing off weird russian food forever. (i didn't learn my lesson. that's a story for another day.) so.

his dad goes to this weird auction type thing and buys us a washer and a dryer for $175. for both. we're stoked. and no, we don't need a washer. nevertheless i got so excited at doing laundry i almost exploded. (i will never type that sentence again.) so his dad comes by and installs it. it works. it's gorgeous. white and gleaming.

with shaking hands, i excitedly load up the washer and use the purex that smells sooo super good and i'm bouncing on the balls of my feet positively trembling at the thought of using a dryer after so many months.

and then i load the dryer.
i go about my business, happy-go-lucky, doin' laundry at midnight just because, and then the dryer buzzes. i open the dryer door w/a flourish expecting fluffy warm yummy soft tee shirts and socks and sweat pants that i can put on right away and revel in the deliciousness of clean and floofy clothes except-

i am face-to-face with what, you may ask?

sopping.
wet.
clothes.

oh, gee, wizz, thanks.... the dryer has no heat.

and i swear, when i find my stupid camera that is lost in my house(cross my fingers)i'm going to take a picture of all of the clothes we have hung over the edge of the railing in an attempt at a sorry-ass clothesline.

it is truly pathetic. but actually? the clothes come out okay. having mens underwear strung on my computer monitor like xmas lights? not so much.

and the other pet peeve? SPIDERS. and trust me. i realllly don't want to get into the details of THAT one. (ew. shudder. gag.) all i can say is... finding a spider that could pass for a hockey puck that close to your bed is SO not the right way to start a Monday. just sayin'.