The joys of suburbia

So, we finally did it. We scoured the 'burbs, we cased the neighborhoods, we checked rottenneighbor.com, and finally signed a lease. Signed our life away to suburban hell. Goodbye, skyline, hello outlet mall.


Half our house is in boxes, which makes living here for the next 6 days like a maddening scavenger hunt, and bubblewrap is fun to play with, so theres that. I know that moving to the suburbs have some benefits, though. I cant think of what they are, but I know it does. I just cant find the silver lining. This is how I envision our first year:

Month one: Move into neighborhood, find amenities near by, restaurants, shopping, marvel how close we are to every retail chain ever built.
Month two: Complain that everyone else is close to all that stuff, too.
Month three: Meet neighbors, plan game night, introduce our kids, tentative excitement towards meeting new people begins to grow.
Month four: Attempt to enroll daughter into good school. Good school will not accept application because of "over crowding" (aka we be poor folk) and place us on the never ending waiting list, settle for zoned public school.
Month five: Shunned by neighbors after declining the invitation to neighbor's wife's tupperware party.
Month six: Nearby lot gets bought for new hospital, commence construction till 2013.
Month seven: Lanes on the main road get widened, commence construction till 2020.
Month eight: Daughter gets shunned by children for not speaking French, Latin, Russian or Mandarin.
Month nine: Car gets keyed with cryptic message, "Should've gone plastic!"
Month ten: Patio furniture mysteriously goes missing, lawn gets TP'd.
Month eleven: Start to understand why everyone is on drugs, get a prescription for Xanax and instate nightly cocktail hour
Month twelve: Full on drug and alcohol addiction, admit self into rehab, find neighbor in as well, bond over horror stories of nearly burning down the house with lit cigarette while passed out from too many Cosmo's and re-pledge friendship.
Month thirteen: Backstabbed by newly sober neighbor, start process all over again.

You can see why I'm so excited. Suburbia or bust!

Deep breaths. Deep breaths.

Yes, WaMu went kaput and AIG is burning through their two bailout checks like a wildfire, sometimes getting gas can be like a scavenger hunt, and seriously? it might be cheaper now just to go buy a fucking cow to keep on hand for milk every week.

Yes, our economy is going down faster than a tranny hooker on Charlie Sheen, but there are still some small comforts in life - low humidity days, frozen margarita's, sunsets, good books, those pink and white frosted little circus cookies, oh wait:

Mother's Cookies Crumbles

(PS: that is a seriously lazy and insincere headline line, NPR)

Well, aint that some shit. First it was Bennigan's Broccoli bites and now THIS. People of the world who run the economy machine listen up - if you do not want to induce mass panic and depression (more so than you already do, or are doing currently) please do not take away our small comforts. It's really in your best interest to ensure the cookie factories keep running - PMSing women and sugar addicts are truculent and alarmingly brutal. I understand that you might've lost $538,000.00 in stock, but we are poor and that money you lost is like our animal cookies. Except you probably have lots more money left and we have NO MORE COOKIES, ASSHOLE.

RIP Mother's cookies. I look forward to paying three times the amount for a bag of frosted deliciousness on the black market soon. Ya'll dont even want to know what I did for a case of broccoli bites - demoralizing, but totally worth it.

Slingin' sandwiches

So in our (seemingly) never ending quest to move to la suburbia (what I'm calling it in an obviously desperate attempt to make it seem more hip), it has been decided that I should get a job. A job outside of the home, that pays in actual cash money not just life experiences and colored pictures of Wall*E.

I've been searching for a job for a while now, without much luck. Because I'm picky and I don't want to spend 3 hours of my day commuting back and forth like the rest of this god forsaken city. My background is something along the lines of administrative work, so you may ask yourself how I ended up getting a job waiting tables.



Sigh. Desperate times call for desperate measures, no? I waited tables for years and years before my little kidlet came along, and once she did I decided that I needed a grown up job with better hours. Nearly 5 years have gone by since I laid my delicate hands on a server tray, and I basically got so frustrated that no one wanted to hire me that I went somewhere where I was assured to get hired - a restaurant.

Pros about waiting tables
Quick, easy money
Flexible hours
Tasty food within reach
Will definitely provide me with bizarre and probably gross stuff to tell you guys about

Cons about waiting tables
Waitstaff drama
I am a huge klutz and I break stuff a lot
Tasty food within reach
Sidework and tipouts
Bitchy customers
Cheap customers
Grueling work with no hope for positive reinforcement since everyone knows waitstaff are slaves to the community
Totally demoralizing

I am SO above this, people. The only reason I decided to even entertain the thought of waitressing is because we need to speed up the process of moving out of the city. I'm doing it for my family to better our situation. So really, I'm like a hero. AND NOT LIKE THE SANDWICH.