one light bulb short of a chandalier

Earlier today we had a pretty heinous thunderstorm in Richmond, which left my neighborhood without power for several hours (and still counting). I love stormy weather, so at first I welcomed the outage with open arms. With nothing to do besides look at each other, Chris and I decided to open the windows and have a nice, long nap on the sofa, both of us anticipating that we would awake to find the TV working again and the A/C running full force. Cut to us, several hours later, perspiring through our t-shirts and wondering why our home suddenly felt more like a muggy swampland than a luxury apartment. In fact, at the time of writing this (1:20 a.m.) I still have no internet connection, and I will have to submit this online after-the-fact when the power comes back on. I am actually composing this post in Microsoft Word (or, rather, Apple’s knock-off, “Pages”), and I suspect that this is how one would write a blog post in the olden days. I don’t mean as far back as when they etched their words out of stone, of course, but more like back when everyone was on dial-up and it wasn’t out of the ordinary to have a life outside of a web interface. As it stands, at this very moment I could not tell you my bank account balance, the status of my online business or whether or not I had homework due at midnight. Without electricity, I am nothing.

So here’s one example of how I am probably different from the rest of you. Let’s say that you find yourself in a situation such as mine, with no central air or cable or cell phone chargers, and you’re walking from room to room trying to decide what you’ll do to pass the time until your life returns to normal. You might step into your bedroom and mindlessly flip the light-switch, momentarily forgetting that without electricity, you’ll have to fumble around in the dark. A normal person might chuckle at themselves for being so forgetful, and proceed to light a candle or flashlight so that they can otherwise see. I, however, found myself absentmindedly flipping every damn light switch in the house, one at a time, each time reminding myself that our ornate light fixtures, although fabulous, are absolutely useless for any reason other than decoration for an undisclosed amount of time. Even still, with each new room I wandered into (hopelessly, and out of sheer boredom), I would somehow forget again and try the light switch. I pondered this aloud after this had gone on for several minutes, and Chris politely explained to me that the definition of “insanity” is to repeat the same action while expecting to receive different results.

Okay, then.

Be that as it may, he was the one who asked me how I was still able to use my electric toothbrush while the power was out. Glass houses, people. Glass houses.

The thing is, I don’t cope well with uncomfortable surroundings. Don’t get me wrong, I’m hardly a diva, and I have some of the poorest taste in dining and entertainment of anyone I know. But I gotta have some air conditioning, y’all. And the ability to turn on the light and see the toilet when I pee. And when a beautiful thunderstorm renders my television set null and void on the night of this season’s premier of Project Runway, things are just not okay.

Growing up, I spent some warm summer months at my Granny’s house, who did not have central A/C. She had some window units, but only in some rooms and those rooms did not include bedrooms because she believed bedrooms were only to be used at night, when the weather was most forgiving. I didn’t like this fact, but I managed. To this day, the feel of a box fan in my face takes me back to a simple, happy time full of laughter and sweat-stains. But I’m an adult now, and I really feel like I’ve “done without” long enough to last a lifetime. I don’t consider it acceptable to be hot and angry in my own home, and when I flip the light switch, dammit, something is supposed to happen.

What’s worse than just spending the night without electricity, though, is my (probably irrational) fear of being robbed and murdered by a bunch of thunderstorm-manipulating looters without said electricity. For the record, I do know the difference between a looter and a big-boy B&E thief, but ever since I saw a documentary on how groups of otherwise upstanding citizens will rob a WalMart if the power is out and they don’t feel like they’re likely to get caught, I’ve deemed my home looter-susceptible in the event of electrical failure. Suddenly my situation goes from “Little House on the Prairie” to “Last House on the Left, and out of the corner of my eye I swear I see someone who is either about to rape me or jump out of the window with my flat-screen TV. Chris insists that I’m delusional, but I saw it on TruTV so you know it’s real.

I suppose if you read this post, though, it means I wasn’t robbed or murdered because (A) I’d be alive to see the power return and (B) my laptop wouldn’t have been stolen. That should be no inclination, however, that I’ve actually stopped flipping the light switches.

FEATURED! | Kym Tolson of Hypnotransformations

I'm so excited! I've recently joined the Richmond Etsy Street Team (REST), and I've just been featured on the very-popular blog of one of my fellow Richmond artists -- Kym Tolson of Hypnotransformations.blogspot.com. She was sweet enough to let me answer a few questions for her audience, and ramble a little about myself and my business. Click here to read the post and to check out Kym's blog and Etsy shop!

Freud would get a kick out of this one.

Internet, I am coming to you by way of a miracle. I'm awake, sipping a white chocolate mocha, and writing a blog...all before noon. A "Good Morning" is very much in order, mostly because I never get to use the phrase anymore.

Unfortunately, I can't say that I'm up completely by my own will. I had an unsettling dream about high school, the unsettling part being that when I woke up I felt like I actually missed high school. Ladies and gentlemen, let me be very clear; Thomas Saylor does not miss high school. Sure, there were good times, but there were a hell of a lot of bad, and just thinking about those feelings of insecurity and helplessness and anger make me feel like an elephant is sitting on my chest. Years from now, when I can afford therapy, a doctor will tell me that this particular time in my life still plagues me because I have unresolved issues surrounding those events. Really, though, it really just boils down to the fact that many people in this world are assholes, and when you're a teenager you're old enough to realize it but too young to do anything about it. My greatest fear about having children (besides the obvious wear and tear on my furniture) is that I'll somehow repeat the same cycle I've experienced growing up and not know (read: care) when my kids are crying out for help. Anyway, all of this is neither here nor there, but the mere thought of longing for those days that were so difficult, when I had no control over who I was or what I'd do, well, it pisses me off.

Right now I can honestly say that I have everything I've ever wanted. And I don't mean owning a business or sleeping till noon or being able to have a glass of wine in the middle of the day without anyone being able to judge me (although all of those things are very nice...especially the wine part). But I know that those things can come and go, and that's okay. That's life. One day soon I may realize that I can't afford independent health care coverage and that it might be nice to stop being a one-man designer/creator/photographer/marketer/customer service-er/butt kisser. And I'll be okay with that, because I'll still have everything I've ever wanted; a loving husband, a cozy apartment and good memories that overshadow the bad ones. So why am I dreaming about sitting in a classroom with people that treated me awfully? And why did I wake up feeling nostalgic about the whole thing?

Come to think of it, the wine could be playing a small part in this situation.

More so, though, I think this all goes back to losing Dad. It's been 4 months now, but moving out of state during that difficult time sort of distracted my mourning so that it comes to me now in little waves. I moved further North while my Dad's health plummeted South and I think the sheer craziness of the events that surrounded his death put me in this weird place of "sad-on-the-inside" but not quite able to "show-it-on-the-outside". But, like anything in life, you can't avoid dealing with things, you can only postpone them. So thinking about the strongest memories I have of my father inevitably results in thinking about high school, because the two go hand-in-hand. And while I certainly wouldn't want to be 16 all over again, it sure would be nice to know that he was still around to scream at about whether or not I could go to the movies.

this Boots was made for fallin'

Chris has always said that my cat could not belong to anyone else in the world besides me...because we are too much alike. There are several reasons why Boots is my soul sister.

1. She only wants to do the opposite of what you want her to do. For example, if a door in the house is closed, she will meow repeatedly and paw underneath it until someone opens it. In which case, she resumes her normal activities outside of said door. She doesn't really want to go anywhere, but she likes having the option in case she changes her mind. That's a state of mind I'm all too familiar with, unfortunately.
2. She is particularly clumsy, and repeatedly rolls off the side of the couch she's laying on. However, she's not going to let you think she slipped, so she's mastered this hilarious "I didn't want to sit there anymore ANYWAY" saunter like no one I've ever seen (besides myself, of course).
3. When company is over, she hides and hisses and REFUSES to act like a nice well-behaved kitty just for the sake of defiance. (Chris' friends will tell you I practiced a similar ritual when I was first introduced to them.)
4. And, finally, probably the most important reason why we're soul sisters: She's vindictive and loyal.  I don't find it a coincidence that the only time she's ever had an "issue" with incontinence was exactly the same time I discovered my now-ex-boyfriend had been cheating on me for months, wherein Boots happily peed-eth on top-eth his cheating ass-eth new chouch-eth. I'm just sayin'.

And don't let her friendly demeanor fool you...she WILL cut. a. bitch.

wherein i can't help but show my (un-dyed) roots

Well, it's finally happened. I've officially partaken in the first parking lot screaming match with a neighbor since we moved to Virginia. I can't believe it took this long, actually, but guys? It totally wasn't my fault this time.

Picture this: Chris and I went out yesterday evening for an after-dinner dessert at Brusters. (Their hot fudge brownie sundae is delish, by the way!) On the way back, we're chatting and tasting and having a wonderful time when all of a sudden this bull-dyke with a lap-dog starts SCREAMING at us as we pull into our parking lot. No, correction, she starts SCREAMING at us before we can even pull into our parking. So one second I'm sitting in the turning lane listening to nothing but Chris' laughter and the sound of my own chewing and the next minute I hear "HEEEEEEEEYYYYY!!!!!!!!" from this bitch like I've just pissed on her shoe or something. I was so stunned at first that I even looked behind us to see who in the hell she was yelling at because "I KNOW she not talkin' to me" (*snaps fingers). But sure enough, by this time she's at my window trying to GET ALL UP IN MY FACE looking like somebody's high school gym teacher with a chihuahua. And, okay, I'm just going to go ahead and admit that I MAY have been the first one to drop a few f bombs into the conversation but, look: you do NOT interrupt a lovely car ride with my ice cream (I mean husband) without some serious repercussions, oKAYYY?! So I ask her very politely what the fuck is her problem and she starts yellin' some nonsense talkin' about I need to SLOW DOWN and...

Okay, wait. The 13 year old black girl who lives inside of me has momentarily taken over due to the severity of this terribly unfortunate incident. Let me try to regain my composure (and correct grammar) for the sake of this post.

The the important things to consider here are:
(A) I do not know this angry lesbian.
(B) I do not LIKE this angry lesbian.
(C) This angry lesbian is standing in the middle of my street yelling at passersby to SLOW DOWN, when all she really needs to do is to stop playing in traffic and let me go back to eating my hot fudge brownie sundae before anybody gets hurt.

So as soon as Chris realizes what's going on, he begins to flee quickly from the potential scene of the crime before I can even get my bearings about what just happened. So my only choice was to lean out of the window as he sped away yelling obscenities at the top of my lungs like the trailer park trash I pretend not to be. And, okay, in hindsight I realize that maybe there was the option of taking the higher road and all of that, but really? I had some shit I had to say!

30 minutes and a double scoop of vanilla later, I'm still fuming. I mean, THE NERVE! In situations such as these, I'm not usually satisfied until the arguing has progressed into either (a) physical violence or (b) someone else's tears. And since Miss Gay Auditorium was demonstrating some interesting sign language in my direction as Chris scurried me home, I'm guessing she didn't need a Kleenex afterwards.

"I'm taking the dog for a walk," I said.

"No, you're not, " Chris counters. "Sit your feisty ass back down on that couch and leave that lesbian alone."

God love him, he is good at diffusing my temper.

I sat in silence for a few minutes before I could finally force the words out of my mouth,

"Hey, Babe?" I ask.

"Yes?"

"This is the reason why they didn't want me to move into this ritzy neighborhood, isn't it?"

"Precisely."

FEATURED on Weebly.com!

Many, many thanks to the great people at Weebly for featuring ThomasSaylorDesigns.com as "Today's Featured Site"! I've been using Weebly.com to host my business websites for a couple of years now, and I've always experienced nothing but cutting-edge features and superior customer service from them. I'm honored to be showcased on their homepage as well as their user dashboard, both of which see a tremendous amount of traffic every day. Yay!

in years past

A while ago, when Chris bought his new car, we cleaned out his old glove box and thew away everything that was no longer relevant. Chris, a traveling nomad, had quite an eclectic collection of random artifacts of his pre-married life stuffed into that small compartment. I think this was my favorite item:

(Click image to enlarge)

Dated in 2003, this old US Cellular calling plan brochure offers individual text messaging for the low-low price of $0.10/message, and the largest package you could buy included only 1,000 monthly messages. Compare that to now where everyone uses a surplus of text/picture/video messaging plus emails and IMs and web-browsing, and you'd expect the regular old SMS rate to have gone down a bit...instead, individual text messaging rates at the same company are now $0.25/message without a package and unlimited messaging is $19.95/line, only $5 difference from the 1,000 messages/month plan offered just 7 years ago. It would seem that we are being gouged by the wireless industry for these tiny messages that obviously don't cost the network very much data (or money) to send.

More importantly, though, is that Chris is old enough to still have this archeological record of historic commerce floating around in his car. And on today, the eve of his 29th birthday, I give a wholehearted chuckle at the fact that, in 2003, while I didn't even have my driver's license yet, he was of legal drinking age and had held a full-time job for several years.

Happy birthday to the oldest man still allowed to touch my woohoo. I love you.