The Incredible Hulk

After my fun times last week with the cold weather/ inappropriate amount of clothing/ broken window debacle, I decided I needed to go buy my step-son's some clothes. Of course, it was also the week before Christmas and I had about $.35 left in the account. Joy. However, the boys sharing one sweater over the holiday stretch really wasn't an option, so I decided to take my chances at Goodwill until we recovered a bit from the holiday cheer. Trust me on this one- if you should ever find yourself in need of clothes around the holidays cheaply- try WalMart. Try Target. Try Hobby Lobby and just make some yourself. Avoid Goodwill!

After about an hour and a half of meticulously searching the racks, I felt that I'd found enough warm weather clothes for the boys to make it for a few weeks until I could get them newer clothes. My arms were completely loaded down, but there were no baskets in sight, so I clumsily maneuvered my way to the front of the store where the check out counter was.

I stood, barely able to see above the stack of clothes I had clustered together, for about 5 minutes when the woman in front of me finished, pushed her cart to the side, and began to walk out with her things.

I noticed that she'd left something in the cart, and reached out to grab it. I said, "Excuse me, I think you left this behind," as the woman was walking out. She glared at me in response, and as I dropped the majority of the stack I was holding in an effort to try and grab the (Ceram wrap I think) that she'd left in her cart, the woman that had just checked her out called, "Mam, you didn't pay for that bag." Apparently she'd swiped a thermal food bag as she was walking out the door, hoping to go unnoticed (and probably would have, if not for my good deed). Nice.

I kept my eyes to the floor as I concentrated REALLY hard on picking each and every piece of the clothing I'd dropped and not making any eye contact with the woman I'd just ousted. The two women argued over whether or not she'd walked in with that bag for a few minutes when finally, a man stocking the furniture area came stalked over and hurriedly settled the argument, allowing the woman to leave with the bag.

I cautiously approached the counter, praying that my tires wouldn't be slashed by the time I was done at the check-out, and went to the man that had settled the argument. He was sweaty, ruddy and seemed to be in a hurry but offered to ring me up, so I took him up on his offer.

I set my huge stack of clothes on the counter, and he began ringing them piece by piece. About a quarter of the way through the stack I could see him getting aggravated by the hangers that seemed to cling to one another. Like I said, he was already sweaty and ruddy, and now his temperament seemed to be raising to his obviously heightened his temperature.

In the midst of his hanger fight, the phone near him rang. He answered and rudely responded to the caller, then set the phone down just a bit too hard, and my antennae started twanging…


I backed up a bit, and the employee checking next to him and I made eye contact, and she gave me a slack/sidways jaw, "this is bad," grimace. Apparently, this guy had anger issues, apparently plastic hangers with metal swivels are this guys arch nemesis, apparently he had about as much patience as my 3 year old.

Anyway, I suppose the roller coaster reached the apex, because suddenly he picked up the entire stack of hangers, which of course had tangled in the phone cord, and in Hulk-Smash mode, raised them high, and chunked them on the floor behind him with a small, "Rahhhhh!" exclamation.

The chunking of his customers belongings and the phone was weird enough, but the muted-grunt-yell thing was a little over the top. I stood there stunned. I tried to imagine if this had ever happened before. Pretty sure, I'd never had a teenager working at American Eagle turn into the Hulk and smash hangers around. I'd never experienced an adult version of a toddler fit while they were performing their job duties in my presence. Nope, this was definitely a first for me.

The hangers scattered, some broke, and the phone smashed into several pieces on the floor behind him. He made no apology though his counter-partner picked up the pieces and set the now 4 piece phone back on the counter. That would have been fun to see him answer. At this point, he was only about half way done ringing up my items, so I (lucky me) was forced to stand there and continue to have this LUNATIC check me out. Now my blood pressure was rising!

By the time the guy had finished, I felt as though I had scarlet fever climbing up my abdomen, and I might just throw something at him! How dare he throw my boys hangers on the floor!! How DARE he behave like a child in front of me! But, of course, I chickened out and stayed quiet.

Still angry when I left, I quickly strode out the door, and as I left, the girl with whom I'd exchanged nervous glances called out sweetly, "Bye, thank you for coming to Goodwill!" Yeah, uhuh.

Stay tuned, I soooo have some good ones coming. My husband's ex-wife is coming for an overnighter, that's bound to have a few stories right? That alone is weird enough to make the 1% blog...

My First Story

So to illuminate what I mean, I know that I need to tell a few stories, but it's hard to know where should I start. I could go all the way back to my 6th birthday really with 1%-er baby stories, but, those will always be there and I can call on them at a later date. Today, I think I will start with yesterday.

Yesterday was the last day of school in 2009 for my 4 year old. Actually, we just call it school for her sake, she really goes to an at-home daycare that gets 2 weeks of paid vacation, while I have to use my sick time to stay home with my kid, as I pay my babysitter to, be on vacation. ANYWAY... yesterday was her Christmas party. I was already staying home yesterday because my step-sons (3 & 4) are in for the holidays and we do not have the money to pay 2 babysitters. Since it was her Christmas party, I thought I would go ahead and take her to "school" even though I was staying at home, so she could exchange gifts with her little friends. After getting all 3 kids dressed, and fed it was already 10:00. Which, of course, meant that I had to hustle since my babysitter doesn't like the kids to be brought in any later than 10:30, and I live 2o minutes away (need to stop bashing my babysitter now I think, she actually does a great job, just has some crazy rules that irritate the crap out of me at times- but moving on), so I ran out to my garage to find the 3rd car seat and, lo and behold, my garage has eaten it. 20 minutes of going through boxes, moving huge Rubbermaid containers filled with God-knows-what, to no resolution.

So on to Austin we went, sans car seat. Now, you may be saying Brittany, big friggen deal, garages eat stuff all the time, for everyone, that doesn't make you special... just wait. The story's not over yet.

The entire way there, Ella (my 4 year old) is sitting a good head and a half lower than the boys, as she's in the middle with no car seat, and they are both in car seats, saying that she doesn't want to go to school, doesn't care that it's Christmas party time, wants to stay home. Awesome. Kid- you're gonna have Christmas with your friends and you're gonna LIKE IT!! Maybe not the best response to her, in fact, in hind sight, I should have listened. Would have made my morning a lot smoother. Anyway, we get to the daycare, after all of the contents (and I'm talking tiny contents) of both boys backpacks spill onto the floor of my new-ish Tahoe. I so, don't even care about that at this point, just let me drop off one of the kids with no incident and we'll clean that up later. So, as we are getting out of the Tahoe, Ella slips on one of the boys cracker containers on the floor, and grabs ahold of the door handle she's getting out from. Crackers smash into a million, peanut buttery little pieces on the floor, and the window rolls down on the side door she grabbed. Ugh... fun times. Oh well, no tears, and the window can stay down for a minute while I run Ella into the daycare, that way I can hear the boys, it works out. So I drop off Ella (who still hasn't changed her tune, still does not want to be at daycare, does not want to have a Christmas party, though the gifts do look intriguing...) as she inspects the gifts I run out the door to prevent the "mommy-you-can't-leave-me" tears we get nearly every morning at drop off.

I go out to the Tahoe where the boys are waiting patiently, but coldly (it's December people, yes it may be Texas, but it still gets cold) and the window will not roll up. Great. So I ran to the driver's side door and tried that panel. No luck. Locked the window lock, and then unlocked it. Tried again. No luck. GERRREAT. It's friken cold outside, I'm broke as no other, and my effing window will not roll up. And the boys are freezing in the back seat.

So, to save face, I drove away from in front of my baby sitter's yard, around the corner, stopped and tried again. As I'm trying to get the blasted little switch thingy to work, it breaks off- marvelous. AND the boys of course are not dressed for driving with the windows down in December, as my husband's ex sent exactly 1 long sleeved shirt, 1 short sleeved shirt and 1 sweater, for 2 boys for 3 weeks. She's special, and apparently, not especially good at math. So, my options at this point are to take it to the dealer and pitch a b!+@# fit because I just bought this car in June (and still probably have to pay some ridiculous amount of money to fix the thing), or go home and tape a tarp to the window. Not so excited about my options.

I decide to go to the dealer and take my changes. Driving with a tarp is something I reserve for days when... oh hell, I hope days I don't see anytime soon, but who are we kidding. Anyway, I drive with the window down (after tying Ella's pink scarf around Jacob's head like Aunt Jamima's hanky) to the dealership. Once I got there, I stepped out in all my pajamaed glory, to find the only non-English speaking sales rep I've ever met at a car dealership. He signs for a mecahnic to come over, and in 2 seconds, rolled up the window and told me that I just had it locked. ARG!!!! switch is still broken, but the window is up, and that's all I care about for the moment.

SO, we go home, thankful to have the window up and walk in the door, where I promptly knock one of Ella's ceramic tea-set pots off the refrigerator and smashes into a million pieces. Fabulous. While I'm cleaning this up, I realize that I had not fed the dog yet, so I grab the food and open the back door to feed the dog, and... the friggen house alarm goes off! We've been in house for 20 minutes and NOW the alarm goes off!?!? This, of course, comes after the alarm went off because Joey set off the alarm 2 nights previously to have the Leander police come by and give us a verbal warning (with a promise of a citation the next time) for not having a "security system permit." Amazing....

SO this is my day in the 1% yesterday. Stay tuned for more fun times to come. Never a boring life in the 1%. :)

First time visiting the 1%?

Hello there curious onlookers.

My name is Brittany (which you probably already know), and I live life in the 1% (which, if you knew my name, you also knew this about me). No, I was not in the top 1% of my high school graduating class, I graduated with 20 people, 1% of that is like what, .2 of a human? Yeah, no. Definitely not 1% of my college graduating class, or any other resume building, smug intelligence indicating "I'm smarter than you are, nany nany poo poo," sort of way. It is not a designation of any great feat, in fact, it is absolutely nothing I can control. I always loved that line out of the reeeeally bad movie Constantine (with Keanu Reeves, there's an indicator of movie quality for ya right there, though I actually think it's one of his better movies), anyway the line goes, "God is just a kid with a magnifying glass, and we're all his ants." I'm pretty sure that I'm one of His favorite ants.

I think I'll introduce this idea of life in the 1% by explaining exactly what it means to be God's chosen ant.

If you know me, you don't even have to have known me well, you basically only would have had to meet me at one point in time, you probably know exactly what the title of this blog is about. But, if on the off chance someone who doesn't know me is reading this, then for you- life in the 1% is a short and simple description of my life. 99% of people will never experience the crazy, inexplicably mind boggling issues that seem to happen to me on a regular basis.

I fall into the 1 % of the human population- if birth control is 99% effective, I'm screwed. If a government bill will help 99% of new home buyers, I can congratulate all my neighbors bringing in their new furniture. If a piece of metal fell from the tractor engine/hot air balloon/space shuttle sent to outer space by a fledgeling Soviet country, it would fall on me, probably right after I bought a new car. Sounds dooms day I know, but at this point, it's just my life... and really, by now, it's comedy.