Old and borrowed was a tiny bird pin ins aide my dress that belonged to my mom from her childhood. New and blue was my underwear.

Something I’ve noticed is that I had basically stopped commenting on Reddit because it seemed like someone always wanted to start a fight. I don’t even generally comment about politics or controversial topics, but still it felt like I was getting rude responses doubting my stories or whatever. Now I’m more likely to take a moment to share a response.

Back in 2006-ish I was dating a guy with pretty conservative views. We disagreed on a lot of stuff but I always felt he was intelligent and able to articulate the reasons behind his views. It also wasn’t so contentious to discuss politics yet. I didn’t think we would have much of a future together but we were young and having fun. One evening we were eating dinner and discussing politics. At the time gay marriage was still illegal but it was in the news a lot and a big topic of debate. I was arguing the pro using the typical arguments in favor and he bizarrely kept comparing gay people wanting to marry to short people wanting to be in NBA. “Sometimes you can really want something but that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.” I realized during that discussion that he was just an asshole and I broke up with him later that week. That wasn’t the only reason but it was definitely the final nail in the coffin.

I worked in the corporate office at a bank in 2008-2009 and they stopped all landscaping , which included no longer mowing the large field out front. Everyone thought we had gone out of business because it was so overgrown and they would call to ask if we closed. We also started having issues with snakes and mice on the first floor. Eventually they had some guys come mow and we watched out the window as mice scattered in every direction.

One time my work had a “employee appreciation fair” with snacks and games. One game was a cake walk. They asked that if you won a cake you quit playing. My shitty coworker Diane won a cake and kept playing and won a second cake and no one stopped her because it was just a dumb work event. After the fair ended we all went back to our cubes and Diane was gloating about her two cakes.

Another coworker, my friend Laura, told her in front of everyone in our department that she should share one of the cakes with us. Laura pointed out it was only fair as she really shouldn’t have gone back for a second. Our bosses were there and she was really put on the spot, so she begrudgingly agreed to share whilst shooting daggers at Laura. We all cut slices of cake and took them back to our desks to continue work.

I composed an email, the contents of which I’ve forgotten but was something to the effect of “Diane was shooting daggers at you so hard I’m surprised you aren’t dead! Watch out cause she’s probably going to stab you later!” I titled it “STABBED” and sent it to Laura. After a few minutes she pinged me to talk about the Diane situation and I mentioned that I already sent her an email about it. As you can guess, it turns out she didn’t receive it because I accidentally sent it to a totally different Laura! Someone in a different building, in a different part of town. I quickly sent an apology and asked her to disregard the email as it was sent in error. She never responded or acknowledged it in any way which is about the best I could ask for in that situation. This was back in 2008-2009 so I imagine the response would be very different now.

I’ve been on a memoir kick. Specifically women celebrities. I just finished Mean Baby by Selma Blair and it was good. I’m about to start Hello Molly by Molly Shannon.

The TV show Big Brother.

I don’t think my customers were dumb but I was regularly accused of breaking the law in a previous job. This was back in 09-10, I worked for a mortgage company in the insurance escrow department processing homeowner insurance claims. The way my job worked: If a homeowner has significant property damage (fire, flood, fallen tree) and the home is under a mortgage, the insurance company will make the check payable to the homeowner and the mortgage company. If it has both names it cannot be cashed unless the mortgage company endorses the check. I was the person responsible for determining if we would sign the back of that check so the customer could cash it.

Mortgages have a clause that allows this, because it’s in the best interest of the mortgage company to make sure the property is returned to the way it was before the claim. If the claim was over a certain amount (I think it was $5k) we required a whole process of holding the money in an escrow account and doling it out in increments using property inspections to verify the work was being completed.

It was honestly a whole annoying process to have to go through, especially if you are already dealing with a traumatic situation that requires the claim in the first place. I got yelled at a lot.

Oftentimes it would start with the customer calling in to figure out why the check was made payable to the mortgage company also. The mortgage company I worked for was part of a large bank, so if the homeowner called the 800 number they were often frustrated by the time they finally found their way to me. Then as I explained that they couldn’t just have the money, we needed them to select a licensed contractor and get our approval, then we would provide 1/3, then we would do an inspection at 50% and release the next 1/3, then a final inspection at 100% and release the remainder. I would get yelled at and told it was illegal. But I would just point them to page 18 section 5 of the mortgage. I could access people’s mortgage docs and I was often asked to send the relevant pages.

Eventually people would accept their fate because they had no choice. I tried to be very sympathetic because it did suck for them. And I had customers tell me a lot of sad stories about fires and floods and tornadoes. It was a super interesting job though. I loved looking at the home inspection reports.

I pretty much agree. I have been going Friday morning right when they open and it’s not bad. We leave around lunchtime when it’s starting to get crowded. My kids have had the day off the past couple of years so it’s worked out but I’m not sure about this year. I wouldn’t go otherwise though, it starts to feel so crowded by the time we leave and I know it only gets worse.