The "Plant Experience"

I know, I know - I took a full month off from blogging. Listen, it's hard to think of so many things to complain about every week. I will confess that I thought about retiring for a while... until someone gave me the shittiest present in the world. So here I am to tell you about it.

I moved into a new house recently - nothing fancy, just a nice row home in a quiet part of town. All the houses lined up along my street have a small yard in the back. Believe me, this was NOT a selling point for me. I don't want to mow grass or rake leaves or do any of that crap. In fact, it was in spite of the yard that I bought the house. However, the yard is really small and not that big of a deal.

I met my new next door neighbor a while back, a woman about 50 years of age and living with cats (I told you that it was a "quiet" part of town!), and she went on and on about how I have to grow plants in the backyard, and how great it is, and how she does it, etc. I pointedly told her that I grew up in the city, I don't have a Green Thumb, I don't want plants, it's too much work, and I'm too busy.

Well, she bought me a house warming gift today. Guess what it is? It's a giant fucking green planter filled with dirt and budding plants. Are you kidding me?? The thing is huge, it can't go anywhere but outside in my unmowed backyard. She manically beamed as she told me, "You said you didn't have much experience with plants... well, now you will have lots of experience!"

What?? Hey, lady... SCREW YOU! Did you ever think that I don't want "plant experience"?? Do you know what the definition of "plant experience" is to me?... It's "work". Why do you think I spent 20 years of my life pretending I had a stomach ache every Saturday morning so that my dad wouldn't make me rake leaves? Why do you think I bought the house with the smallest yard I could find? It wasn't an accident that I don't have plant experience - it was a well-crafted strategy I used to make sure that I enjoyed my weekends.

Do you believe this? So, of course, this giant planter has to go in my backyard, where this woman will see it every day out of her kitchen window. It's so big, I can't even throw it out if I wanted to (which I would have done, if she didn't live RIGHT NEXT DOOR to me). Now I have to water it every day, tend to it, and do the other bullshit gardening stuff to it - ("pruning"? is that what it is?) - because if I don't, then she will see it all die, and then I would have to face the botanical inquisition from her about why it died - or she would know that I killed it from neglect and her feelings would be all hurt, and I'll have an "angry neighbor situation" for the rest of my life (or the rest of her life, whichever ends or moves first). Jesus Christ.

Who gives this kind of present?? She basically saddled me with another chore to do every week. I told this woman from the beginning that I didn't want anything to do with plants or dirt. When she first saw the inside of my house, she remarked about how I had no "living green things" around. Yeah, that's right - that's by design. I don't have "living green things" around because I don't want "dead brown things" around. It's not that I would kill the plants accidentally because I don't know what I'm doing - I would kill them intentionally because I don't want to deal with it!

What is this lady going to do for my birthday?... gift wrap a baby and leave it at my doorstep so I can be burdened with taking care of that thing for the next 18 years?! Forget the plant experience, why not give me the parent experience instead??

I know some people get relaxation or satisfaction from doing gardening and lawn work, but I'm not one of them. And to give someone the "curse of chores" is not a gift. And I don't want to hear from all the altruistic women on The Knot.com that will tell me that "it's not the gift that counts, it's the thought" - because she DIDN'T think. She knew I wasn't interested in plants, and she's trying to force it on me, and now I have no choice. The planter is so big that I can't "accidentally drop it", I can't accidentally burn it, and no one would believe me if I said that someone stole it (plus I can't stage a theft because it's too heavy for me to move). So now I have to go through this whole charade of trying to care for the plants until I come up with some clever way to remove this albatross from around my neck. In the meantime, the planter is consuming 25% of the square footage of my backyard, and I was going to put a beer pong table back there now that the snow has thawed and it's warming up. Goddamnit.

Spring Break!!

Sorry, disciples of The Minister of Common Sense, but I must abandon common sense for a while and indulge in some irrational drinking and behavior! Stay tuned to future postings on this site soon! I hope you all are enjoying the return of warmer weather. In the meantime, check out the archives for good posts you may have missed!

Stamp Prices

Did you know that the U.S. Postal Service is raising the price of stamps AGAIN?! On May 11, 2009, the cost of one first-class stamp will increase from $0.42 to $0.44. I'm not against increasing the cost to mail a letter, but what I object to is these guys constantly bothering us with these stupid little changes to the price of one lousy stamp. Did you know they have increased the price of a stamp SEVEN times in the past ten years? And it's always in those annoying little one or two penny increments. Can't they just increase it by ten cents and leave us the hell alone for a decade?

Thank goodness they came up with those "forever" stamps where you no longer have to buy those ridiculous $0.01 or $0.02 stamps when they increase of price of postage. It probably cost the post office more than a penny just to make and print those stupid $0.01 stamps in the first place, so they likely lost money on the increase in postage rates. It was such a major hassle buying those $0.01 stamps - going to the post office and waiting in line just to buy a hundred one-penny stamps stamps. I wouldn't do it... I would just overkill it by slapping two of the old stamps on an envelope and just be done with the whole thing.

I hate you, one-cent stamp

It amazes me that, even with the upcoming increase in postage in May, it's still only costs FORTY-FOUR cents to mail a letter! Doesn't that seem preposterously low? You couldn't get me to lick an envelope for forty-four cents, let alone trek across the country and deliver a letter. Just think about how cheap that is - and they get it across the country and to your doorstep in about 3 days. How do they sort it all and get it to the millions of different addresses every day? How to they individually read everyone's horrible handwriting?? To me, that seems like a miracle. And a miracle shouldn't cost forty-four cents. Do you know that UPS charges about $20.45 to send a letter from New York to Los Angeles using 2-day mail? So why is the U.S. government charging us 98% LESS than that? I think mailing a letter should cost about $15 - that seems to make more sense - and it sure would cut down on junk mail.

If you think I'm crazy for suggesting that they should raise the postal rates, you have to consider the economics and realize you are probably already paying for it. The U.S. Post Office lost $2.8 billion last year, and they are budgeted to lose $6 billion this year! So, we are already effectively paying for higher postage by subsidizing their loss via our taxes. So, either way, you're paying for it. I could make postage free... but then the post office would lose like $30 billion dollars, and you'd up effectively paying for postage through higher taxes in order to counterbalance that loss.

And have you noticed that it's $0.44 for a FIRST-CLASS stamp? What is "first-class" mail anyway? Is there a "second class" or "third class"? What does a third-class stamp cost?... $0.00325?? What do they do with a letter that is not first class? Does it take weeks to get it delivered, or do they spit on it or something? I might go to the post office and try to end myself something using "second-class" mail, just to see what happens. And if there isn't anything lower than first-class mail, then I want to lobby to have that term removed and just call it "mail".

So please join me in writing an open letter to the U.S. Postal Service and suggest that they stop the inconvenient and stupid one-penny increases in postage (when what they really need is like a ten-dollar increase in postage). Make sure you send it to them via e-mail (which is the REAL "first-class" mail!).