Housemate Xed works for the Secretary of State, in the bit that registers businesses and, for a few years and for somewhat convoluted political reasons, domestic partnerships.
Yesterday their office received the… complaints? Of a somewhat distraught pair of people (notice I do not say ‘couple’) who, at some point in the last few years, had decided to go into business together — a nail salon or something, I think — and been advised that they should form a Partnership. Pretty standard for a small business with two owners.
…except they didn’t understand and formed a Domestic Partnership instead.
Washington State legalized same-sex marriage in 2012, and as part of that, this June ALL non-senior domestic partnerships became marriages automatically.
These two business partners accidentally married each other.
And now they’re trying to figure out how to undo it.
…short of divorce.
THIS IS THE BEST *saves this plot for REPEATED FUTURE USE*
My friend got married yesterday and we missed the wedding because of work but we made it to the reception. Because its mid-September and the reception was in a nature center (awesome!) there was a little bit of a fall theme. Not overbearingly, but the tables all had these tiny pumpkins.
So they’re cleaning up at the end of it and we’re still hanging out because we haven’t seen these people in forever and we can talk until three in the morning when we get together. All of a sudden, the Maid of Honor hands us a tiny pumpkin.
“Take one.”
“Um… okay?”
“Take another.”
“….?”
“It is my duty as Maid of Honor to make sure that the guests leave with an uncomfortable number of tiny pumpkins.”
So it turns out that she’d gotten a bunch of them for a Halloween party last year and after the party was over her mom threw them into the compost heap thinking that would be the end of it. But what she didn’t seem to realize was that if you put pumpkins in a compost heap- it grows more pumpkins. It grows pumpkins exponentially. Serious mathematical anomaly pumpkins.
So this year she has even more tiny pumpkins and she figured it would be a good idea to have them as decor for the reception. BUT- she would still have to throw them out at the end of the day and no matter where you throw them you are doomed to have a ridiculous amount of tiny pumpkins growing SOMEWHERE at your fault.
So everyone left with at least two tiny pumpkins and that’s how we made friends with the Maid of Honor.
So I forgot about it and then the next morning I woke up and found these two tiny pumpkins in my purse and had a puzzling moment of ‘what?’
We were invited to the Maid of Honor’s house the other day so we could:
take some of the flowers off her hands
help with some post-wedding stuff
watch the presidential debate
play Clue for like three hours
drink a lot of booze.
And there are just… tiny pumpkins EVERYWHERE.
They were in the bathroom.
At the end of the night, I counted 26 tiny pumpkins, and that was just what I could see.
It happened again.
Three pumpkins ended up in my purse this time.
One of them has a face.
I need to stop drinking with this woman.
this is getting out of hand.
Okay so I finally had a day off and decided that the best way to handle the pumpkin situation was to eat them and muffins sounded fucking fantastic. But I found out really fast that most recipes call for a ‘can’ of pureed pumpkin and I don’t have a scale to go by. So I figured that I had six pumpkins, it would probably amount to something like one can, right?
Well… no.
It ended up being something like two and a half cans-ish. And that’s a really rough estimate. Turns out there’s a lot more meat on those things than you think there’d be. So I figured I could do something like double it and then make a half batch.
But then I ran out of sugar. I mis-measured the baking soda. I only had whole cloves, so I had to grind them down and had to estimate how much I needed. I couldn’t find the liquid measure.
I’m mixing up this giant bowl of pumpkin batter goo thinking shit shit shit this is going to be a mess. There’s no way anyone is going to be able to eat these things. And there’s no muffin cups. But I already made it this far and I’m stubborn as hell so in the oven they go.
I… kind of… forgot about them? Woops!
Place starts smelling like Yankee Candle and I’m like SHIT. Get over to the oven and…
they’re…
….somehow perfect?
Maybe a little dry, but they’re fucking delicious. Fucking magic pumpkins. Truly I am a witch.
So the moral of the story is that if life gives you tiny pumpkins, make them into muffins and give them right back.
Also roast the seeds because hell yeah.
Happy Halloween, everyone!
We’ve found her in real life guys
An actul fictional character in real life
she even baked with them
This is not the only evidence posed to me that I might, in fact, be a fictional character.
My employer decided to convert all of a certain class of our records from paper based files to digital. There were three immediate problems. Our company was not going to buy a generic system, but develop our own unique, tailored system. It was to be done on the cheap, with net savings for record keeping from Year 1. The guy in charge (let’s call him Genius) always (and I mean ALWAYS) thought he was the smartest guy in room. Believe me, he wasn’t.
Anyway, one of the girls I worked with took on the project on the condition that she could have the next July off for her wedding and honeymoon. She worked hard, and the project was actually making progress. One of her duties was passwords, none of which could be written anywhere because Genius knew this was ‘bad’. She periodically reminded Genius about the July wedding and he told her it’d be fine, but never signed off the paperwork. Come mid May, the project is WAY behind, mainly because Genius told management it could all be done in house at negligible cost, and Genius kept changing the design every time he read a new magazine article on IT. My friend was then told 6 weeks out from the Wedding that her leave was cancelled. The project took priority and she’d just have to reschedule her wedding, honeymoon, the works. Genius just could not see that this might be a problem. So she did her job, updated the passwords as required, never recording them anywhere, as required,……and resigned without notice the last day of June.
On her honeymoon she gets a frantic call from Genius demanding all the passwords. “Sorry, I don’t work there anymore “ click.
That’s why a decade later our company still has a few hundred electronic case files we can’t access.
so my campus is currently hosting an ENORMOUS conference of scholars who study medieval history. they’ve been completely flooding the tiny cafe where I work and drinking our coffee faster than we can make it, but the good news is that they provide some PRIME people watching, including:
the fact that all of their name tags include pronouns so that I won’t feel bad assuming anyone’s gender in this post
the woman RANTING about one of her colleagues on the following grounds: “he thinks he understands it from some class he took in 1996! FUCK OFF, TOM.”
the man who was loudly and earnestly discussing the “influence of the Harry Potter fandom on our modern political discourse” while he got a soda
before he was out the door he’d switched topics to his preferred methods for teaching students about elves
the two nice extremely polite young British lads who I could not tell apart to save my life. their name tags indicated that they were apparently not twins, but cloning does not seem impossible.
the sheer number of people graciously volunteering to buy lunch for people they’ve just met
an unexpected number of very handsome soft butch women involved in medieval studies. I am bisexual and weak.
the guy in the flannel shirt who had the coldest, softest, most feminine hands I’ve ever encountered. I fell in love with him for a good 60 seconds. I am bisexual and weak.
people who aren’t from America being cheerfully confused by our money, including my favorite, a Canadian woman who told me “I’m slow with American money because it’s all the same color.”
I’ve learned that people who aren’t going to be in the country for more than a few days don’t give a SHIT about their change and will toss all of it in the take a penny/leave a penny jar. I collected so many quarters, y’all.
also a nice British woman called it the penny pot, which is the cutest shit I’ve ever heard and absolutely its new name.
just in general the EXTREMELY good grace and patience with which everyone accepted that we only have 2 cashiers and that it takes about seven minutes to make more coffee.
SEVERAL times after I apologized for the coffee wait (because this is customer service and minor inconveniences mean we have to grovel) the response was ‘lmao no worries this just means I get a fresh pot’
a woman approached me to day with a fucking enamel pin of that old illustration of a nun gathering dicks from a tree (you know the one) and I said immediately “oh my god, is that a pin of the penis tree?” and she looked stoked and said “yes it is the penis tree! you’re only the second person to recognize it!” what kind of boring ass medieval scholars has she been hanging with???? she was probably so fucking excited to finally have company where she could wear that pin and nobody said anything??? rude.
you know, this one
I have more:
every single person who said “cheers” when I gave them their change.
the painfully hip young man who was dressed entirely in standard academic business casual EXCEPT FOR his shiny silver doc martens.
me: “you boots are amazing.”
him: “!!!! thank you!”
the man who walked in, spotted the selection of high octane energy drinks, and nearly cried with relief. when he came to the register to pay for what was probably enough caffeine to kill a horse he looked me dead in the eye and said cheerfully “thanks, I’m jet lagged as shit and I can’t be expected to function right now.”
the dude who overheard my friend Austin listening to Florence and the Machine, started chatting with him about it, and asked him out on a date
I sold a hot dog to An Actual Nun
I have a very important update for everyone who had questions regarding the penis tree pin (and there were many of you):
this post found it’s way to one Dr. Kara Maloney, who is in fact the proud wearer of the penis tree pin
as several people have suggested, it does in fact come from the Marginalia Paraphernalia kickstarter, so we can officially say we solved that mystery.
a friend of mine forgot the word “lamp” once and said “light faucet”
I’m shaking from laughter. Yes, this is the right way to start a Friday morning.
Listen guys, I have a BA in English and an MA in Professional Writing and I have:
Forgotten the word “gums” and called them “teeth cuticles” Forgotten the term “liquor store” and called it a “rum-o-rama” Forgotten the word “mohawk” and called it a “head mustache”
The list goes on and on. Wording is HARD.
You know that putty you put in holes before you paint a wall? I forgot the word “putty,” called it “hole-be-gone” instead, and now my whole family refers to it as hole-be-gone.
it’s hard to make the brain do the english, ok!?
I wish I had this skill. When I lose a word, my brain derails. I use the term ‘derail’ because it is the mental equivalent of a train derailment (just easier to clean up)
At the staff meeting, my boss referred to the clipboard as “that snappy board”
My 4-year-old nephew didn’t know the word “knuckle” so he told us his finger knee hurt.
I forgot the word “speech” once so I said “you wrote me an essay with your mouth”
Dad once temporarily had the term “auto body filler” leave his brain; the Canadian Tire worker had her whole day made when he cheerfully said, “I’m here to procure some…car-spackle!”
I once forgot the work barrel so I described it as a round wooden box and then something “pirates put rum in it” before my mate figured out what I meant.
Oh god. Here we go.
Once upon a time, I had a lot of trouble communicating with friends. It could be argued that I still do.
In my first year of high school, I was talking to this one girl who I’ll call Lullaby. We had literally every class together, so we started hanging out all the time.
During lunch, we had a conversation about our experiences dating girls vs. dating guys in a sexual manner. We get back and we go to the rest of our classes, and she starts out the door.
What I WANT to say is “Come back”
Of course my brain decides that there are synonyms to words that sound like that, since it won’t actually word.
I blurt out, in front of half of my class.
“Ejaculate back!”
I do this a lot.
Here are some good ones:
I stepped on something gross and it got between my toes, and in my distress I referred to my toes as “feet teeth.”
I was very proud to have finished the “plate laundry.”
I told my ex to go look in the garage, only I said “car pantry.”
But my VERY FAVORITE is when I couldn’t remember the word for brown, so I called it “boring purple.”
>
I once forgot the work barrel so I described it as a round wooden box and then something “pirates put rum in it” before my mate figured out what I meant.
“Something pirates put rum in” is usually “pirates” in my experience.
Look, I still maintain “food closet” is a perfectly acceptable term if you can’t remember “pantry”.
Conversely I once forgot the term “linen closet” and told my mum to get a sheet from the Blanket Pantry.
I’m an anglophone living in Europe, and I keep having this problem not because I forget a word, but because I forget which English dialect someone else speaks (or don’t know).
The past week featured ‘hot potato rectangles’ (because i was unsure what ‘chips’ would mean to my friend).
Don’t even get me started on the holes in the wall that make the electrikkity go.
i was talking to my sister on the phone the other day and she has a tendency to talk for several hundred years so eventually i got hungry and grabbed a rice cake and started to Munch and she goes “what’s that” and i said “i’m eating a rice cake” and she’s like “oh gross you like those?”
and without thinking i said, “they satisfy my urge to eat packing peanuts” and what followed was seven full seconds of silence
like oh okay go ahead and pretend you’ve never wanted to eat a packing peanut you pretentious fool
so im at work and bagging for this lady and her little kid and the kids askin me about what its like being a big kid and all that so he goes “do you have a girlfriend? is she pretty?” and i live in a pretty liberal area and it was pretty quiet in the store so i just calmly responded “actually i have a boyfriend, but he’s fairly pretty” and the mom just kinda pauses on her phone and looks down at her son like please dont say anything bad please dont embarrass me but he just gets so fuckin excited and is like “you can do that ???? i didnt know boys were allowed to have boyfriends!!” and hes turns to his mom and is pulling at her phone trying to get her attention and is just really excited like “mom did you know that ? can i have a boyfriend instead of a girlfriend ??” and she just started laughing and was like “if you want sure” and they took their groceries and left and im just standing there like
DID THAT JUST HAPPEN
THAT WAS SO CUTE
The purest post.
OMG
That is so cute and that mother!!!!! Good job mom.
my favorite student is this little excitable turkish kid who waves me over at lunch every day to holler a joke at me & then urges me to get the other teachers to come listen to his jokes. my favorite so far is Q: what do you call somebody who doesnt want you to go to the bathroom? A: a teacher (the other teachers did not find it as hilarious as i did)
this child, hollering at me in the middle of class: YOU NEED PUN.
me: yeah i do whats ur pun
this child: what was the real name of the titanic? …the fathership. ……….because fathers are Big.
me, at recess: hey u got any jokes today
this child, stumbling off a log & dramatically yeeting his paper hat full force for no apparent reason: i have,,,,, ONE. [dramatic pause] i really have to KETCHUP on fortnite
todays the last day i have this kids class & he was like “u need a GOOD final joke” & i want yall to know his final joke to me was: why are frogs so happy? because they eat what bugs them. he then proceeded to hug me for a solid minute while a bunch of other kids came & took turns hugging me,
My husband doesn’t believe me that shaving your legs is difficult and time consuming. So long story short he is about to shave his legs for the first time.
Update: he is part way through one leg and regretting his decision. I got him to switch from his men’s razor to my woman razor (his is for face shaving) and it’s going slightly better.
He is hating shaving his legs. HATING it.
Update:
My husband from the shower: how many notes does your post have?
Me: roughly one for every YEAR you have been in that shower!
Update:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
He says it was ridiculous and he can’t imagine having to do it again in a few days time, it’s much harder than shaving his face (he had previously claimed they would be abut the same). He says he feels he has learned a lesson!
Edit: He also pulled a muscle while shaving his legs! He said it was like exercise. “Yoga in the shower with razors” indeed!
Update: he has been rubbing his legs together in bed for ten minutes.
Steel Phoenix Studios 