It's a Beautiful Day in the [Neighbor]Hood

Kim and I reside in a condo just west of downtown Cincinnati, in Lower Price Hill. Some people have taken to calling our neighborhood The Incline District, most likely to make the area sound better than what it actually is. To be perfectly honest, our neighborhood leaves little to be desired. I will give the city credit though – they are working diligently to try and get the place cleaned up. The problem is that most people living in this area don’t give a shit. Many of Price Hill’s inhabitants are often inconsiderate, and somewhat lacking in the pride and compassion departments. Just as soon as something is restored, it’s back to piss poor condition soon after. Let’s take the Price Hill Kroger Market Place, for example. Kim and I made a bet as to when that brand new facility would be destroyed; it only took about a month and a half. I’m still hopeful, though. With the demolishment of an outdated viaduct and the rebuilding of a new one, perhaps LPH finally has some potential.

I would like to point out that the condo community isn’t nearly as bad as the rest of the area. If anything, we have the best view on the property and it could even be argued, one of the best in the city. My general rule of thumb is that as long as I'm not forced to venture to the top of the hill, I'm golden.




View From Upstairs Balcony



There are a few issues, though. About a week and a half ago, Kim and I were walking our two small dogs at around 11:15 pm. We stumbled across - not one, but two - sets of prostitutes in front of the wooded area near dumpsters where pet owners are required to walk their pets. These prostitutes were, of course, performing lewd acts right in our parking lot. Kim, noticing a head pop up, immediately ran to the first car, knocked on the passenger side window and yelled, alright, time to go…you gotta go…you can't be up here.

Neither of us actually saw the other car that was parked just one spot over until it sped off rights as Kim and I were discussing the first violators.

Unfortunately, these episodes happen on a pretty regular basis. Kim and I are constantly finding needles, chicken wing bones, and used condoms (gross) in the rear of the property. It’s no secret that prostitution (in addition to blatant drug activity) runs rampant on West Eighth Street, just at the bottom of the hill. Our condo is a twenty-second trek for girls to get picked up, park the car, and conduct their "business." And while the recent addition of two sturdy Private Property signs now permits District 3 to ticket violators, it certainly doesn’t deter these people from constantly entering the property illegally.

There has been chatter around our community regarding the installation of video surveillance cameras. Almost everyone is on the same page with the project, and most of us agree that these cameras would seriously help in eliminating a lot of the illegal activity that goes on at night. The catch is that, as in all walks of life, there is always that one difficult person - the one who chooses to be difficult in almost every instance. 

Our condo association board is no different. One troublemaker is pulling out all the stops to keep the installation of the cameras from happening, including adding even more fuel to the fire with blatant rumors. But she doesn’t have to deal with the prostitutes, the lewd acts, and the safety concerns, does she? To hell with us dog-owners, right?

There is a meeting this week in regards to this project. Until then, I guess I’ll just have to wait and see where this one goes.

For more entertainment, go to Kim's blog: http://kimesherwood.blogspot.com



Photo Taken By Kim E Sherwood



Control - Alt - Delete

Shortly after the holidays, Kim and I headed out on a Saturday evening to attend one of his comedy shows in Northern Kentucky. Nothing out of the norm, here. As we're walking in to the place, I get a Shannon Barno to my left, and I look over to see an old girl friend that I haven’t seen over five years. For the sake of this blog, I will call her Allison.

I cannot for the life of me explain this, but this run-in with Allison was bittersweet. While I had a fantastic time catching up with her, both of us knew damn well that we didn’t end things on a good note. When the night ended, we exchanged numbers but there was a strange silent understanding that there wouldn’t be any further contact. Not to mention, with the shenanigans that she and I used to get in to, I’m pretty sure that her husband can’t stand me. But that is neither here nor there.

Back when I was still friends with Allison I had the tendency to play the friendship game with some pretty toxic people. I don’t want to say that I was a pushover per say, but I did find myself putting up with a lot of shit that I shouldn’t have - and for what? For the sake of keeping the peace with people who weren’t even worthy of it?

Because I was keeping the company of contaminated people, Kim eventually brought my defect to a head. I was whining to him about Allison again who, at the time, was completely taking advantage of me. Kim stopped me and asked me why I let Allison constantly make withdrawals from our relationship without making a single deposit. To him, my relationship with Allison was obviously bankrupt. Puzzled, I looked and him and thought, well isn’t THAT is a fantastic question.

Very shortly after hearing those simple but very important words, I pulled the plug on our friendship. Sad, I know, but I felt much better. No more drama, no more withdrawals, no more heartache.

It would be wonderful if this was the only time I've had to end a crappy relationship, but anyone who either knows me or has read even one of blogs knows it's not. Not even close. Not by a long shot. I've had to weed out the liars. The manipulators. The cheaters. The pumpkin-pie eaters (kidding). You never see the bad ones coming because as a wise man once said, bad people are intriguing (thanks, Jorge Garcia).  About three months ago, I walked away from yet another toxic situation. This one wasn’t quite as obvious, but eventually I saw this individual's true colors, very shortly after Kim and I got engaged. This one was tricky - we had been great friends for years! But with a small jab here, a bitchy dig there, and an off-handed comment just about everywhere (not to mention her threat to kick my ass on my birthday) I soon realized that this gal was jealous. Who gets jealous of their own friends? You're supposed to be happy - better yet, ecstatic - for your friends and family, not jealous. Haters always gotta be hatin', right? Anyway, after receiving a super-shitty group text message regarding a un-invitation to her party (that’s right, instead of just calling me and talking to me like a freaking human being, I was uninvited via bitchy, threaded text), I was done. Of all the things in the world, that was the straw that broke the camel's back. Control, alt, delete.

If there is someone in your life who is making you unhappy, either because that person is constantly putting you down, or leading you into bad situations, or lying to you, or cheating on you, or generally treating you like garbage, and you're thinking of pulling the plug on that toxic relationship then just do it! He /she is NOT worth the pain and frustration. The genuine people that truly love you for who you are (GOOD friends; family members) will still be there. And all those little things about yourself that those toxic people used to refer to as annoying, or irresponsible, or stupid, or lame? Those things will undeniably be embraced - not ridiculed - by the people who really love you.

Hold on, Let me Check my Facebook (Real Quick)

Ahhhhhh, yeeeessss....

It's the ass-crack of dawn, and you barely have your sleepy eyes open wide enough to locate your partner and whisper, good morning, but some how you do manage to muster up just enough strength to slowly roll over, grab your smart phone, slide the screen to unlock it, and immediately check your Facebook page. After all, you have to see if anyone has responded to your witty posts and comments from the night previous, right?

You finally manage to get your groggy butt up out of bed, pull on some clothes, and head to work. Throughout your work day, you're forced to read and respond to no less than 13,467 emails. You Tweet (or according to Kathy Griffin, 'Twat') a few mildly amusing quips or news stories on Twitter. You pin a funny BluntCard or two on Pinterest along with a few new and ingenious recipes. After you go home for the evening (if you're into writing like me), you might post a blog if you're feeling particularly saucy that night. And before heading to bed for the night, check your Facebook again. Does this sound familiar? If so, you're not alone.

When it comes to social networking, Facebook is the cat's pajamas. Facebook is a lot like Wal-mart. You really don't want to go, but every so often you just have to; if not for the merchandise then for the entertainment value alone. My mother whole-heartedly believes that Facebook is an evil ploy aided by our government to get naive people (such as myself and the rest of the world) to give out personal information with little or no effort on their part. And who knows, she could be right. People put everything about themselves on Facebook without so much as batting an eyelash.

I bet your ass that some of your so-called "friends" make posts on Facebook that absolutely hit a nerve, don't they? I have a few friends that I genuinely contemplate de-friending on a regular basis because of the dumb shit that they continue to post. And don't get me started on how often these people are posting stuff! There's usually an update, picture, check-in, and/or game played every 33-36 seconds. Oh, I see that you just checked in at the Gyno! Good for you! Good luck on your pap-smear! Hope everything turns out all right!

Facebook is also notorious for enabling inappropriate, stalk-like behavior by just about everyone. Want to see what your boyfriend from high school is up to? Check him out on Facebook. Feel the need to get in touch with an old fling from that crazy weekend get-away seven years ago? Look him up on Facebook. Is it killing you to see what your new boyfriends ex-girlfriend looks like? Well by all means, please go and see what she looks like on Facebook. Chances are, she'll have 150 back-to-back pictures of herself in the bathroom, posing full out duck face.

I'm not on Facebook now as much as I was, say a year or two ago. Anymore, I'm just on there to "check-in" at various places, and I can do that on Foursquare. I've deactivated my Facebook account multiple times because there are days that I just get tired of the egotistical horse manure that people put out there (maybe I'm just a bitch?). But after about a week or two of proudly living Facebook-free, I log back in and come back for more. I'm currently trying to get enough courage to deactivate it for good. Maybe if they made those fun little tokens like they do for people in AA - then maybe then it would encourage me to keep off and stay off. And just think of all of the extra time that I would have to do other things - like check my email!!

The Stench of Humanity

I have to wonder what the mental capacity must be with the world’s countless inhabitants. I’ve found that I either "see" people as either wildly amusing or jaw-droppingly dreadful. And before I go any further with this, I would like to clarify that I'm not talking about the people who have an occasional tongue slip and say something stupid (GOD knows that have I crammed my foot in my mouth A LOT), or even those irritating, highly opinionated people, because I'm irritating and highly opinionated. Actually, I admire the people who have a no-bullshit stance on life.

 

Like these people, if you want my honest opinion on a topic, I'll to give it to you, straight up. Call it a curse or call it a positive and/or redeeming quality, but it's the one quality that I’m actually proud to have: a no-bullshit persona. But now I'm getting off-topic. 

 

What I’m attempting to describe is so more that that. Unfortunately, there are people that, while the words are billowing from their mouths, I totally pull an Ally McBeal and begin to day-dream...I can't help but look at these poor people and think, how on earth have you managed to make it this far in life without either hurting yourself or getting your ass kicked, or both? Then the awe-factor sets in. People can be such buffoons! I must just have an extremely low tolerance for such a ridiculous level of douchebagery, which is why I could never be a lawyer.

There are various strains of idiot that have recently floated to the societal surface that I would like to tackle, head on. The first type is that the archetypal, haughty, self-promoting, pain in the ass, prima donna with an incredible ability to place him/her herself on the highest pedestal possible. For the purpose of this blog, I shall call this ridiculous individual, Perfect Polly. You've never heard Polly so much as whisper anything derogatory about herself. Come to think of it, you’ve probably never heard Polly tell a joke about herself. That teensy, tiny little joke might somehow paint her in a negative light and bruise her ginormous ego. Polly never can and never will do anything less than awesome – ever, because Polly is remarkable at everything in every possible way. We get it, Polly, you totes rock. 

As Polly is droning on and on AND ON about all of the wonderful things she has done with this and with that, I imagine myself leaning over and punching her right in her throat; but as soon as the image pops into my head, I realize what's REALLY going on here. Polly only acts this way because she lacks the self-esteem that she so desperately wants everyone to think she really has. So I pull my imaginary arm back, and settle down.

 

Now let's go on to the second type, which you might not spot quite as often as type number one, but unfortunately still very much exists in the world: Debbie Downer. Debbie is a rather usual breed of miserable pessimist. She's all too quick to point out the imperfections the very people who are unfortunate enough to be around her. Debbie will relentlessly bitch, cry, whimper, and moan about every element of everything, all of the time. Debbie even manages to find the negative in seemingly charming things like sunshine, daisies, and kittens. Sadly, Debbie will never, ever find peace in her meaningless life because she is just that wretched. Debbie doesn’t appreciate her life or the wonderful things that life has to offer, which really makes me crazy, when considering the countless people out there who are desperately fighting to save their own. Nothing will ever make Debbie happy and she will forever continue to go through life squeezing out what's left of the happiness around her, like a dirty, soggy dish rag.


Because normal people like you and I are somewhat benevolent individuals, I find myself in a desperate attempt find some sort of redeeming quality in Perfect Polly and Debbie Downer. I mean, there has to be something, right? But just as I’m giving myself the ole' benefit of a doubt pep-talk, I get smacked up-side the head with life's giant football, realizing that there will never be anything good about these people, because they're, well, ridiculous. At this point, all I can do is try to ignore people like this and hope that one day, my head doesn't inflate to the size of Polly's, or come to find everything around me as loathesome as Debbie.

 

I'm Sorry...

I'm Sorry.

These two teeny-tiny words are not said (or heard) as often as they should be. When I'm wrong, I'm wrong, and I don't have a problem admitting when I am. Buy many others obviously lack the ability.

Recently, I made the conscience decision to apologize to someone – a friend, of a friend, of a friend – who I had hurt a while back. Not to make excuses for my behavior in the past but mentally, I was in a pretty bad place in my life. I’m certainly not proud of the way that I behaved at that time, but I did learn a valuable life lesson from it. If only I would have just went with my gut and stayed away from a few bad seeds, things would have been a lot different. But I can't go back, so, here we are.

Anyway, I knew that I had offended this woman, because she had made it abundantly clear to anyone who would listen to her – my close friends included. She continued to trash-talk me behind my back on a regular basis and well after the incident occurred. So, two years later, I swallowed my pride (and my fourth Blue Moon), and decided to finally nip this thing in the bud, once and for all. I pulled her aside and I apologized for my wrong doings, and she seemed to take a liking to the fact that I was admitting fault, on my part. In fact, she accepted my apology, and told me that she appreciated the gesture.

I thought for a very brief moment, that she had finally viewed the situation from my perspective. Apparently not. In fact, I couldn’t have been more wrong. The next day, she acted as though nothing had happened and immediately went back to her trash-talking. Apparently now she's upset that "things were brought up from the past," and she's "totally humiliated" because of it. So my question is: weren't these things already brought up from the past when you decided to trash talk me to my friends, not even a month ago? It makes zero sense to me.

Regardless, of this, I’m not completely full of shit. When I tell someone that I’m sorry, for God’s sake, I genuinely mean that I’m sorry. And the truly sad part is that I'm not the only person that should have apologized. There was another person involved! But by all means, go back to kissing that person's ass, why don't you?

After a lengthy conversation with a pretty good friend of mine, we chalked it up to the she's-bat-shit-crazy-factor. The fact that this woman acted as though things were fine one minute, and then completely changed her tune only a few hours later, leads me to believe that this is definitely the case.

***

At this point sweetie, I've said my peace. If you don't accept that then trust me, I'm completely fine with it. But the next time you see me out - right after you've been talking shit for the hundredth time - I'm not going to be so nice. Take your meds.

People

Most people who know me will vouch that I'm a social butterfly. I like to be out and about whenever possible. And when you're flitting around as much as I am, you're bound to witness a whole lot of human interaction. 

Now, for the most part, I would like to think that people as a whole are kind, caring, and decent. I see the good things that people do for one another. One day I might witness a woman offering to help an elderly man across the street, another, I may see a man offering up directions to a woman who is obviously lost.

But there are also a lot of ugly people in the world, too. Hateful people. The kind of people that normal people (like you and I) don't really understand.

Hate - the kind of hate that chills you to your core - the stuff you see in the local news every single day. The troubled teen who kills his neighbor’s entire family; the withdrawn middle-aged man who tortures then kills teenage girls; the clinically depressed woman who drowns her own children in a bathtub. Obviously, these are the worst-case scenarios but unfortunately, we hear about these horrific circumstances way more often then the good ones.

When I think about all of these outrageous things that are constantly happening around us, I have to consider the less obvious ways that we are hateful to one another. Perhaps our incessant use of social media and the bombardment of never-ending technology has made us a little...cold. But have you ever stopped to think about the less extreme acts of hate? The stuff that you don't necessarily see on the news, but that happens right smack dab in front of you? I know you've witnessed at least one idiot screaming at the person behind the Customer Service desk while waiting to check-in at the airport, or while ordering an espresso at Starbucks. I've seen the malicious ways that people treat one another for no apparent reason. Maybe it's out of sheer frustration or maybe it's an ego thing. Or perhaps some people just have a false sense of entitlement - those who feel like the rest of the population owes them something – and it’s usually more that what the rest of us are getting.

There are days that I can picture that rude customer from earlier in the day going home later that night and plopping his/her butt on the couch, calling up a friend and spouting off something like:

It was so ridiculous that the airlines bumped my flight back a whole hour. I mean, seriously. You should have heard me. I really laid into the bitch at the desk, too. I wish you could have seen the look on her face. I made her look soooo stupid.

Now, I can say with absolute confidence that you just made yourself look ignorant. If you really want to get what you want, I would like to think that most people would recognize and understand that you have to be nice to the person that you're making such demands to. After all, they're the ones that are holding the cards to your fate at that moment in time. Sugar catches more flies than vinegar. When someone screams at me, it only makes me want to give them absolutely nothing: 

You want an apple, you say? Well guess what? You're an obnoxious, self-centered egotistical, nit-wit and you’re definitely getting an orange. Now, would you like me to schedule surgery so you can have that stick removed?

The next time you feel the urge to scream at someone who is simply trying to help you, try to remember one thing: you never know what the person that you're screaming at (like your misbehaved toddler) might be going through. Perhaps he/she has just lost a loved one - or has just been diagnosed with incurable cancer - or has maybe has just come back to work after suffering a massive heart attack (jeez, go easy on the poor guy or you might give him another!).

Don't get me wrong, I most certainly have my moments. There are days that it takes a great deal of strength to just step back, and just take a few breaths....Woosah. But I have also found that being nice doesn't require that much more of an effort than being rude or indifferent to someone you don't know.

Cell Phone Drivers: BEWARE!

Today I'm here to talk about cell phone usage. And I'm not talking about my Verizon data plan. I'm talking about the nine out of every ten drivers that I see on the road that are either talking on their cell phone or texting (or Tweeting...or Facebooking...or Pinteresting).


Now I'm all for multi-tasking. I can multi-task with the best of them. But leave that for the work force, shall we? When I'm attempting to merge into the passing lane because the jackass in front of me is driving 45 MPH in a 65 MPH, because he's talking on his cell phone, and then I spot ANOTHER ass clown that is texting in the lane that I'm trying to merge into - and not paying a bit of attention - I have a genuine problem with that. 


Just last week, a brand new sparkly silver BMW nearly ran straight into me, cutting me off at a red light at a three-way intersection downtown and gunning it at 70 MPH. And what do I see as I'm driving through the intersection and slamming on my newly-worked-on brakes? The SuperDouche himself, chatting away on his cell phone - with a cop sitting right there, watching the whole scenario unfold.

And while I do realize that you are THE most important person on the face of the planet, Mr. SuperDouche, I'm really not in the mood to die a painful fiery death today. And I really don't think that my family or my friends would be particularly thrilled at the thought of the police picking my severed body parts up from the pavement in the aftermath of a horrific car accident, simply because YOU couldn't stay off of your phone for a measly three seconds. But because you are sooooo important, I know that YOU just really don't care. Kudos, Mr. SuperDouche. Kudos.


Going forward, I think I'm going to BLAST my car horn at any driver who is on his/her cell phone while operating a vehicle. And I'm not talking about a quick "beep." Oh, no, I'm talking about an earth shattering, fully loaded fourty-seven second sounding of my horn that will make any unsuspecting cell-phone-talking driver nearly piss his britches; while making it perfectly clear to him - and everyone around him - that he too - is a SuperDouche.


They make hands-free devices for a reason!! Time to start using them!