Sick, mad, and in need of a cocktail....

I love this time of year.

I also hate this time of year.

Confused? Yeah. Me too. Maybe it's the gallons of alcohol-laced cold medicine I've had to guzzle thanks to this bear of a virus that managed to sneak its way into my body.

I can't seem to make it through a single fall without catching the first truly nasty bug of the season. It's like I have a giant target on my head that says, "Pick me first!" And the sucky part is that I can't concentrate enough to be able to use my time wisely and productively. Instead, I'm surfing MySpace and Facebook.

And because of that, I'm fuming mad. Mad and sick. Fantastic combination.

Ok, a little background:

I'm divorced. (We'll call him The Big Jerk) Our marriage was a joke from the beginning as The Big Jerk has only ever been interested in....well....not being alone. It doesn't matter who he's married to, as long as he's married. Pretty sad, but hey, not my problem.

Someone, however, keeps making it my problem: mainly, number four (his fourth wife). This woman has been stuck on me like doggy poop on a pair of cleats! She won't freaking leave me alone!! I tried making my MySpace profile private, but apparently, status updates still show up, and she was viewing my page every day to see what I was up to. Why? I have no clue. Obsession, perhaps.

Anyway, I had finally had enough, so I looked into switching over to Facebook. Before I switched, I checked to make sure she wasn't already a member of the site.

(However, I must mention, Facebook is much better for avoiding psychopathic stalkers. There are a lot more privacy controls that allow you to control who sees what.)

So, I checked, and she wasn't there. Sweet.

--Or so I thought.

The witch is now on Facebook. She wasn't there, and now she's there. And she even tried signing up under what I'm assuming is her maiden name as her first name, and her first name as her last name. Wow. I mean, I knew she was disgustingly obsessed with me for some reason, so I really shouldn't be surprised, yet I am. And the thing that gets me is that I'm the one trying to get away from her, she's the one following me, but she still has the nerve to act like some kind of victim when I get pissed off about the stalking.

Ok, that anger took a lot of energy. I'm too sick for this crap. Psycho stalker can do whatever she wants. I'm the one in a real marriage with a guy that doesn't get married just to have a wife. No matter what she does and says, I know that guy, and he'll say and do anything he has to in order to avoid being alone. (Proof: she's wearing a ring he bought for the girl he knocked up right before her. Wow, that's gotta suck.)

I'm putting her psycho-stalking ways out of my head, popping in Practical Magic, and taking a much needed, cold medicine-induced nap. Night night.

You call that a cold front?!?!?

Most people don't realize it, but there's a vast difference between western and eastern Washington State. If you think back to fifth grade science, you might remember learning something about rain shadows. A rain shadow happens when the clouds are too fat and lazy to climb up the mountains and rain on the other side of them. Or something like that. I don't know, I was too busy staring at boys to pay attention in science.

Anyway, eastern Washington sits in a rain shadow, and this makes it hot and dry in the summer, and colder than a witch's tit in the winter. (And yes, witch's tit is a technical term. Especially if it's in a brass bra. Ask my mother.)

I grew up in those extreme temperatures, so it wasn't unusual for me to go trick-or-treating wearing my costume, a jacket, a fur coat, my snow boots, a scarf, a hat, two pairs of gloves, and a hot water bottle. We'd run around the block as fast as we could, banging on doors, mumbling "Trick-or-treat" very quietly (because, of course, our lips were frozen together), and racing home as soon as possible to drink hot cocoa and count our five pieces of candy.

Western Washington, however, is a little different. You hope it doesn't rain. If it does, you bring an umbrella. That's it.

I just checked the weather forecast for the area, and they have posted a "SEVERE WEATHER ALERT." Well, of course, I clicked on this weather alert because if the 40-year flood is coming, I want to know about it so I can build an ark. (Or make hubby build an ark because all I would do is smash my fingers with the hammer.)

Anyway, so I check this weather alert only to see that we're expecting a major cold front this weekend. Our lows might get down to, like, 30 degrees.

Shoot. I've run down the street naked in colder weather than that. (Truth or Dare. Don't ask.)

In eastern Washington, they'd call that forecast a warm front. And then they'd laugh their asses off.

It's like the time I was driving down the road listening to the news on the radio. The newsman was talking about some graffiti that had been found downtown, and he announced that the police were asking citizens to call in if they saw anyone suspicious walking around with a can of spray paint. I laughed so hard, I almost side-swiped a Buick.

If I called the police over a guy carrying a can of spray paint in my home town, they'd threaten to arrest me for being a dumbass.

Maybe those extreme temperatures increase the crime rate. I don't know. All I know is it's a completely different world over here, and I'm still getting used to its eccentricities.