Old Lady Gerdes

Here is a list of recent occurrences that concrete my status firmly in the "I am becoming a cranky old lady" camp.

1) A few weeks ago, while leaving for work, there was a really strong skunk smell in our kitchen. It was bizarre. When we exited our back door, we were hit with a thick wall of marijuana smoke.  Fuzzy informed me that a whole lot of teenagers were exiting the area below our staircase where they were easily hidden. I was surprised he didn't say anything to them. They left, and then before we drove off, they walked back through our alleyway. I stayed in the car while they walked by, so that they would be too intimidated to go back down to their "smoking lounge."

For a few weeks after that, I obsessively checked the landing to make sure that kids weren't stowing away down there. I considered putting up a "No Smoking" sign down there as a passive aggressive way to tell them to stop.

Then one day, I smelled cigarette smoke and heard a lot of voices chattering. I exited my apartment, and rounded the corner to the staircase below. Caught in the act!!  I told the teenagers to please stop smoking below our apartment, that it stinks up our kitchen and that it isn't their private hangout. Literally 6 kids were crammed up against the wall trying to not be seen. One kid jumped out and said "Yes, ma'am, we won't do it again" and then, like a clown car, one by one the teens sheepishly left the little cave, while I stood there watching them all and saying "Let's move em out. Here we go." etc etc.

Fuzzy informed me that I did the city version of "You kids get off my lawn!"

2) At the office where I work, we have exposed buzzers/ doorbells on the street. We're also really close to a middle school, and kids walk by between 3:00 and 4:00. Every single day, we get at least one buzz in that hour. I've worked there for over 5 years, so I'm used to it. So the other day, I was taking out the trash, and I saw one kid poise his finger over the top button and run his hand down all 7 buttons. What did I do? I call out to him "Hey! Thanks for buzzing our apartments every day! We love it--it gives us a nice mid-afternoon jolt." I was met with an expressionless stare.  I bet he thought I was really lame.  We've gotten a buzz every day since.

3) This past Friday night, Fuzzy and I had a night in, catching up on some tv. Each time we would start a new show, I would exclaim "LET'S STAY UP ALL NIGHT!" I did that until I couldn't be awake for another second and it took everything I could to walk to the bedroom to go to sleep. I looked at the clock--it was 12:05.

4) Y'all all know that I love me some music videos. The other night, I was working on a project and I put it on MTV Hits as background noise. A video came on for some pop starlet with red hair (I wish I could remember who it was so I could link to the video, but alas, the memory's going.) In the video I think she was trying to be sexy, but how she tries to accomplish this is by wearing a leotard and sticking her ass in the air over and over again while on all fours. It was really just embarrassing. I was trying to describe the video to Fuzzy later, and the following sentence came out of my mouth: "I mean, I wonder what her parents think about it."

Sheesh.

(Sidenote: I think this blog post is going to push my triumphant Judy Tenuta post off the front page of my blog. Goodbye, Judy...I'll miss you. But don't worry, you won't be forgotten. I think I just made Judy Tenuta be my unofficial blog mascot in my mind. Judy forever! Oh, in writing this, another old lady story--I was telling a friend of mine recently about the Judy Tenuta project, and he had no clue who Judy Tenuta was. Fuzzy and I remembered later that he's a number of years younger than I am...so he missed that whole portion of pop culture.  KIDS, GET OFF MY SHED!)

UPDATE! Because my brain works in really weird ways, as I was driving into work today, the name of the artist in point #4 popped into my head. It's Neon Hitch, and the song is Love You Betta, but really, it's F U Betta (oh, brother) but this is the TV friendly version. The embarrassing video is here.