Sometimes, weird things happen in the Hotfessional household. This week, though, we had TWO (count ‘em, two!) episodes.

Weirdness #1

Mr. Hot’s cell phone rang with a number that he didn’t recognize. Usually, he ignores these calls, but for some reason, he answered. The disembodied voice on the other end of his “Hello” said, “Hel-lo. This.is.a.cour.tes.y.call.from.C.V.S.pharm.a.cy.” The voice went on to “kindly let us know that a prescription for Shortman Hotfessional was currently awaiting pickup.” “Hmmmmm”, though Mr. Hot, “Shortman doesn’t have any current prescriptions and certainly none that need to be picked up.”

Disembodied voice continued, “Your.nearest.C.V.S.pharmacy.is.at.3322.main.street.tallahassee.florida.”

So, y’all? Somehow, CVS confused OUR Shortman Hotfessional in Ann Arbor, Michigan with a Shortman Hotfessional awaiting a prescription in Tallahassee, Florida. Does this seem at all strange to you?

Weirdness #2

Mr. Hot brought his radio out to the porch to listen to the Detroit Tigers play the Chicago White Sox. I was supposed to be at last Wednesday’s game, but decided that I didn’t really want to travel waste corporate budget for a baseball game that we were sure to lose. When he sat down and tuned into the station (97.1-The Ticket), he ended up getting KLOV - 89.3 - a Christian radio station from…Winchester, Oregon.

Then he tried to explain radio skip to me. But y’all? Skipping 2,425 miles? Really? Or is someone trying to SAVE Mr. Hot?

And now the not-so-weird.

I went to MomandDad’s today to fix her computer (again) and stole liberated a bag full of old Polaroid pictures. I’ve decided to make Mondays “The Past in Polaroids” - a recurring subject post wherein I will pick a Polaroid at random, scan it in, and tell you a story about the picture. It may Rock! (especially when you get to laugh at the Hotfessional as a 13-year-old) or it may rock (as in sink to the bottom of the ocean).

—- Anyway, check back tomorrow for my first attempt at starting a new weekly feature. —-

Yesterday morning, Mr. Hot woke me up at 7:30. In the morning. On a Saturday. To go run at the track. (You’re either suitably impressed or thinking to yourself, “The Hotfessional has completely lost whatever little bit of sanity she had remaining.”) When we arrived, there was a man walking around with hand weights. We stretched and got ready to do our warm up lap, loving the slight breeze that was blowing.

Then we heard the Walker yelling. And saw him making all kinds of gestures. Pointing and shaking his index finger as if the invisible companion on his left needed straightening out. He was certainly upset, and I feared that he was going to drop dead of apoplexy, or do bodily harm to his partner (wherever that partner’s body was).

This went on for half a lap. Walker was quiet… walking along… but his body language showed continued agitation. Just as we rounded the turn to start running, we heard Walker again go off on his invisible companion. He was gesticulating wildly. Flailing his weight laden arms and shouting, “No, up! Up!”

Mr. Hot and I didn’t know if we should hang back in case we were to, y’know, run over Walker’s partner, or run like the devil was on our heels to get as far away from him as we could. But Walker was between us and the car. And we were only on lap 2.

As we got closer, I heard Mr. Hot whimper, “I’m scared.” I said, “Me, too. But we can take him.” “What about the guy he’s talking to?” We gave each other’s hands a quick squeeze and increased our pace slightly.

With each footfall, we got closer. Walker was still talking. He was still pointing and flapping his hands. It was obvious that whatever he wanted to go “up” was still having problems, but the rest of his words were mumbled and incoherent. Maybe he wouldn’t notice us with his attention focused elsewhere.

I just hoped that if the invisible companion decided to swerve into my lane (or was already in my lane) that I could go through him/her. It would be terrible if all of the ghost stories I’d read were wrong and they were transparent but solid as a brick wall. I could see myself bouncing backwards onto the hard asphalt and scraping up my ass. Which would have been a real shame because y’know, sitting on it to read blogs and drink vodka all weekend would be fuckin’ painful.

Closer. A glimpse at Mr. Hot. He lifted up his chin, whispered, “Let’s go” and kicked it up another notch. I nodded slightly. Closer. Oh mah holy hell y’all.

Closer. I adjusted my ballcap and vowed to keep my eyes straight ahead.

Closer. Deep breath and……

……then, of course, we saw it.

The bluetooth stuck in Walker’s ear.

—- This is why we should leave our glasses on when we run. —-

Oh mah holy hell y’all.

6:50 a.m. - Something is going “beeeeeep beeeeeep beeeeeep” in my ear. I crack my eyes open and reach for the alarm. Silly me, I committed to go to the track to run with Mr. Hot. What the fuck was I thinking? I can barely walk before coffee. I’m gonna run? Snort.

8:05 a.m. - Swigging water after our 12 revolutions of the track. Walk on the odd-numbers, run on the evens. We call it “old people’s interval training”. Today, though, we did 3/4 of the way around walking, 1 1/4 running. Yay us! And I never even fell over once! Shit - soccer destroyed my knees and my toes. (And did I mention? No coffee yet.)

8:30 a.m. - Shower. Breakfast. Grab some coffee.

9:00 a.m. - Attend a conference call covering “Career Planning”. Put phone on mute and say sarcastically to the presenter, “I already know what your career plan is for me. The freakin’ unemployment line! Bastard.”

9:50 a.m. - Flip the bird to the phone when the presenter uses that time worn phrase, “We finished early! I’m giving you 10 minutes of your life back!” Apparently we should all kiss his ass. The Hotfessional declines to do so and heads to the bathroom to pee.

9:51 a.m. - Begin working on my mid-year Performance Review. Go to get more coffee and figure out that the pot shut off and it’s lukewarm. Decide I’m too lazy to microwave a cup - and get a bottle of water instead. (Too lazy to microwave a cup of coffee. Obviously the whole running thing scrambled my flippin’ brain.)

10:00 a.m. - 5:45 p.m. - Participate in the Process call from Hell. Manage to get 3 bathroom breaks. Since the asshats decided that I was going to be the presenter, I had to have my laptop screen “shared” the entire time. No blog reading. No email reading. No fuckin’ Twittering. (I missed you!) I did manage, though, to finish the trim on a baby sweater and bonnet that I’m working on. And though I couldn’t tell them all how fucking stupid they were, I did stick my tongue out and make liberal use of my middle finger. On both hands.

5:45 p.m. - Hang up (until we reconvene tomorrow for round 183,276 283 17 4). Eat my ‘dinner’ of brown rice, green beans, and pine nuts. Feel like a squirrel.

6:30 p.m. - Sit on porch with Mr. Hot debating whether his 321 calorie glass of red wine (this is not a wine-glass glass, obviously) or my vodka/limeade (215.5 calories) is more satisfying. Of course, since I’m sure I won’t stop at one…it all depends on who has more willpower.

7:55 p.m. - Decide that I need (NEED) my internets fix and plop down on the couch to write this post.

8:06 p.m. - Remember that I left out a part. And I have to tell you all! Dudes!!!

While I was sitting there (around 5:00) trying not to stab my pen through my right eye (the left one was stabbed around 1:23 p.m. as near as I can tell), a car drove down the street. Light-greenish Subaru wagon with a cargo carrier on the top.

I saw this car yesterday while Mr. Hot was cutting grass. They stopped at the end of the driveway, as his back was turned to the street. I thought maybe they were trying to ask him directions. (Ohhhh, poor lost old people. If I wasn’t up on a phone call, I’d come help you!)

Since he wears earplugs when he cuts grass (and y’know, he was cutting.grass. With a loud.ass.mower), he couldn’t hear them, so they went on up the street. They turned around and went on back down the street. And - they were gone. (Bye bye!)

Sooooooooooo, annnnywayyyy, that was yesterday, right?

Today, the same car comes back! And stops. Right-the-fuck in front of my house! And they start taking pictures! Of the front of the house. Of the driveway. I’m completely dumbfounded by what I’m seeing. Stunned. Silent. (Shush. It does happen.)

Shortman was sitting next to me up in the office. I punch “Mute” on my phone and start pointing. And bouncing. “Get my binoculars, fast.” , I finally get my mouth to start working. (I’m going to take down this ass’s license plate number. WTF? Taking pictures of my house????) “Get ready to write this down.”

I try to follow the back end of this car. I bash my head on the window because of the angle I’m turning my head. The only way I could read the whole plate would be to punch out the screen and crawl onto the roof. Even though I considered it as an option, I figured I’d lose my cover if they came back by. (Or would they not notice a bald woman in a neon green tank top sitting on the roof spying on them?)

I can only get the first three numbers - I think they’re 096. I think it’s a Michigan plate. But then the new Michigan plates have the letters first. So maybe it’s not a Michigan plate. Or my binoculars are cheap…

Or I’m just freakin’ blind.

(I did stab that left eye earlier.)

So the car goes down the street and then turns around and drives REALLY slow back past my house. I have my useless-ass binoculars trained on the car. There’s a giant Lab in the backseat and a giant woman in the passenger side.

Annnnnnnd.

That’s it. They drove away. With pictures of my house!

Y’all? I have to say it again. What the fuck?

—-8:38 p.m. - I can’t figure it out. So I decide to go pour that second drink. Damn. I’m gonna have to run again in the morning. —-

The pretty new washer has been delivered. Funny thing though. After the Sears delivery guys were through carrying out the broken one and carrying in the improved version (and they hooked everything up, too!) - they handed Mr. Hot a bag of bolts.

Really big bolts.

They told him that they were the “stabilizing bolts” that should be used in case we ever need to move Washer Version 2.0.

Move? As in from one house to another? ……………… Huh.

Well fuck a duck and make him quack. No one gave us any bolts when we bought Version 1.0. in 2002. And we moved that sucker twice. Y’know what y’all? The bolts stabilize the washer drum. And it was the washer drum that broke last week. Hmmmmm. Methinks maybe the washer would have lasted longer if someone had given.us.the.stupid.bolts. the first time!

I’m smart that way. Cause and Effect. I see it.

I am not, however, all that intelligent in the way of volunteering for projects. Like the process development team I bitched about here? Last week, while I was in Chicago, I spent 12 hours over two days trapped in a conference room with these people. Face-to-face.

They didn’t even supply coffee or chocolate. Seriously. Like they expected me to be able to think?

We went through this process with a fine toothed comb. Turned it upside down and rightside out. We ripped it to pieces and put it back together. We made it black and white, then gray, then pretty pastel colors. (Puke. I changed it back to gray.)

Today, I got an email invitation to two more meetings with this group. The first is from 10 a-freakin’-m to 6 you’ve-got-to-be-shitting-me p.m. Tomorrow. The next one? Wednesday from 9:30 (yes!!!! in the morning) to 6. AGAIN.

I’m not going to Chicago for those though. I’m going to sit right here in my office (which you can check out at Blissfully Domestic in my “Working from Home” articles - Part 1 and Part 2) with my own coffee and chocolate stash. I’m going to put my phone on mute and make snide comments and rude sounds when someone says something I don’t like. I’ll probably repeatedly (and then again for good measure) flip them the bird.

Cause and effect? Volunteer = Work your ass off and get no chocolate. (for me) Cause and effect for them? Piss off Hotfessional = being blogged about in disparaging manner.

But right this very instant, I’m going to go get ready to meet Sonia Sunshine and Nancy for dinner. We’re going to make Nancy tell us all about BlogHer and hope that she doesn’t fall asleep in her hummus.

—- And if they talk me into it, you may get pictures of me pretending to be Demi Moore. —-

Last night, Mr. Hot and I were sitting on the couch watching Daniel Craig in Casino Royale. (Why yes, we’re a bit behind in our movie watching.) Oh mah holy hell y’all…I’d heard the whispers about the chiseling of this new Bond guy’s abs, and his arms, and his legs…but {{swoon}} - fuck a duck. He’s gorgeous.

Um, wait, that’s not where this post was going. Shall we start over?

So, we’re watching this movie. Mr. Hot gets up to refill his Big Gulp cup wine glass with some nice red from the box in the garage. (Shut up. It’s more economical in bulk.) When he opened the door out to the garage, he paused. He looked back at me and then looked out in the garage again.

“Hey, Hot. The lights were on in the car. Y’know, how when you open the door and the dome light comes on? Then it kinda fades out after a while? Well, it was on, and then while I was standing here, it faded out.”

“Hmmmm. My purse is in the house, right?”

I got up from the couch and checked. Yes. Purse in kitchen and wallet accounted for. Checkbook accounted for.

“Check for your mp3 player, Mr. Hot. It was in the glove box.”

“Yes, it’s here. The dog’s leash is here. The Spartan window flag is here. Nothing seems to be missing, but that’s weird.”

He shut the garage door and I started drooling all over again we went back to the movie. I pushed the little nagging thought that some stranger had been in my garage to the back of my mind. After all, if someone had tried to steal something from the car, they didn’t find anything worth taking. Nothing obvious was missing from the garage itself. They didn’t come into the house and kill us all. And the garage door was shut now, so we were all fine.

Besides, Daniel Craig had his shirt off again.

After the movie, I was sitting out on the front porch smoking my “before bed” cigarette waiting for the dog to finish his business and fantasizing about meeting up with Daniel Craig sometime giving Mr. Hot “cookies”. The car horn honked. Once. The car in the garage. (Queue the Twilight Zone music here.)

Now, I don’t scare easily, and I ALWAYS look for the “everyday” explanation behind things like this. It’s not that I don’t believe in “unexplained” phenomena - but like UFOs are Unidentified Flying Objects - unidentified and unexplained don’t necessarily mean ghosts and little green men from Mars. I crave a provable, repeatable reason for shit. Blame 20 years of education (no, it didn’t take me that long to graduate from high school smartie-pants) spent primarily studying math and science.

But y’all? Fuckin’ strange. And creepy. (Again, queue the music.)

I decided that something must have gotten INTO the car. Some stray cat maybe. Or a possum. Something went into the garage while the door was up, crawled into the car since the windows were down, and hit something that turned the dome light on. Now, since Mr. Hot had shut the door, the poor creature was stuck in there - and decided to beep the horn to let us know that he needed out. (Because, y’know, he had to pee and didn’t want to do it in my Avenger.)

Just about the time I was finishing this hypothesis and getting up to explain it all to Mr. Hot so that he could go find out what was in the car, he walked out. With a grin on his face.

“Did you hear the horn honk?”, he asked.

“Yes! There’s something stuck in the car isn’t there? I have it figured out though. Something got into the car when the garage was open and now it’s stuck….”

I tapered off as his grin got bigger. And I noticed his right hand was hidden behind his back.

“I went upstairs and was wondering what was in my back pocket…”

He started patting his ass to demonstrate.

“…and look what I found.”

He held up a set of car keys. With the remote door opener. That turns on the dome light when you unlock the doors. And beeps when you lock the doors.

That had been in his back pocket. Under his butt as he was getting up off the couch. To go fill his cup. Said action apparently triggered the “unlock” mechanism.

Patting his right asscheek apparently triggered the “lock” feature.

—- Now explain to me how he can hit that tiny little button correctly in those circumstances, but when we go to the grocery store and he tries to use the remote entry, he invariably sets off the panic alarm - causing every person in the lot to look at us like we’re idiots. —-
*Rod Serling - The Twilight Zone