Per Normal Activity

Some time ago, probably about a month or two ago, I was having a conversation with my father about my insomnia. This is already a subject that's touchy enough between the two of us, as on several occasions he's quite candidly told me he doesn't empathize with my condition at all and that he's never had trouble sleeping a single night in his life. A statement I'm sure is full of shit, although sadly I do believe he has an utter lack of empathy in my plight as an insomniac. Regardless this conversation wasn’t aided by the fact that my dumbass slut sister and her bastard child were buzzing around the kitchen, in close proximity to our conversation. The aforementioned dumb slutty sibling, Colleen, wasted little time in interrupting our conversation to inform my dad and I that she too, had insomnia. I immediately chimed in that she didn’t, however if she did, the last thing people with insomnia are supposed to do is drink caffeine. Given she’s a daily coffee drinker, I figured this would shut her up enough so that she’d back off and mind her own business. Of course it wasn’t and only added fuel to the fire, as she was now claiming that not only did she have insomnia but that I did not; and then went on to tell my dad how all I do is sleep all day. Needless to say what little patience I possess was now desolate.

“Bullshit,” I screamed out. “The only reason you say that is because when I finally crash and am able to sleep it’s usually in the day-time hours. That’s beside the fact that the primary reason you ever come downstairs in the first place is to pawn off your kid on me because you’re a terrible parent who ignores her the majority of the time.” “Don’t use that kind of language in front of Kadence,” my dad sternly warned me. “Well then tell this ignorant idiot to shut the hell up. She has no idea what real insomnia entails. And if she did, she’d know she’s doing the exact opposite of what any doctor would suggest, sitting a room all day doing nothing, drinking caffeinated beverages and not exercising. Since this point forward she’s continued to insist she has insomnia, whilst her habits have remained stagnant, unlike her weight.

Jumping forward to a time closer to our present, about a week ago I was looking for a large glass pitcher, which I use to refill the dogs’ water bowls. I scoured the kitchen but couldn’t find it. My dad and I agree on few things however one exception has been our intense displeasure with the way Colleen “re-organizes” the kitchen. Her methods of sorting make little sense and genuinely just annoy my dad and me. Out of my frustration it was at this moment I decided to take some vindictive action. I hid her coffee pot, displaced all her types of coffee and coffee related condiments in various locations. For the last week or so, she either hasn’t noticed or has made her degenerate baby’s daddy who had been hanging around the house buy her pre-made coffee elsewhere. This week however, he along with their kid is back in South Carolina, which means as a broke jobless bitch without a car or a license, she could no longer outsource for coffee and was finally forced to look for her missing coffee pot. Last night I heard her questioning my father about the location of the coffee pot and I was impressed with his Clinton-esque manner of speech. I had previously told him I intended on hiding various things from Colleen to deliberately annoy her, so he knew full well that the coffee pot was deliberately hidden, along with the identity of the perpetrator. Yet he was totally forthright and honest with her that he didn’t know where the coffee pot was and tactful in his responses, none of which even hinted toward incriminating me.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011: I run out on an errand at the request of my youngest sister to pick up a prescription from a doctor’s office roughly 5 minutes away when I’m approached by Colleen, inquiring about the location of her coffee pot. And the game begins. “Have you seen my coffee pot?” she asks me, in a neutral non-accusatory manner. “Yeah,” I reply. “I’ve seen it.” “Oh, do you know where it is?” She eagerly asked. “Nope,” I immediately responded. “But I thought you said you’ve seen it?” She questioned. “It’s in our kitchen on a daily basis of course I’ve seen it… just not recently,” I said as I subsequently slammed the front door in her face before she could inquire any further.

I returned roughly 10 minutes later and laid the prescription I had been asked to pick up on the kitchen counter. As I opened my door to head downstairs I notice Colleen is in the kitchen, frantically looking for her coffee pot. So far so good, I think to myself. “So… you really don’t know where my coffee pot is?” she asks me in a suspicious tone. “No,” I reply. “And if I did, I wouldn’t admit it.” “So then you hid it!” she exclaimed. “I never said that, I simply said if I knew where it was, I wouldn’t tell you. Don’t waste your time, you’ll never find it.” I closed my door and walked downstairs, knowing exactly what was about to happen.

Our kitchen is only one room and although it has significant storage space in it’s amplitude of kitchen cabinets. I knew it was only a matter of time before she found the coffee pot, given that I had hidden it along with all of her coffee related crap in there. I also knew after finding said coffee pot, that I claimed she’d never find, she’d feel a sense of victory, of indomitability. It was inevitable, predictable and of course only a ruse to cover up its true genius. I’d hidden all her coffee condiments in places I knew she wouldn’t have bothered looking; especially after she had found her “holy grail” that was her coffee pot. The only condiment she had left was a bowl of sugar, which I replaced with salt, which lay innocently the entire time right next to the coffee maker. Thus, she’d victoriously make her first batch of coffee, pour salt in it and ruin it herself.
A short time later I ventured upstairs to get a vitamin supplement from my upstairs cabinet when I notice my top step is soaking wet. Immediately I look toward Yago, whose been locked down the basement with me since one of our bitches is in heat. Whenever he does something wrong, he immediately bows his head and avoids eye contact with me. Then I notice this liquid is browner looking and partially splattered on both sides of the wall. Given how narrow my basement stairwell is, this would’ve been a very impressive urination display, if it were in fact urine, which of course it wasn’t. I come upstairs and my sister is beaming with victory. “You think you’re so smart. You said I’d never find it. I found it in less than 5 minutes,” she proudly stated. “Then you poured a bunch of salt in your coffee and ruined it, just like I had planned all along, dumb bitch.” And just like that her face turned from victor to victim. No doubt aided by the smile spread across my face and my pleasant demeanor despite just having coffee poured all over my top basement step. Having already cleaned up the mess which was obviously the bad coffee she had made, I trotted down the stairs whistling along the way. Despite the fact that she was no-doubt left in an angry state, the fact that she had the last word by soaking my top step, I’m sure was enough for her to feel that we were even. Perhaps if she had read the motto of some of the Morton’s salt I replaced her sugar with she’d have seen the foreshadowing: When it rains, it pours.

Still in a fairly good mood about what had just transpired I contemplated my next plan of action. I initially thought of dumping a large pitcher of water all over her bed. But the ramifications of such would just be her monopolizing the laundry machine – as she often does anyway – and really that’d be more of an inconvenience to my dad. As I brainstormed about various things I could perhaps dump on her possessions and which of those would be most fitting I realized I glanced over a much easier and more effective solution. The answer lied in the source: where the problem had started: the kitchen. Of course this answer lied in my kitchen. And it had been lying there, covered in black mold, filled with green-yellow opaque water which had been sitting stagnant and smelling foul for months. It was a medium-sized Tupperware bowl with once-unfinished food lining its sides, which had long since been overtaken by mold, bacteria and fungus. So I nonchalantly walked upstairs and grabbed a pair of latex rubber gloves and put them on. I poured a slight amount of the putrid water out so I wouldn’t spill it on my trip upstairs and subsequently to Colleen’s room. I also took the liberty of cleaning all the most disgusting parts of the bacterial growths, located on the bowls outer rims and placed them inside the tepid repulsive liquid, where they’d serve my purpose perfectly. Once I had finished the task at hand I wasted no time. I slowly, carefully and deliberately walked up the stairs, right past Colleen who was in the kitchen and shouted “Hey what are you doing!?” and poured the entire bowl of filth in the middle of her carpet. The putrescence splashed anything in the vicinity and foul odor engulfed her tiny room. “Oh okay!” she shouted. “Well now I’m just going to do something to something of yours again,” she said. “And how exactly do you plan on doing that?” I ask in amusement. “When you’re not here I’ll just go downstairs, she says.” “I have a lock on my door, thanks for the warning.” “Fine then your car,” she says. I briefly laugh for a moment then reply, “I’ll just lock that too.” “Just face it,” I say. “You can’t win.” “Yes I can!” she immediately exclaims. “I’m smarter than you, faster than you, stronger than you and most importantly better than you,” I calmly state. “You’re a piece of shit, you have nothing on me, and you can’t win.” She walks away her head still held high, the typical response of denial for a victim of yet another:
Reality Check

Chuck McG Flees

The night before I recant this events of this morning, my father Chuck McGovern aka Chuck McG 3 inquired about any possible plans I had for the next day. That day being a Saturday, he told me he had some work for me to do. To anyone that knows even the slightest information about Chuck, myself obviously included, this was no suprise. Pretty much any remaining time he has between his full-time job as a CFO and his part-time job as a dance-instructor, he will fill with meaningless, tedious tasks. While some would call this "busy work," he would probably call it "free time." To put a little more emphasis on this point, he will go well out of his way to make sure he spends most, if not all of his free time engaging in such tasks I've often labeled, satirically so, as "Chuck McGovern's weekend projects."
Getting back to the story at hand, I told him I had planned on probably reading most of the day, but that was about it. Essentially my docket was wide open. I'm sure this came as a shock to him... "Well he repeated, I have some work for you to do if you're interested. What time do you plan on getting up?" "I have no idea," I replied. "I just told you yesterday one of the new perscriptions I picked up is supposedly an 'oldschool' sleep aid. Meaning it's supposed to knock you out. The doctor told me don't make any plans for the next 6-8 hours after taking it. So... yeah, I have no idea. I plan on getting as much sleep as my body allows me to."
He shrugged and briefly outlined for me some his plans which included driving the F-150 to downtown Charlotte so one of us, presumably him, could drive his other car back. I contemplated asking him a snyde question about his confidence in my ability to drive one of his vehicles, given his utter lack of confidence in my driving style but in the end I decided perhaps it was best to leave this for another time. A time when I'm not basically broke and relegated to taking any odd-job he will throw my way. "Alright," I say. "I'm not setting any alarms so I guess I'll talk to you when I get up."
I get up around 11:30AM. As I walk toward my light switch it's already evident that I was definately still feeling some of the physical effects of the sleep medication, which frankly suprised me. I'm also hungry as hell. So the first thing I do is head straight toward my kitchen and make a protein shake. I figure getting something in my system would be the best way to solve both problems of my hunger and lingering drug effects. I make a shake, grab a multivitamin and a fish-oil supplement and proceed through my typical morning routine. This usually consists of pulling up My Yahoo! homepage and then checking fagbook for any possibly entertaining updates or friends in need of my social signature; meaning people who have posted something I deem as 'stupid' that I will add my 51.3 cents to. Usually insulting or satirical in nature; often both.
After consuming about half of my shake I feel both my grogginess and hunger will quickly be resolved so I called my dad. Asking him if what the status was with his daily plan and if I had missed my window of opportunity. He told me I hadn't, he was on the way home in the F-350 and he'd see me soon. So I hang up and pick-up where I left off, purusing various articles that struck my eye on Yahoo!. Roughly 10 minutes later, my dad opens my basement door and shouts down "Are you ready to go?" As if he had mentioned any detail about being in some sort of rush or meeting some time-frame. "Uhhh.. almost" I yell back. He slams the door and I jump into action. I was already dressed so my answer was essentially true. Although it's noteworthy I didn't have my contacts in and there was an imminent need for me to defecate before I left on whatever dumbass errand we were running. As I didn't see either of these tasks as very time consuming, I headed straight to the source: the bathroom. I popped both my contacts in relatively quickly then sat down to complete the task at hand. No sooner does my ass hit the seat til I hear my dad's voice shouting out my name in an annoyed tone. "CHASE?!" "YES?" I shout back in an more annoyed tone. "What are you doing!? It's been 8 minutes already." "I'm going to the bathroom." I respond. "Come upstairs when you're ready," he replies. I hear him subsequently stomp up the stairs and slam the door.
After finishing my business I grabbed my wallet, phone and of course - my sunglasses - and knocked on his door. I notice all three of the dogs look toward the front door. Meaning he had definately already left the house. I open the front door and notice the F-150 is already gone and I'm immediately perturbed. I call his cell-phone. He doesn't answer and it goes to voicemail. I repeated this three times til I realized he probably wasn't going to pick up. Typical Chuck McGovern behaviour; act like a teenage girl. So I sent him a text, despite the fact I was relatively certain he wouldn't read it til long after he reached his destination or perhaps indefinately.

Me:Wtf is your problem? You said "come upstairs when you're ready." Not hey Chase I'm gonna come downstairs act like a jackass and leave.

Me: Way to act like a 3 year old.

Knowing full well these text messages probably wouldn't be read only fueled my anger at getting ready in such a rush only to be ditched without warning. So once again I call him back. Once again he doesn't answer. And once again I get his voicemail. This time I decide to leave a message. "Hi, this is Chase McGovern," I begin. "Since you've decided not to answer my calls, I'm going to keep calling you back and fill up your entire mailbox," then hung up. I then proceeded to keep calling him back repeatedly going through the alphabet as I left messages. I got about half-way through til I came to the conclusion I was probably only annoying myself much more than I could ever annoy him. Unfortunately for me, this is often the case regardless of who I am dealing with.
So I retreat to my basement, knowing he'll be back eventually, unable to avoid my impending confrontation. As I settled back down in the dark solitude of my basement my mood quickly followed suit and I was very quickly overwhelmed with feelings of tiredness. Perhaps it was my anger slowly diwndling, the darkness of my basement, the lingering sleep-drug effects or the most comforting fact that I'd probably annoyed him somewhat - just in the fact that he got mad enough to leave so quickly, thus disabling him to fully accomplish whatever his total plan for the day was, given it required two people. So I went back into the total abyss that is my bedroom and fell asleep for a few hours.
I woke back up and immediately listened down the hall, to see if I could hear his TV going. I could, so I wasted no time in going straight up the stairwell to confront him. "So... what's the deal?" I asked him. "What deal? There is no deal. I didn't feel like going down to Charlotte today." Total bullshit. "No I mean why'd you come downstairs and say "come up when you're ready," then just leave?" "I was in a rush, I waited and waited and waited. Then I decided to finally leave," he said. "Oh really," I replied in the most sarcastic tone I could manage (which, for the record, is ultra-sarcastic). "What exactly was the time period between these supposed 'ands'? If you were in such a rush, why didn't you even ONCE mention that to me? Don't you think that'd have been at all pertinent? Instead you tell me come up when I'm ready then just go? Who does that?" "I was already past exit 23 when you first called me," he replied. "Sounds like you were driving pretty recklessly, and you think I drive too fast." "Listen," he says. "I don't feel like arguing with you right now." "Arguing?!" I exclaim. "This isn't an argument. This is me asking you why you always have to behave like such a jerk. While you have no comeback whatsoever." He starts to laugh slightly. This means he's getting really annoyed. Before my dad completetly erupts, sort of similar to the fashion I often do, he always tries to laugh off the agitation at hand. "Don't you consider anyone else when making any decision? And you think Colleen is selfish... and you wonder where she gets it from?" "No I don't," he replies in the same half-laughing manner. "Good," I say. "Because it's pretty obvious."
He then got up and slammed his door and my face. "Typical behaviour for someone who has no comeback and nothing to say... or for a 16 year old girl," I shout through his door. I hear him laughing, probably half-laughing, half-fuming on the other side of the door. Also the typical behaviour of someone who has just been served up with a rather harsh: Reality Check.