Respect Has Been Paid

You may have read that I’ve been recently unemployed.  No more.  Yay.  Updates follow, because asshattery has ensued.  However, this rule applies: money in = increased patience with shenanigans.

What I’m ranting about now is my time off between hires (unpaid, by the way).  I had one full unpaid week of absolutely unpaid nothing to do other than what the tiny lady I’m married to asked me to do, unpaid, which wasn’t much.  What I’m assed about is, of seven straight days of being close to living in a van down by the river, IT RAINED FOR FIVE OF THEM.  Fuck.

I love me some yardwork time, and when the Unemployment God dickslaps you with his awesome unpaid munificence, you take advantage of that time.  Unless, of course, it is fucking raining and you cannot do yardwork that needs done.  Fuckers.

All that said, you can do math (hopefully) and realized that I did get two days of awesome.  I got a lot done, and in that time, there’s of course a story.  I’ll preface it with the reference to my two-weekend, wasp-sting experience where I “discovered” a yellow jacket ground nest while pulling out some ivy from my back yard.  Ouch.

Flash forward to now.  Below, you’ll see the shittastic little corner of my yard where there once was a verdant bed of uncontrollable English ivy bent on world domination.  By the way, all English ivy is bent on world domination.  The Brits once tried to dominate the world, and therefore their evil fucking ivy now does the same.

Wasp Graveyard… Near the leaf, directly below the new shrub… die, you evil-stinging, eye-closing motherfuckers

I’ll point out the grayish smudge of dirty shit across the photo.  That is the remnant of burnt shit.  Why?  Because yours truly exacted epic, Biblical-scale fire-death upon the wasps.  They died in their nest, struggling to escape, while accelerant-fueled flames licked at their multifaceted fucking eyes and immolated their queen.  Score: Rants – 2, Wasps – 2, series ended.

Of course, as I returned to the ivy I’d abandoned due to the death-stinger asshole insects, guess what happened?  No, I did not have dinner with Stephen King or Neil DeGrasse Tyson.  Dammit.  What did happen was, three wasps returned as I was raking the shit smooth once the ivy had been ripped brutally from the ground.  They swooped in, sniffed me, and hovered.

At this point, I’ve learned to fucking pay attention to black-and-yellow goddamn bugs in the air.  However, they circled, then moved in and out, and left.  It felt like a message to me, possibly saying: “You were a worthy adversary, Rants.  Respect.  We will now separate, not in peace but in mutual standoff.”

Fucking fine by me, you little pissflaps.  A year and a half from now, your former nest will be coated over with a verdant blanket of grass.  Dickwads.  However, my adventure wasn’t over.  As I was peeling off my work boots (old combat boots, of fucking course), I spotted this:

What the actual fuck??

Curious, I had to inspect it.  The area closest to the house I’ve managed to coat with a generous and deep layer of self-made topsoil.  This looked like a mushroom at first glance.  Upon closer inspection, I found this:

Great. I’m a Southern town.

Fucking great.  I have a miniature fucking water tower.  Either the worms are worshipping me, or the alien invasion has started, and I’m the capitol city.  Welcome to my life.