Brian has taken Clara Jane for her annual check-up, which means for the first time in five years I don’t have to deal with the trauma of inoculations. There’s a streak of “Will and Grace” reruns on Lifetime. I just had coffee, which doesn’t make my esophagus cry anymore. I should be in a fine mood.

I’m not.

This house is a wreck. I feel like I’m constantly picking up after Clara Jane, and she’s following behind me, tearing shit up. Currently on display in my living room? An open entertainment center door with a piece of tape stuck to the top of it, strung three feet across the living room like a trip wire, still attached to the tape dispenser. It used to have crayons stuck to it. Brian removed those last night so the dogs wouldn’t eat them. Not sure why he left the tape, but since I haven’t removed the tape I really can’t complain.

In good news, yesterday’s Dive Bomber is up.

In related news, I’ve been reminded today why I hate buying shit on ebay.

This week I realized that I’m quickly going to plow through my collection of crappy cookbooks. I gave tons of them away on Freecycle before the move two years ago, so my collection’s not as big as I recalled. Need more books for fodder!

Since this week’s been crazy busy, I was only able to hit one thrift store. I scored four books, and I think I’ll be able to get decent material from three of them. Not bad for $2. Since I was on a purchasing roll, that night I hit ebay – I hate ebay – and bid on a few books.

I should have taken heed on the one auction with the message that payment was required IMMEDIATELY upon the end of the auction. This might as well have been a blinking .gif saying, “Stay away! This cookbook will cost you $73-worth of drama!”

The auction ended late Thursday/early Friday, after I’d gone to bed. Which is saying something, because I’m a night owl. Yesterday, I had messages that I had won two cookbook auctions, but I got distracted by trying to squeeze in my own online business stuff quickly so as to not deny Clara Jane a day outside in the 70+ degree weather. So I didn’t pay for my $1 cookbook IMMEDIATELY.

This morning, I have an email from the seller:

AS mentioned in my auctions Immediate payment was required.

Well, then. I apologize for not dropping my entire life to be up in the middle of the night, or putting my entire life on hold in order to send my $1 payment. Jesus.

I paid, of course, and included a rather snippy note of my own, which really upped the price I was paying for the book.

I have spent the past hour getting emails from this seller detailing how rotten her life is, after partaking in a lively debate regarding which one of us is the most rude.

If the stuff she’s saying is truly happening – job loss, ill relatives, overworked, young kids, etc – well, no one deserves that. I don’t doubt her story; plenty of people are in similar shitty situations. I’ll be spending Monday cooking for 20 of them at a shelter.

I’m up to five emails from this seller regarding the state of her life. The last one included an apology. And yes, I apologized for calling her out on her rude message. I could have been a little nicer in telling her to chill the fuck out. I guess this is all an example of how the climate these days has everyone so close to snapping. We’re all a bunch of walking nerve ends, aren’t we?

So, this 1958 cookbook cost me $1 + s&h, an hour of my emotional life, and a portion of my soul. I’d better get at least five columns out of it.

Seriously, though, I’m sticking to the thrift stores. It’s less work in the long run.