Designers can be real dicks.

I'm an advertising copywriter, which means I work with tons of designers and art directors.

And they all have their quirks. Most of them have very unique qualities. Many of them fall into stereotypes.

And many of them are assholes about other designers.

Being a freelancer, I oftentimes will work with several designers on the same account. And I'll never understand why they'll view a piece I've worked on, and then knock it in front of me. But in particular, the designer that worked on it.

"Ugh. That looks like shit. That tiny little spec right there. I would have magicked that out and used Pantone whatever. That color right there is so cliche. Any why is it on paper? I would have used leather."

I always want to scream at them.

"Dude, that's my fucking work, too!"

"Hey, asshole, I didn't ask for your opinion."

"You should see what this guy said about your piece!"

There are many times when I see shitty writing, and although I bitch about it a lot, I probably only express my opinion half of the time. Because I know how bogged-down-depressing being a professional creative can be at times—always having your work under an electron microscope by people that constantly profess "I know I'm not creative, but ..."

... but lick my ass.

So I would think that designers, knowing damn well what other designers go through, would be a little nicer. At least to my face seeing as I know the guy they're insulting and I probably like that guy, too.

Although, most of the time, it's the inferior designer bitching about the better designer. At least in my opinion. I mean, I'm not a designer, but ...

Burts Bees lip balm is no joke.

After my usual morning makeup routine, I opted for the honey-scented/flavored Burt's Bees lip balm instead of whatever it is I normally use.

There's no reason why I chose honey over mint. Except maybe to attract bees. Because that's what the freaking lip balm did.

Not fifteen minutes later, I was pumping gas into my car when I noticed a bee buzzing around. Usually, I don't bug out when there's a flying insect because my Daddy Lou always told me that bees won't bother you if you don't bother them.

This bee, however, was different. This bee kept coming right at me.

As I slowly backed away, the bee circled and came closer, then further, then closer, then further. By this time, others at the gas station had noticed my strange behavior, but I'm confident they couldn't see the bee.

I must've looked like I was about to have a seizure.

I backed away from the pump and the bee. It seemed to work. The bee took off and was out of site.

Then, it swooped in from behind me, darting between my calves and bumping one as it circled me again.

I didn't swat at it, but I might have jumped and spun in a circle. And I might have said, "Fuck." I always say, "Fuck."

A this point, it was obvious people were watching me now. What wasn't obvious was why I was stiff-armed, moving in a serpentine pattern, and spewing four-letter words.

That's when the bee decided to go for my face. He got so close, my eyes crossed.

It hit me then ... an idea, not the bee. That bee can smell my lip balm.

I quickly tucked my lips in and covered my mouth with my hand. After four seconds, the bee flew away. (After about thirty seconds, my face started sweating it's over 105 degrees here today.)

My crazy idea had worked. Sure, I looked nuts covering my face while pumping gas. But at least I wasn't dancing around screeching, as I was two minutes prior.

I'm doing it myself.

So now that the King of Awesome and I are homeowners, we're tackling a few projects without the (direct) help of experts.

Because I'm cheap and able.

Hopefully able.

Regardless, while we're taping corners and drilling holes and unscrewing pipes, we keep noticing little spots where previous workers just said, "Fuck it." Like with the paint on the inset windows. The beautiful wall retexturing that's been done throughout the entire house is shoddy at best in the parts of the window you don't see unless you're leaning against the wall and uncomfortably looking back at it.

Yeah, exactly. You have to get in strange, Twister positions to even notice. But still, there's evidence of someone else who was probably an exhausted five-hours in just saying, "Fuck it."

And I feel their pain, because I feel like saying, "Fuck it," when I'm in the same spots. Like the itsy bitsy spots of paint that were missed. Sure, we say we'll get them later, but will we really?

Fuck it.

Or the switch plates that are an ugly color so we painted them and stuck them up temporarily. At least we painted them. But will we really replace them?

Fuck it.

Or that teeny bit of blue paint that's now on the ceiling in the corner that you can't see unless you're standing on the toilet. Are we going to fix that? Hopefully, but in reality? Fuck it.

At least we're doing the quirks ourselves, though, instead of paying some other folks hourly to say, "Fuck it," when we're not looking.

9946 Parkford Dr. in Dallas, Texas, has black mold.

9946 Parkford Dr. Dallas, TX

That's the house my husband and I were days away from owning when our lender told us to get a mold inspection.

That's the house that ended up having black mold in the walls.

That's the house owned by the out-of-country people who kept saying they couldn't afford to keep it and tried to get us to pay their mortgage when the closing was delayed.

That's the house that they kept telling us would go into foreclosure.

And it's also the house which I saw is back on the market.

I don't like to post things like addresses here. Or bad mouth anyone specific. Or ruin stuff for others. Or put up such blatant real-word stuff from my life.

But I have a feeling that whoever is in charge of 9946 Parkford Dr. in Dallas, Texas, won't disclose that the house has black mold.

So all I can do is post the address, 9946 Parkford Dr. in Dallas, Texas, enough to make the house climb in the Google searches. And then hope someone searches for the address. And then save that person thousands and thousands of dollars and heartache.

9946 Parkford Dr. in Dallas, Texas, has black mold. And I have the extremely expensive reports to prove it. It also has a slow water leak which caused the mold and is destroying the structural integrity of the kitchen. That's not the only leaky thing, also.

We were planning on putting a lot of money into that house to get it up to par. But the discovery of black mold made us realize we were going to spend way more than we anticipated. That and the bank wouldn't give us the money after discovering the 9946 Parkford's little, spore-spreading skeleton.

If you're interested in that house and you found this blog, I'll be honest and forthcoming about the Parkford house's history. I'll tell you everything, including how it broke my heart.

Let me sleep.

The writer had finally fallen asleep after no less than two hours of twisting the sheets between her ankles and adjusting the pillow multiple times. Her eyelids finally stopped fighting gravity and her mind finally quit racing through the following weeks.

It was sometime around four in the morning. Really too late to be getting to sleep. And far too early to be waking up.

But the gentle hand on her shoulder brought her back up through the dream levels, undoing all of the great effort that it took to get her to sleep in the first place.

She opened her eyes. Slowly. She wasn't sure if she was awake.

"Now?" she asked. So quietly.

"Yes," the Muse gently answered as she brushed hair from the writer's face.

"But I'm so tired," the writer nearly cried. "I don't want to get up."

"But you must," the Muse cooed as she raised a delicate arm in the direction of the computer.

The writer rolled onto her back to look at the ceiling, which she had been staring at before finally sleeping.

"I'd rather rest." But her mind began racing again. And the ideas were popping like kernels of corn inside of her head.

"It's your decision. But I'm here if you need me." The Muse rose from her spot beside the bed, walked over to the writer's chair at the desk, and delicately sat down.

The writer sat up, turned, and placed her feet upon the cold floor. She groggily made her way to the computer and began to write.

And then she woke up.

She had never left the bed, choosing (perhaps not deliberately) to sleep instead of creating.

And the Muse had left her nothing.

The writer prepared for another daytime of searching for ideas, fearing that they would again show up in the night.

"It's just a house."

Cooter Brown and I were in the process of buying a house.

A really cool, funky house surrounded by trees and nice people and gentle hills.

The house needed a lot of love, and we were willing to give that love.

But fate, or whatever it is, intervened and we lost our little house. Days before it was officially ours.

And it feels like a death. It's crushing, really, how badly losing a home feels.

A home that, like I just said, wasn't even ours yet.

I pride myself on not being super materialistic. If my apartment burned down, I'd miss my shoes and my jeans and my computer, but I'd live.

I'd mourn for my iPhone, sure, and I'd be sad having to replace my "[Name of High School] Class of '01" coffee mug with something generic from Target. But I'd live.

And I'll live after losing this house. But this hurts so impossibly much.

I'm no stranger to mental pain. I lost a job when the economy was shit, while I was unmarried and living with a guy. And I was frightful that he'd leave me if he had to support me. I've lost family members and friends, and nearly lost my mind at the same time. I even faced being crippled when my surgery went all wrong and had to deal with the fear that I might not walk right, get in and out of cars easily, or run ever again (I still have a slight limp today, but only a few have noticed).

But losing this house hurt in a new way. It was a failure. I failed. I failed that little house and the future we would share. And now it will sit there and continue to rot away and die.

We dodged a bullet, everyone is saying.

It happened for a reason, we keep hearing.

It wasn't meant to be, people have repeated ad infinitum.

Blessing in disguise? Maybe. Divine intervention? Arrogant to think that my life is that important, but whatever. Fucked up coincidence that happened in the nick of time? Most likely, although that blows, too.

Anyway, I'll just keep on keeping on. And eventually I'll get off of this sad little roller coaster and onto the platform of another home. Hopefully a better home.

Those aren't words.

In the book "Who Censored Roger Rabbit?" by Gary Wolf (which is where the idea for the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" came from), comic characters speak in word bubbles.

Some of the more famous characters, however, suppress their word bubbles and actually speak. Jessica Rabbit is one of these characters.

During one part, she is so distraught and borderline incoherent that garbled mess appears on busted word bubbles over her head. And her speech is unclear and full of blips and bobs and nonsense.

She's mixing the two together and unable to express her feelings.

I feel like that right now. Just thought I'd share.