Internet hook ups, dumpster diving, a high guy in my car, and hiring a guy from the 'hood. Yes. It was quite a weekend, y'all.

The rest of the Brazil story is going to have to wait because today Imma tell y'all about my weekend because it was full of fun, frustration and total crazy.

Karen from Virginia Beach was in Atlanta this weekend and she wasn't sure she was going to be able to escape her family to meet up with me but she told them they needed to get over it and they got scared of her so they let her go.  I'm kidding.  I have no idea what their discussions were like.  I think her daughter was a bit freaked out that her mom was going to go jump in the car with some crazy lady from the internet she had never met before, but Karen did it anyway.

Only she did it 30 minutes later than we had agreed on and this is going to sound confusing but I knew exactly how to get to her hotel, however, I was one lane over from where I needed to be on Freedom Parkway and there was a lot of traffic and no one would let me over so I ended up going in the opposite direction from where I needed to go and got on the expressway instead of Andrew Young International Boulevard.  I got off on the first exit and got myself good and lost because I might be a native of Atlanta, but that doesn't mean I go driving around in the middle of downtown very often.  I actually live 2 miles from downtown.  But I get lost downtown.  I keep telling y'all I've never claimed to be very smart. 

But my biggest problem is that if there were a contest for World's Biggest Lack of Any Sense of Direction Whatsoever, I would win without question.  I have to blame my biological mom since she died when I was young and I have no one else in my family to blame, because she apparently did not give me the sense of direction gene.  My dad (when he was alive) and both of my brothers could be in a city they've never been to in their life and you could tell them you need to find a laundromat next door to an Episcopal church built out of stone with a red front door and within five minutes they would find it.  And if you asked me to do the same thing, I could drive around for 4 days and never even find a laundromat.  I got out my GPS and put in the street address for Karen's hotel.  But my GPS is an asshole and took me to the bus station which is not even on the same street.  And yes, I double checked what I entered and I had entered it correctly.  Then I searched by lodging, chose her hotel and started out again.  This time I got held up by a long and very slow train.

I also saw this salon while I was lost and thought, what the heck?  That seems rather offensive to me. 

Eventually I made it to her hotel and she jumped in my car and we hugged and we didn't stop talking until I dropped her back off  about an hour and a half later.  I drove around and got lost again so she saw all kinds of stuff in Atlanta.  I got out my asshole GPS again and drove her through Little 5 Points since I mention it a lot, and then I took her to Virginia Highlands for lunch.  I decided to take her to Manuel's Tavern, not because they have the best food in Atlanta because it's basic bar food, but because it's kind of an institution in Atlanta and has been around since the 1950s.

And because they have this hilarious sign in their parking lot:

This is the only photo either of us took the entire time we hung out.  But I will tell y'all that Karen is gorgeous.  And sweet.  And I felt like I had known her half my life.  I hope she'll come back to Atlanta sometime and hang out and leave her family at home.  She can stay at my house and I can show her the parts of Atlanta I don't get lost in.

Sadly, I then had to take her back to her family because she had to go with them to her son's show where she was delivering homemade baked goods to the rap stars and I hope she leaves a comment to let us know how that went.  It made me love her just that much more that she baked for some really famous rap guys.  She baked for Kid Cudi, y'all!

After I dropped her off, I stampeded back to my house (I miraculously did not get lost) where I met my brother because I told him I needed to borrow his manliness at my house before we went to my neighbors' house to watch the LSU-Florida game.  Yes, I watched football again.  No, I still don't like watching football.  My brother laughed when I asked if I could borrow his manliness and said, "Um, I don't know.  It depends on what exactly you are needing."  I just needed him to climb a ladder.  I have 7 pot lights (Tee loves it when I call them pot lights) in my kitchen which has 10 foot ceilings.  5 pot lights had dead bulbs so it was kind of hard to see in my kitchen.  The first bulb he worked on started falling apart as he took it out and it cut his hand and then he started bleeding like a stuck pig.  And I had one teeny tiny band-aid in my whole house because I'm only a fake mom, not a real one.  The second light was an easy change.  The third light?  You have to take the ring out of the ceiling but with the third light the entire can inside came out with it.  So anyway, we had a bit of a time (don't y'all like how I said "we" when I was sitting on a bar stool watching him?) but he eventually got them changed and then I asked him to move the ladder into my living room so he could change a bulb in the ceiling fan because those ceilings are probably about 13 feet.

Then we went and watched football and ate jambalaya and potatoes and a cake that had scary Halloween icing on it that a 7-year-old picked out at the store.  The icing looked like Dijon mustard.  It was a gross color for a cake. 

My neighbor had thrown out her back really bad so I told her I was planning to be at home on Sunday pressure washing my house and to let me know if she needed anything.  She said if their daughter was really antsy and wanting her to be really active she may ask if she could come to my house and "help" me pressure wash. The husband told me what y'all told me:  don't spray yourself or it will peel your skin right off.  He also told me not to use an extension cord with it because it would blow fuses, etc.

The wife and daughter did stop by for about 10 minutes while I was attempting to get the pressure washer assembled and working.  I tried not to say too many curse words while they were there.  I had everything hooked up, but I was not getting any pressure.  It was the pressure of a garden hose.  I have 3 hoses and I had tried all 3 of them because the instructions said if there was no pressure I could have a leak in my hose, etc.  None of them would work.  I had been trying for over an hour and was just about to give up when I saw a part/accessory/thing stuck in a hole on the actual machine itself and thought, "hmmm, maybe I'm supposed to attach this to something somehow" and I was standing there looking at it when a man stopped at the front gate and asked how I was doing.

"Fine.  I think.  I'm trying to learn how to use a pressure washer for the first time."

"Where is your nozzle?" he asked as he looked at my situation.

"Is this it?" I asked as I held up the part thing I had just discovered.

He told me it was and that he would put it on for me so I opened my gate and he came in and attached it and just like that, I had pressure!

"Do you need help washing your house?" he asked.

"No.  I bought this thing so I can do this myself.  But maybe when you come back by you can see if I'm having problems then."

"If I keep walking, I'm going home and I'm not coming back.  Look, I just lost my job and I'm not going to lie.  I need money.  I will pressure wash your house for $25."

"Does that include moving the 90 gazillion things off my front porch and putting them back too?"

He looked at the 90 gazillion things and said he would move everything for me and do all of the washing for $40. 

"Deal!" I said as I shook his hand because moving all of that stuff was what I dreaded most of all.  My porch is big and I use it as another room of my house and a lot of people sit out there with me.  So I have a set of wicker furniture, 4 other chairs, a bakers rack, an antique chicken coop, two small tables, about 30 bird houses, some candle holders, an old window, and a whole lot of pots for planting.  It was well worth another $15. 

While he was cleaning he said to me at some point, "So that creepy old lady across the street finally died, huh?"  I told her she had passed away within the past couple of weeks and he said, "She JUST DIED?  She was old when I was a kid.  I thought she would have been dead a long time now."  He proceeded to tell me that he lived right up the street, his grandmother lives around the corner, and one of his aunts walked by while he was there.  He grew up in the 'hood and told me when he was a kid he and his friends were completely terrified of the old lady and even more scared of her creepy house.  He said they would go the long way as they walked home from school because they were too scared to walk by her house even in broad daylight.  He said even now as an adult, he always walks on my side of the street and will not walk on her side.  I told y'all it was too creepy for me to go over there in the dark by myself and look through her trash!

He did a great job, my porch and siding are spotless, he swept all of the water off my porch, moved everything back, and he even said he was bored so he would wash the front gate for no extra charge before he left.  I asked him if he would be interested in raking and bagging up leaves in my yard this fall and he said yes.  He said even if he gets a job in the meantime, he just wants to work so he'd work something out with me to do it around whatever job he might have.  I asked him how much he'd charge me and he said this:

"You tell me what you want to pay.  I want the job so you tell me what you think is fair.  I don't want to lose a job because you think I've quoted you too much." 

I told him I had no idea because I've never had anyone do that job before because I had been doing it all myself.  He left me his number and told me to ask my friends what they pay and then call him and tell him what sounds fair and he'll do it for whatever I say I'll pay him.  So do any of you in Atlanta pay someone to rake and bag leaves in your yard and, if so, how much?  My lot is only 1/3 of an acre and my house and garage take up about 80 - 90% of it.  My yard is tiny but there are TONS of leaves that fall in it.  Last year I think I bagged up approximately 30 or 35 of those big paper yard bags.  Which is why I don't want to do it myself this year.

After he left, I pressure washed some more of my white picket fence but after being out there dealing with all of this for over 5 hours by that point, I was completely tuckered out so I didn't do all of the fence.  So now part of it looks white and part of it looks dingy gray and if you come to the party in a couple of weeks, please pretend like you don't notice that.

I went inside and cooked my lunches for the week and then realized I had a headache because it was about 6:30 and I had not eaten anything since 8:30 so I sat on my nice clean porch and ate some dinner.  As I sat there I kept looking at the trash bags and overflowing dumpster across the street at the old lady's house and I saw a stool on top of everything and decided I wanted to check it out.

I walked over there and grabbed it and brought it across the street and I did it in a huge hurry because being up in her yard was creeping me out so much.  Y'all, that house is 100 times creepier up close.  I put the stool on my porch to use as a plant stand.

A little later I noticed two young guys over there and one of them was up in the dumpster looking around.  I walked back over there and asked if they were finding anything good because I didn't want to get in the dumpster but if they found something good and didn't want it then I'd take it.

The guy in the dumpster had crazy cool dreadlocks and the one on the ground looked like he was high as a kite.  The dread guy said he knew she had died at 91 and he loved learning about people's personal history.  He asked me if I wanted her old Samsonite suitcase.  Um, no.  He said they were looking for furniture they could use in their recording studio.

I walked back across the street and about 10 minutes later a car pulled up with two of their friends.  So now we had one pretty average looking guy, one slightly nerdy looking guy, the dread guy, and the high as a kite guy.  They had pulled a 3-piece sectional out of the dumpster and were trying to fit it in a Ford Taurus.  And as we all know, that is never going to happen.  I heard the dread guy asking if between all of them they could scrounge up enough money to rent a truck and they all said they had no money.

I yelled across the street and asked them how far they needed to move it and they said about 30 seconds up the street.  And before I knew what my mouth was saying, I had offered to let them load it in my SUV and drive it to their recording studio.

I asked fake daughter if she wanted to go on an adventure with me but she was busy working on something and said no.  I told her if I wasn't back in 30 minutes to call the police. 

We put two pieces in my car and the high guy jumped in with me to show me where their house is with the recording studio in the basement.  It was super close.  A couple of minutes later, the Taurus pulled up with a sectional piece hanging out one of the doors and they unloaded everything.  They offered me a few bucks but I told them not to worry about it because honestly, I was glad I could help out some young guys struggling to get their own business off the ground.  I was also just glad I didn't get killed doing something which was honestly kind of stupid for a female to do.

And then I got back home and went inside to take a shower.  And when I got undressed is when I finally realized I had my neighbors over for a few minutes, a 'hood guy pressure wash my house, and had helped four young strangers move some furniture out of the dumpster of a super creepy house to their recording studio in my SUV.....and I had never put a bra on.