2009 Archive

2009 Archive – 84,642 words.

January 2, 2009

Happy 2009. The past ten days or so have been really weird here and I’ve got so much to say about it that it’s overwhelming and almost paralyzing. I’ll try to touch on just the highlights so this entry doesn’t run overly long.

First, the yearly, standard disclaimer. Please read through it, especially if you’re looking to use me as a future, alternative income source.

Second, sadly pathetic is that it took a man with MS and a fifty-two year old asthmatic woman with a pair of shovels to literally dig an eighth of a mile of our street out from under inches of thick ice and snow just so some of us could physically get out of the neighborhood after Christmas. For all the other able-bodied men, women, and children on this entire street, not a single other soul came out to help. We’re also responsible for adverting what could have been a major street flooding problem by digging out nearby clogged storm drains. We probably should have let the stuff pool up and under The Renters house for all the dirty looks they shot us through closed windows.

We nearly had a pet emergency right after Christmas and wouldn’t have been able to get our car out or to the vet. Lesson learned: Even though they claim not to be interested, cats love chocolate chip cookies. Unfortunately, chocolate is a pet killer.

We had a house full of people, so unlike us, after the snow and ice of Christmas and was able to get rid of our banquet gift. Long story short, no one really wanted it because it was wrapped too pretty. Too ‘Foo-Foo,’ all the macho egos filling the rooms said and naturally assumed to be a ‘girlie’ gift. So it was ignored. The couple who eventually ended up with it, it being the very last thing exchanged, was pleasantly surprised as were the others. Sometimes, you can’t judge a gift by its wrapping.

Before Christmas, we shut off some of our expensive and unnecessary phone services and bundled our TV service with our Internet carrier. Somewhere along the line, the company got confused and shut off our phone. With the odd weather and construction on a neighborhood skate park going on around the corner, Internet service has been spotty at best. We were completely without service for several days but with the weather and me still feeling under the weather, I haven’t missed it. Construction appears to be done the last time I walked near there and we think we’ve got the phone thing all straightened out now.

We’re still working on getting our budget and living expenses under control. One thing we’re still on the fence about is buying extra pet food for wandering animals in the neighborhood. Since Limpy’s passing at Thanksgiving, we thought we’d stop putting food outside. There’s twenty dollars a month. Then we were revisited by Scruffy who lives up the street and nibbles now and then, the big, skitter-ish orange and white tom that lives down around the corner, a stocky, thick-furred black cat, and a somewhat friendly (though don’t touch me!) black and white shorthair. And don’t forget the polite raccoon. Clearly, we started something when we decided to make sure Limpy had food. Now it’s either cut everyone off cold-turkey or go without ourselves. Decision, decisions.

Finally, after four days of rain that wiped out most of the deep snow here, it’s snowing again outside this very minute. We woke up to chunky ice and thin snow this morning and were glad once again, we didn’t wait until the last minute to make January’s grocery shopping trip yesterday. But if anyone thinks we’re going to dig everyone else out again, they’ve got another thing coming.

January 3, 2009

The slush isn’t even melted from the snow we had last month, last week, and last night. The temperature outside is 36 degrees F. It is 6 p.m. and pitch black. What are the renters in your neighborhood doing right this minute?

Ours are skateboarding in the middle of the dark street, crashing and banging toward that still unattainable flip jump thing they spent every waking moment last year trying to learn.

Look you losers, Give*It*A*Rest!

January 4, 2009

I never would have believed we could have gotten the house back into such great shape so quickly and so organized. I guess that year-long organization kick really did pay off. And so, I’ll continue it into this year too. We still have a closet or two that are complete and utter disasters. That’s valuable real estate being wasted and besides, no one can find anything in there.

The twelve-foot tree is packed away and the very back of the under-the-stairs closet is so clean and organized it practically squeaks. We significantly pared down the look of the entire place (sans the library. The clean, uncluttered look has already grown favorably upon me. A scaled back look for scaled back economic times. Perfect timing.

Tomorrow, WS goes back to work and life here returns to normal. The treadmill and I become regular pals again and I go back to working toward losing the final five pounds plus the additional eight I piled on during December. The eight pounds will be easy. The final five will fight me throughout the year until I realize I’ve wasted so much time being fat, complaining about being fat, unable to do this and that because I’m fat that I really ought to stop complaining, get over the hurdle, and give being thinner a go if only for once in my life. It’s sad to think how much time I’ve wasted on the subject and what else I could have been doing with that same time instead.

We had a hard freeze here last night. Strangely, all the snow melted but all the standing water frozen solid. The roofs of the homes across the street are white with heavy frost and the sky is a shade greyer. We’ll be socked in with clouds the rest of the week. For as much as I love the snow and ice, I can’t wait until the weather returns to regular winter rain.

1 year ago: The Wall Streets prepare to move back to SoCal. A For Rent sign dominates their front yard.
Two years ago: We both have bad colds, WS is recovering from a crippling MS exacerbation, and I question my future as a writer (again).
Five years ago: Snow is falling from the skies and our heater has flown south for the winter.
Ten years ago: I am set up to officially begin work for The Company even though I had been working nearly nonstop since before Christmas. MsNoManagementSkills has already made me feel like an idiot for being so much older than her.
Fifteen years ago: Changes at work (typing pool for major insurance company) go into effect today and eliminate my career path forward. Suddenly at age thirty-eight, I’m too old for their management track.

January 6, 2009

I’ve started to cut back a little, just a little, on my morning coffee in lieu of something new we’ve decided to try. We generally go through coffee around here like no one’s business, and in case you didn’t notice, coffee is expensive. That said, I’ll admit we have some thirty-plus pounds of un-ground coffee beans sitting up in the cupboard of various roasts and flavors. It’s not like we’re going to run out anytime soon.

What we would like to run out of sometime this year is tea. Easily, we’ve got twice the amount of tea in this house than we have coffee and like coffee, we’re big consumer whores when it comes to varieties. It doesn’t even need to be a new blend or flavor. Just package it up stylishly with pretty font labeling and we’ll beat people to death with their own arms in order to be first in line to purchase the stuff.

Sometimes, we actually drink tea; more so in the summer than in the winter because we like sun tea. But what’s more relaxing-sounding than to sit somewhere quiet with a cat, a book or laptop computer, and a fragrant mug of tea on a cool winter’s day? Right, so why don’t we do this more often? The reasons need to find another home.

First, if we feel too relaxed around here, all we want to do is sleep. So drink caffeinated tea, you might say. You certainly have enough of that kind! Yes, we do but around here, caffeine consumed after two p.m. screws up the sleep patterns. Okay, so drink the decaf tea. You’ve got half a mountain’s worth of that. Yes, right-o again. We’ll work on remembering that.

Have any of you actually tried to sit with a cat on your lap while trying to read or work on a computer? Depending on lap size, it’s not really as easy or relaxing as it might sound. Some cats insist on getting up in your face or trying to curl up around your neck. Some demand a stray hand be petting them or that a stray hand is the perfect chew toy. Add a tempting mug of liquid to the mix and a curious pet will be dipping paws and tongues in it in no time.

Okay, so drink caffeinated tea early in the day, decaf in the afternoon/evening. Keep the cats off the lap, away from the mug of tea, or better yet, make that quiet, relaxing spot somewhere behind closed doors.

Try not to listen to cat meowing and pets clawing at closed door. They know you’re in there and not likely to stop until you come out.

But we’ve always had coffee in the morning. It seems like a better ‘wake me up’ beverage than boring, subtle tea. Oh, we’ve got some tea here that will kick coffee’s ass and take names. Tazo’s Five Hundred Mile Chai and Dean & Deluca’s Gunpowder Grey both come to mind. Or that tightly curled stuff I have stored in a glass jar because I was warned it could disintegrate paper and eat through aluminum. All are loose-leaf so we can make it just as weak or strong as we like. I once accidently steeped a mug of Gunpowder Grey for an hour and a half. I assure you the results could have stripped paint off a battleship. I had to toss out the mug as I recall because I could get neither the taste nor the stain out.

So we’re going to forego coffee on weekday mornings and drink strong tea. And we’ll work on the decaf in the afternoon. Coffee will be saved for the weekends. In theory, this will help with our outrageous soymilk bill as well. We love vanilla soymilk in our coffee and we can go through an entire carton a day. We used to buy it by the dozens and at two-three dollars a carton, you can see how this can easily get out of hand. Now, I like English-style milky tea now and then, particularly when added to Chai, but to save as much as we were blowing on soymilk last year, I will gladly drink my tea plain.

Don’t even get me started on sweetener.

January 8, 2009

Originally, I was going to write about our dying neighbor, the one who had half of their organs removed and some joints replaced due to rampant cancer. This neighbor was full of piss and vinegar last year and the year before when all this started for them but chemotherapy and disease has taken it’s toll and the will to live has all but fled. They continue to get behind the wheel of an oversized vehicle once a week and drive across town to the nearest hospital and I can’t possibly be the only one in the neighborhood that worries how they will ever stop the big SUV in time should emergency warrant it, if not for the frail nature of the body then for the nearly incoherent confusion of the drugged mind.

This afternoon, this neighbor ‘tapped’ their garage door with their bumper while tooling up the driveway. Nothing serious. Then they remained in the vehicle for a good half an hour. The staying in the vehicle is commonplace. Ditto for struggling to get out of the SUV and eventually into their house. Yet they refuse help of any kind. There are lots of other family members around but none of them help either. This neighbor is very independent, even so since giving away most of their things and preparing for the end. It’s a sad sight and angers me sometimes because they and their kids have told everyone clearly, us included, to stay away.

But really, this post is about Cap’t Dan and the Smokin’ Clan. Something has changed over there. His home overlooks our backyard and up until this past summer, everywhere in the house, both curtains and blinds had always been drawn. Always.

Over the summer, windows were suddenly opened and left open, often late into the night and we could clearly see into their master bedroom. It was beautifully lit and decorated, like something out of a Pottery Barn catalog. We keep a clean and pretty bedroom ourselves but theirs looked high-end magazine-worthy. Stunning and inviting are two words that come to mind. Who would have known?

Then, right before Christmas and our big snowstorm, I happened to glance over there and almost all the furniture was gone! The walls have been returned to a white color and art no longer graced the walls. I walked around the block that evening just to see if perhaps he had put his house back up for sale. Nope.

Now, directly in front of the window sits a single kitchen chair and a small round table with a lamp on it. Nothing else is in the huge room. Throughout the night, every night, Cap’t Dan sits at the table at the window and smokes. It’s eerie. Whenever we get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, we see him over there, the lower half of his face lit golden by lamplight, just sitting and smoking. What is he doing? What’s he looking at? Why doesn’t he sleep?

Upon occasion since, I thought I might have been able to make out a laptop on the table in front of him. Now what’s he doing? Nothing? Something? Surfing? Working? Naw, not working. He’s unemployed and gets monthly disability. In lieu of driving myself insane with wondering, I’ve chosen to believe he’s penning his memoirs. Let’s see. Half-blind man/pirate with rabid, anti-social wife, older rock and roll son living out of garage, pregnant step daughter, younger teenage son with bright green hair, and two yappy dogs (who both somehow miraculously survived outdoors in the frigid snow storms) unable to work or sell their home due to heavy tobacco presence. Surely there’s a story in there somewhere.

January 12, 2009

A-Ha! I knew it wasn’t me. One of our local news channels just reported that reported cases of colds and flu are up 45 percent over those reported last year. Apparently, it’s not just I who’s gotten sick a lot this winter. I feel almost perfectly fine now by the way. Minor left ear crunchy sounds when I yawn or blow my nose and an occasional overnight stuffy nose is all that’s left of a three cold succession.

I’ve been working out regularly again. Even after a month and a half stop in weight training, my upper arms are whipping themselves back into form fast. I still can’t run more than 1-2 minutes straight on the treadmill, making me rethink any outside thoughts I’ve ever given to participating in some kind of wimpy marathon. Last fall, I had a day wherein I ran for six minutes straight. The planets and all the stars must have aligned on that day. I haven’t been able to repeat it since. I’m not going to stop trying though.

It was a fairly low-key weekend here, on purpose. There was a fun writer’s group meeting Friday night followed by lots of doing little stuff that needed attention before it started to pile up on Saturday. Then we read, listened to music, and are working our way through the Dick Van Dyke TV series on DVD. I saw every last one of those shows via reruns in the early 70’s (in order to do so, I had to sneak behind my parent’s back to watch TV). WS hadn’t seen a one other than those shown in a marathon a few years back on Nickelodeon. The original series had run and been cancelled before he was born! I’m constantly surprised at how much he seems to enjoy the episodes.

Sunday was all about conversation and grocery shopping, bill paying and more Dick Van Dyke. Yawn.

Finally, I received a pointy anonymous email last week and I’m still trying to digest it. When I do, you’ll be sure to read about it here. I’ll leave you with this to ponder – What kind of a person gets upset over folded toilet paper? Specifically, at a host or hostess’s home, if the flap on the end of a roll of toilet paper is folded into a point, similar to how some hotel housekeepers do it, why would a guest believe they can’t use the toilet paper? If you need it, use it. IT’S JUST TOILET PAPER! Apparently, this, amongst other things, makes me pretentious. And all this time, I was just hoping to make guests feel as if they were at a resort (how pretentious-sounding is that?)

Thirteen years ago: Depression lumbers along as I continue to ponder why New Year’s Eve evenings suck and are never just like in the movies.
Eleven years ago: Snow predicted and money’s so tight, we can barely afford to heat the house.
Eight years ago: Winding down from my first two week vacation since 1985. The lot behind us has been sold and construction of an oversized, view-blocking house has begun.
Three years ago: The week has been spent searching area merchants for seemingly common place Roadster Show items that cannot be found. A Blogeois reader’s suggestion pulls my fat from out of the fire.
One year ago: My backyard web cam died, potential renters continue streaming into the house next door, and a tornado struck less than twenty miles away.

January 16, 2009

We had a hard freeze here overnight and since it was also extra foggy, the street out front is sparkling with ice even though it’s already eleven a.m. Could make for interesting errand outings today. Once the sun makes it up high enough to reach the street, I’m sure things will thaw.

The week seemed to fly by and here it is Friday already. I accomplished some things, not so much on other things, though I feel like my subconscious is working on most of those. Still haven’t lost that extra five pounds and in fact, I’m gaining though I’m pretty sure that’s muscle in my arms and shoulders. I’m at the point of needing to go by waistband feel and I can feel that five pounds needs to be shifted from my waist to my arms, ten pounds would even be better. Much better. I’m up to thirty-five minutes on the treadmill four times a week (four minutes of those are running – cannot do any more than that before my genetically-weak lower legs give out and my exercise-induced asthma kicks in). A month of this ought to nearly do the trick for the five pounds which will be perfect timing because I absolutely must feel a smidge thinner for another, pre-budgeted science fiction convention I’m attending in February.

That being said, I have come to the conclusion that grains are not my friend. Now before you shout, “But you need grains for fiber!” hear me out for a minute. The South Beach diet, of which WS and I have been following since early 2007, introduces whole grains as part of Phase Two. WS has no problem with that and has been on Phase Two since completing the initial two-to-six week Phase One period of the diet.

The only thing grains have done for me is brought my weight loss to a screeching halt. Additionally, grains have made me feel bloated, gassy, and constipated all at the same time. It’s been very uncomfortable. You might remember early last year I was complaining about being on a weight-loss plateau. Well, I’m still on that plateau which puts me uncomfortably stuck at the same general weight for the past year and eight months. Frustration doesn’t begin to describe how I’ve felt about this. In fact, frustration has morphed into comedy and further changed to disregard. I only weigh myself once or twice a week now at the most and the one thing in life I can always count on is that my weight will still be the same – 156-158 pounds and my body fat will still be 40 percent. Clearly for the past year, I’ve been doing something wrong.

Recently, I’ve decided to limit grain intake to twice a week. I’ll admit I feel a little better and not as bloated but my weight has remained steadfast. I’m not going to go back to fasting because I always feel awful in the days coming off one and gain weight back too fast. The South Beach diet has gotten me to this point and I’ve been more than elated to have lost those thirty pounds and kept them off. But there’s got to be a way to get this last five-ten pounds off without resorting to something I’ll pay dearly for afterward. I want them permanently gone. I want to move on from here.

January 20, 2009

Transcribed by WS from me due to trouble I’ve having with my contacts.

This is a historical day, even for one who hates all things political and has tried to keep all political things here on Blogeois.com undercover. I simply do not comment on such stuff, until today.

I’ve been watching one of the C-SPAN channels because I quickly grew tired of the news reporters yakking, all vying to create sound bites that will forever be attached to President Obama’s day. To those reporters and particularly, to whose doubtful words show who’s side you are clearly against: Shut up.

To those who have said Bush will forever be the only true tested President since Lincoln: Shut up.

To the gentleman who came to the U.S. from Cuba, who called in from Florida and said he had no faith in President Obama because he hadn’t served in the military and that a military-run government was all he believed in: Why did you come to the U.S. from Cuba if you love military rule so much? How’s that been working for Cuba? Shut up.

To the woman from the south who called in and complained that President Obama’s speech was all things Jewish and only talked about Israel this and Israel that: What channel were you watching? You need to change the one playing in your head. Yeah, you can shut up too.

To the well-known black man who announced that within twenty years the minority in this country would be the majority and whites had better get used to it: Thanks for stirring the pot of racial hatred. Now shut up.

To the group of young black men who were captured on the C-SPAN cameras after President Obama left for his luncheon, the ones who were pushing and shoving people to stay in the camera’s focus, to the one who shouted that his fathers already did all the work to build this country and that he wouldn’t lift a finger to help: Put down your cell phone(s), park your pimped-out SUV, and shut up. Listen and you might just learn something.

To George Bush: Tacky, tacky, tacky. A legend in your own mind.
You’re a poor sport. I will forever be ashamed of every minute you spent in office. Try hard to never speak to the public again.

Elsewhere on this momentous day:

To relatives of both WS and myself: Roll in your graves. We’re sad you weren’t here to see what you openly voiced swore, and celebrated would never happen. The world is better off without any of you small- minded people. We doubly denounce you.

To neighbors who this morning felt the need to stick crossed-out Obama/ Biden election signs in their yards: You hadn’t needed to. You’re oversized McCain bumper stickers already voiced your displeasure in the election. I resent you trying to make our neighborhood appear white elitist and non-supportive. Shut up. Oh, and fuck you.

To those car club members with whom I was appalled to find myself amongst this past weekend, with whom I sat watching the Barrett- Jackson car auction from TV, when watching assassinated President Kennedy’s Florida Lincoln car go up on the block for sale; most of you concluded that the only Presidential car you’d ever bid on was the one in which President Obama’s brains were splattered all over: Shut up, you pathetic, little men. Every one of you are an embarrassment and are part of the scum of the country. No black men are going to come take your sports cars away if that’s what you are afraid of, you’re not going to be forced to listen to rap music and eat sweet potato pie, nor are your lily-white trophy wives and grandchildren going to be sold into prostitution. I will never see any of you again as anything other than racists and if that makes me a racist for hating racists, so be it. Shame on you, shame on you, and for all the good it will do me, let me say with every fiber of my being, shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!

Welcome President Obama and family. I don’t need to tell you what kind of hell on earth you’re up against. I know things will get much worse before they get better. I know you will be blamed for stuff you had nothing to do with and were expected to fix immediately. Hang in there. Perseverance is key. Keep us in the loop. Information shared with the people will serve you well. Lastly, many of us have been waiting a long time for you. With us, drink in all that this time offers. I wish and hope for you all the luck in the world.

January 21, 2009

Maybe it’s just me but I didn’t want last night to end. Magical is what I’ll always refer to it as. Beyonce singing “At Last” while the Obamas danced; even more magical. But enough already. It’s time to get down to work and what better day to do so than today? There is none.

WS and I have both been working out fairly regularly since the beginning of the year. This morning that commitment was renewed as is my goal of losing this extra eight pounds I’ve been carrying for the past six months. With a bit extra work, these pounds will disappear.

I’m renewing my commitment to write more regularly both here and in my writer’s life. I needed the break from National Novel Writing Month back in November and yes, I probably should have taken a moment to enjoy this two month break instead of endlessly stressing, every.single.day. actually, over not having a creative bone in my body.

I’ll let you in on a secret: Lately my self esteem has been running slower than my self doubt. That’s not normal for me. In the past and more often than not, I felt I could do anything. Since last fall, that hasn’t been the case. I suspect the problems of the world have worn me and my creativity down to a bare, tired, raw nub. The only way to find fresh creativity is to write every day. The only way to get the worries off my chest is to write them out. I know this. Writing has gotten me through much worse times. I’ve forgotten how to listen to the better, more sensible part of myself. I need to listen again.

Writers have a saying. The best way to write is to just write. Even better put is, “BICFOK” which stands for “Butt In Chair, Fingers On Keyboard.” Even if that means sitting in front of a blank monitor and not moving for twenty minutes, keep your butt in the chair and your fingers on the keyboard. Write what comes to mind even if it something yawn-inspiring like this:

“I am so tired. Couldn’t I just sleep today? Maybe for the next eight months? I don’t want to work out. I don’t want to get up. I hate everything. Sleep, I just wanT TO SLEEP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

You get the idea. In the movie, “The Shining” writer Jack Torrance is under pressure to write a novel. During writing time, he keeps his butt in the chair and his fingers on the typewriter keys. And he writes. Okay, so all he wrote was “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” over and over again (but all so creativity on page after page!). But he wrote.

So maybe that wasn’t the best analogy but you get what I’m trying to say, don’t you? Search yourself for the methodology you’ve always relied on to get things done, renew your commitment to do so like so much of our nation today needs to do, take a deep breath, and do it. Tomorrow, when you’re tired, remember your commitment. Think of all the other people who have made their own commitments and join them, not in failure, but in celebration of yourself and your ability to keep going. Look ahead and know that there will be days when the last thing you want to do is anything at all. That’s a stumble. Don’t make it a stoppage. Keep going and look farther ahead and visualize the improvement to yourself. This is your goal. You can make it happen.

And I will. Join me and make a commitment to yourself, for your better self.

January 22, 2009

Time for a neighborhood update.

The Renters have finally taken down their big LED Christmas light display. The oldest Renter kid, known at our house as BFL or Big Fat Liar, continues to spit on our driveway every day on his walk home from school. Some days he throws trash in our yard. This morning’s offering was a half-full cup of Wendy’s Frosty and boy, did he make sure that chocolate mess splattered everywhere. We’ve got rain coming in a day or so. If that doesn’t wash it away, I’ll have to hook up the hose and spray it down. Otherwise, ants will have a field day out there and I absolutely will not have ants tracked into the house.

Mr. Dimmer has decided, after gaining and losing a dozen different jobs last year, that he wants to become a firefighter. More power to him, I guess. Didn’t know our county was so hard up that they would take someone with narcotics, alcohol, and anger management issues, not to mention four different liens against his house and a history of suing past employers. I’m willing to bet he thinks he’ll hit pay-dirt if the government hires him. One false step and he’ll take the city and county to court in a heartbeat.

Still no sign of Cap’t Dan’s wife. He continues to sit day and night at the window of his empty master bedroom. His youngest son has installed a loud, coffee-can exhaust pipe on his little car. You can hear him coming and going from the neighborhood quite clearly now. Luckily so far, it doesn’t appear he has an early morning job.

The Howler Monkeys are finally back from a month long trip to a far northern plain state. A month! Can you imagine? Or could you imagine what I would be doing if Limpy was still around and had gotten sick while they were away? Have I ever mentioned that when they take off, be it for a weekend or a month, they don’t tell anyone where or how long they are going for? Yeah, more than likely some vet bills would have been acquired here. Remember, we weren’t even supposed to be giving Limpy the time of day. But we couldn’t ignore him and when we saw that he was getting sick, had his family not been here, we would have done something to help. We certainly wouldn’t have let him starve to death and die out in the middle of their yard like they did, despite all his last day attempts to garner their attention. So sad. But at least the young Howler Monkey boys are happy. They hated Limpy. And I will admit this winter would have been terribly, horribly hard on him.

The foreclosed house up around the corner has been on the market since November but hasn’t sold yet. No sign of any of the pets that supposedly were released from there when the family abandoned the place. I think it’s safe to say they’re gone. We might have another foreclosure in the process down the hill. All homes in our development that have been up for sale within the past year and a half have not sold. Not a one. I was watching our local government channel the other evening and saw that our town’s mayor has concluded that on the outside reach, our area would take three years to recover enough to be noticeable. Three years of worry about everything sounds so tiring. And you know, by then, surely there’ll be something else to worry about. Does it ever really end? And when I’m really old and on my death bed, will I regret all the lost years I spent worrying? I’ve tried extra hard not to have any regrets in my life but this one I might not be able to do anything about.

January 23, 2009

Please fill in the blanks:

“If I could ______, I would _______.”

Allow me to offer a few examples:

If I could write 100 words a day, I would have a book in my hands after 365 days.

If I could sleep 12 hours a day, I would not have as much time to eat.

If I could turn a deaf ear to self doubt, I would fail at nothing.

If I could let go of control, I would feel small and helpless.

If I could give up cheese, I would be happier.

If I could read a chapter a day, I would get through most of our unread books in 6 months.

If I could keep my window blinds shut, I would not care about what happens outside.

If I could run 6 miles a day, I would be thinner.

If I could put forth extra effort, I would become master of my own universe.

January 27, 2009

For most of last year, we’ve had nothing but problems with our hosting service. It all began after they sold themselves to an Indian company. And not to stereotype anyone, but we just knew we’d end up having problems. Boy, did we ever.

They lost our account information countless times, screwed up email a few more, and couldn’t seem to understand how we had things set up before their switch. Tech support told us something different each time. Basically, the right hand had no idea what the left hand was doing but we couldn’t afford to do anything about it. Secretly, I hoped it would get better.

They finally worked everything out but then changed how pages and the like were uploaded to their server. What had once been a simple overwrite now required complete deletion of everything before anything new was posted. On the days when their servers ran slowly, which seemed to be twenty-three and three quarters hours out of every twenty-four, Blogeois.com would look, more than anticipated, as if it didn’t exist. This was not acceptable to me but again, the budget didn’t allow for a change. I gave serious thought to making 2008 my last blogging year. Who needed this kind of grief?

Enough is enough. WS had been looking for an alternative service and today we’re making the switch. As readers and visitors, this should appear seamless; you shouldn’t see any difference. But if you do, please let us know what you see, what you don’t see, what you’d like to see (No, naked photos of us still won’t be available and you can thank your lucky stars for that.).

Two inches of snow has blanketed our area twice since Saturday evening. So pretty. So lucky we grocery shopped Saturday morning. If only this would stay another week, then burst out fully into spring.

January 28, 2009

True or false:

1) Ten days ago, a car club member’s Yorkshire terrier accidentally licked me in the eye, my eye with the contact in it. He didn’t lick my contact out but ever since, I’ve barely been able to wear a contact in it. Until this morning. Moments ago, I received an email from the car club cancelling tomorrow night’s meeting due to a death in the club President’s family; the Yorkie passed away without warning this morning. Apparently, they give all their dogs numbers as names and the Yorkie was number ten.

2) Over the weekend, I found a dead robin on a sidewalk in our backyard. It was a very messy kill. The best word to describe the scene is evisceration. Not at all fun to clean up. Who knew a robin’s heart was so big and why was it left? I couldn’t help but wonder if something other than animal had done it. The area seemed awfully staged like something someone with only a rudimentary knowledge of Voodoo would do to try to invoke fear. But after a day or two, I decided my imagination had simply gotten the best of me. I now believe a hawk was responsible and that it had been scared off before consuming the entire thing. Still, to pull out everything including that huge heart from under the ribcage…

3) Facebook isn’t so much a means for blogging but a networking tool. The best description I’ve heard for Facebook is that it enables the ability to track down anyone you’ve ever known from the past 30 years. MsNoManagementSkills seems to be a master of this and is actively searching for all her ex-boyfriends. Her husband, DorkMaster, is doing the same for all his ex-girlfriends. Why? To join the BBW (Big Beautiful Women) Swingers club they belong to! I got an invite myself before Christmas. Needless to say, I am repulsed by this on multiple levels. I never thought of MsNo as ‘beautiful.’ And I didn’t think I was that big.

January 29, 2009

A pondering:

Last summer and fall, I worked hard to thin out some overgrown areas of our backyard. As a result and during these winter months, one area under a pine tree now affords us a direct view of Cap’t Dan’s living room window. I believe he’s got a deciduous tree that when with leaves, effectively blocks the view. For the time being, we can’t see anything beyond his window because of our angle of sight and because that room seems to have always been drenched in darkness. Nonetheless, upon occasion, I’ve stood in our kitchen for extended periods of time looking out at our backyard, usually musing over which future landscape improvement might be worth the cost and my time and potential back strain, and have witnessed his living room blinds suddenly snap shut.

Did he think I was looking his way? Did he think I was watching him?

If he only knew, but here’s a question.

Since we know he’s up all night, lit only by a single, small lamp, seated in front of his empty master bedroom window and some of us think of his behavior as odd, how odd might he think we are if we were to seem to stand all night in our kitchen peering out at his living room window?

Naw, that’d just be mean.

January 30, 2009

Nothing Personal.

Empty your mind for a moment and follow me on a short journey.

Imagine if you will that for the past fifteen years, you’ve worked a white collar job. You have a company-assigned laptop or two and a cubicle a few miles from home to call your very own. Every other year or so, in your department’s building, your cubicle along with dozens of your coworkers’ cubicles get redesigned and made smaller and smaller. Today, what was once a spacious ten-by-twelve foot space is now six-by-six. Every five-to-seven years, your department is asked to reduce costs. No more new equipment, no more replacements for broken laptops, no more business trips to out-of-state facilities. Some plants take this much more seriously than others but it all evens out in the end. With a few adjustments, in essence, work life is business as usual.

Then the world market goes to hell in a hand basket. No one can afford computer stuff anymore. Everyone makes due the best they can with what they have. People find ways to extend paper and printer ink usage. They use blow driers to dry up split coffee out of keyboards and superglue keys back on. They choose not to use the CD/DVD tray that junior broke off the first week the computer was new. What was previously tossed out and replaced at will is now kept much longer than was designed for, and now the company you work for is feeling the financial pinch.

One day, you notice many of the cubicles around you are no longer occupied and you begin to feel nervous.

You’re a bright employee, once pondered life as an accountant, in fact. Somehow, your manager has noticed your ease with numbers and so takes you under their wing and shares the department’s quarterly financial future. All higher managers are screaming for more cuts, more layoffs, anything to save their own necks, not seeming to care that with the slashes they require, they will have no one left to direct.

Entire campus buildings are being emptied and scores of people let go. Far off future cuts become scheduled to be enacted upon immediately in lieu of waiting. Your manager copies you in on financial email coming down from on high and asks you to sit in on budget meetings with people of whom you only know of because you’ve seen their names on your paycheck. There is little talk of you going back to doing the same white collar job you did for fifteen years and you try not to think of all the deliverables you promised last quarter knowing you don’t have the time to complete most of them. It’s possible none of that will matter, but you don’t know that for certain and so, you try hard not to think about it. You try hard to do both jobs and try harder to keep both your boss and your coworkers satisfied.

Your boss has never lied to you before; well, not an out-and-out lie. But you do wonder why he’s suddenly including you, previously just an average employee, and no one else, in on how the department can and will cut costs. Is your boss being a nice guy? Or is he setting you up to understand the reasoning on why you too will eventually be let go?

In these times when seventy-one thousand jobs can be lost in a single day, the mind can’t help but wonder, wander, and worry.

January 30, 2009

Another round of office budget cuts and layoffs coming around the corner soon for WS. Different day, same crap.

Ten years ago: Our computer died and I’m told by an allergy specialist I’m allergic to caffeine among other things.
Six years ago: I celebrate getting myself down to 160 pounds but only after eating nothing but chicken broth for days. MsNoManagementSkills accuses me of faking a raging cold and I discover the company I work for has no sick day policy. I ponder going on the Atkin’s Diet.
Three years ago: WS rants about having to go on a business trip over Valentine’s day week.
One year ago: We paid off my car early. WS begins another MS exacerbation. I scoop up a freshly killed cat in front of WS’ workplace driveway and try not to let it bother me.

February 4, 2009

Very busy week in progress. Late next week I’m attending a writing convention (pre-planned and pre-budgeted) and since I’m going without WS, I need to sort through all kinds of stuff beforehand, both actual and mental, to prepare. You know, the kind of stuff that’ll keep a person up all night worrying, both actual and imagined.

Now, I don’t want to go into less-than-ideal behavior WS may or may not have skirted with during my past trips out of town but I worry nonetheless. I’m not his mother, nor should I act like one. But I have and do and I’m trying hard to stop that. He’s 42 and a grown man with more than enough brains to survive my few days out of town.

Other things I’ve done in preparation for next week: Continued to sort out our budget and pay monthly bills, made sure enough pet food is in the house, handled all email to-do tasks to date, read almost everything I promised I would and wrote up critiques, and printed out various convention maps and schedules.

Things I need to accomplish next week: Grocery shop to stock house for WS, last minute budget checks, finish all laundry, clean house, clean car, check oil and tire pressure, and pre-select and then pack what I’m taking – clothes, shoes, coat, incidentals, writing/reading material, donation items, music. I’m going with two writing friends and am really looking forward to the trip conversations as well as the trip itself. But I’m trying not to think too much about it too soon. I’ve looked forward to this trip (and two others to come later) for a year. I don’t like getting too excited about anything too soon. Things can change in a heartbeat.

Assuredly, a whole ‘nother batch of stuff to worry about will come up between now and then. I can handle that because I expect it.

On a completely unrelated note, if I had a bit of a fake tan, my arms would look exactly like Katie Couric’s. Beefy and stout. That woman is definitely lifting something heavier than a tennis racket or pansy little, three-pound dumbbells (which are all the rage in Hollywood thanks to Madonna’s wiry, thin-yet-ripped arms). Women with thick, intentionally built muscles are so unpopular still and I for one am so tired of that mode of thinking.

February 5, 2009

It’s been two months now without cable or satellite TV. We’ve got nothing but the basic of basic channels and yes, occasionally I think about what we *might* be missing. Then I decide I don’t care.

Sure, come Oscar time, we won’t know half of what was nominated but you know what? We didn’t know back when we were paying for almost every channel in existence. We didn’t watch all those shows. We don’t live in front of the TV. That’ll never change and I feel we’re better people for it.

We’re still working on getting our budget under control. We’ve eliminated nearly everything humanly possible here at home or reduced things to the bare minimum but we’re still bleeding money each month. Well, maybe bleeding is too strong a word. Oozing is more accurate. This oozing into negative territory is entirely due to the cost of things going up when WS’ salary hasn’t budged for four years. For example, we upped our car insurance deductibles to catch a break on the monthly cost only to learn that the rates were going up for 2009. We didn’t break even there. Our trash collection bill went up as did water and WS’ medical benefits deductible. But he still has a job for the time being so we’re not really complaining.

We owe credit card companies like a lot of other people and all of those companies raised their minimum payments due as of the first of February. This is one of those things they are doing to their customers if you owe more than they think you should. No problem, I thought, we always pay more than the minimum due anyway. Except now they want the same as what we used to pay over the bare minimum or in one case, more than even that. Given that we know paying just the minimum due assures never getting out of debt in a lifetime, we feel forced to cough up even more than they want, even though that means we can only afford an extra five or ten dollars a month more now and that’s now taken out of grocery shopping money, another segment that has already been slashed to the bare bones.

Our heads are still high above water but there are days when I think, “What a mess we’ve gotten ourselves into. But it’s no one’s fault but our own.” It’s a good thing we’ve still got a little savings left over from when we were laid off from The Company (after the Big Ass Company bought them out and screwed everyone out of a small percentage of stock option money). It’s that savings that supplement our budget on the months we come up short. Should WS’ job remain the same and nothing else bad happens, we could survive like this for years. And maybe then, we’d be out of the hole enough to go back to actually paying a card or two off every year.

February 6, 2009

More things to do before my trip late next week:

Water indoor plants.
Print out destination map and assemble travel confirmation folder (yes, I AM both anal and comfortable about this).
Make decision about laptop.
Burn a couple CDs.

Two items of note from this past week: We received yet another warning that our personal financial information may have been compromised via our bank. I am furious how no one, NO ONE it would seem, is being held accountable for this crap over and over again and again. Yet I’m the one who has to feel terrified every so many months? This is bullshit. Between someone walking around with our records on their laptop which is then conveniently “lost” or more than likely, carelessly left on a table at a local Starbucks or Subway restaurant, and knowing that no one is going to be sent to jail for the financial meltdown of the economy, I’m beginning to feel like I’m being f**ked up the ass with a 20-foot coconut palm. I’m sure many others basically feel the same way although they’d probably say it much more politely.

On a good note, I found and have joined (for free) SparkPeople.com to help me with tracking my daily exercise and nutrition. It’s all about one thing for me: Accountability. I realize I might be one of the last people on the planet who care about such things but if I don’t ‘fess up about what I’m doing, I only have myself to blame (kind of like our own personal budget challenge).

The big eye-opener since joining and entering what I’ve been eating is that while yes, I’m eating healthy (I already knew that) was that I’m consuming a huge amount of carbohydrates; much more than I should be if I want to lose this last twenty pounds.

You see, I’m a raw fruit and veggie junkie and while it’s good to eat 4-5 servings every day, I was pretty much doubling that day in and day out. And I’m not getting enough protein, a tough thing for me since I’m a borderline vegetarian. Yes, protein can be had from some veggies but then I’m back to dealing with carb overload. Protein drinks and tablets are right out as is pretty much all dairy because of my dairy allergy (a true allergy that affects my asthma and sinuses, NOT a lactose intolerance issue).

It’s an interesting discovery but you know me: I love a challenge. This is a good one and so far, I’ve learned stuff that I only thought I knew everything about. I’m doing well. Plus, I’ve been motivated again. Even though I’ve been using the treadmill regularly, SparkPeople.com has me walking longer. And that’s exactly what I needed to balance out those days with too many carbs.

February 9, 2009

Tempers are running high around here for the second weekend in a row. Not sure what’s going on. Everything else seems to be running smoothly. I feel like I’m always asking too many questions and never getting any answers without long, drawn out explanations. It seems I’m always asking about specific situations that need the long explanations even though I’m not aware that I’m asking about those things. All I look for is a yes or no. Never get it. In addition, I’m always under foot or in the way or want something done at a bad time. It always seems like a bad time. Always, always, always. And you know me, I can’t seem to keep my mouth shut. Suddenly, I’ve returned to being five years old.

In other news, in a balls-to-the-wall session yesterday, I finished all but one item on my pending reading list, wrote up critiques where needed, researched some necessary information and printed out everything I need for later in the week. Music for CDs has been selected and playlists have been completed. A short secondary trip list has been assembled and everything compiled. I even got a little editing done on a piece of writing I haven’t looked at since last autumn. Now, I just need a little time to get my head in the right place. It’s going to be a very social couple of months. Maybe I should use the opportunity to find someone else to answer my questions.

February 10, 2009

I don’t profess to be a weatherman but I do sometimes play one online. I pay attention to storms and currents off our area’s coastline and I’ve been interested in weather events most of my life. I’m also going to be driving to eastern Washington later this week. So over the past weekend when our local news said snow is back in our forecast for the coming week, I sat up and paid close attention.

Readers here know I’m not enamored with our local weathermen. Okay, not enamored is probably too weak a phrase. Honestly, I don’t think most of them could find their own butts with two hands and a flashlight. That said, I know predicting weather can and is often a tricky business. All kinds of things can affect a forecast. But sometimes you can catch one local channel repeating nearly word by word what another channel is saying and you just know in your gut they’re both dead wrong. I don’t claim to have a sixth sense about weather but if I do say so myself, I am more right about what’s coming than not.

Yesterday I predicted snow just like all the local news channels did and this morning, we awoke to some. It’s nice when everyone’s right. There was just enough white to cover the ground and then by ten in the morning, it had melted and rain had taken over. It’s going on two in the afternoon now and every once in a while, I see a flake trying to sneak down with the steady rain but I think it’s mostly over until tonight when I think it’ll repeat today all over again. Typical mid-February weather. Pretty, but nothing to get too excited over.

February 11, 2009

Yesterday we had a big, fat Comcast outage around here. I was able to squeeze out one congratulatory email to a fellow writer who sold her first novel and then boom! No Internet service.

Fine. It’s lunchtime-ish, I’ll go watch TV and eat a salad.

Well, crap. No Comcast cable TV service either.

Minutes drifted into hours and then the good part of the entire day was gone. All I can say is good thing we don’t use Comcast for our phone because that’d probably be out too. Then what would I do with myself? Walk into our gym and workout, that’s what.

I watch TV when I’m on the treadmill. It’s good for walking away the time and the fat. But with no TV, that wasn’t going to go as smoothly as I figured. I’m up to walking 35 to 50 minutes, four times a week now. Sometimes I run a minute or two, once or twice. I still can’t run very long because my lungs don’t like it too much but I feel that I’m building up endurance now that I’m walking longer than a measly twenty minutes a day.

But boy, the extra time is really kicking my butt. I feel like I’m dragging around the house the rest of the day. If it wasn’t that I’m already feeling results, I’d be tempted to back off a little. I like the results better than being a wuss. Being a complainer is a whole ‘nother thing.

The late rain yesterday wiped out any snow we had left. Today is about the bright, glaring sun. Yep, spring’s a coming.

February 12, 2009

Out of town until late Sunday. I’m off to eastern Washington. Do you know what famous modern day fiction author was born there?

February 18, 2009

I’m back from my writing convention. Still tired but I think that’s because I spent a lot of energy refusing to get sick from all the sickies who were there (and those riding along with me). I still feel fine. It was energy well spent.

I met a lot of people, not as many as I planned to because I let myself get drawn into helping out with an event that sorely needed bodies, which then for me and me alone, went terribly awry. Got to meet three of Washington State’s finest as a result, one in particular very, very close, closer than I’d ever want to. I told everyone later that it was all my fault, that absolute power corrupts and I had absolute power in what duty I had chose to perform at the event (I.D. checker at the door).

But later, after a number of very well informed people talked with me and calmed me down, I realized the officer was equally guilty in that he was displaying his ‘absolute power’ in front of his partner and officer trainee. Maybe we were both guilty. Maybe we were both innocent. I don’t want to think about it anymore other than to say I’m very happy I didn’t have to call WS from eastern Washington in order to get bailed out of jail.

Or something like that.

The following day, I met with another of the state’s finest just a few miles west of the previous evening’s encounter. He informed me WS’ car’s license plate situation was all wrong but didn’t give me a ticket. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that it rattled the nerves of my friends who rode with me on the trip and for that I will forever apologize.

Upon arriving home and after I told WS about what happened with that incident, he looked up the very laws the officer said I was violating. Surprise! It’s not illegal but ‘open to interpretation’ for any state officer to enforce or not. I don’t need to tell you how strapped towns and cities are for cash, and I sympathize completely. And I don’t think I need to go further with my assessment of why I think I might have been pulled over. Even so, next year I’ll make damned sure the car is compliant. Even if it kills me to do so.

Anyway, I’m home and without any unplanned expenses. Whew! Who knew I was such a bad girl?

February 19, 2009

Squeezing blood from stones.

I’m spending the day and will be spending the days to come pouring over our budget looking for further ways to reduce our monthly costs. This in the wake of a mandatory job salary cut. The problem is, we’ve nearly slashed our personal budget to the bone but were still bleeding about a hundred bucks a month. Now we have to find another two-three hundred a month more to cut just to break even.

So naturally, I’m giving the hairy eyeball to our monthly home security service and water delivery. Between the two, there’s eighty-one dollars saved. I’ve got a reasonable plan should anyone try to break in while I’m at home, one I am comfortable living with including consequences thereafter.

Regarding water service, I haven’t added the additional cost of using more city water in lieu of bottled water use. I have to assume it will add at least half the cost of the delivery service bill. We’ve always been big water drinkers. To keep good health up, we can’t change that so we might only be looking at saving about sixty dollars a month.

Next on the chopping block will be my once every 6-to-7 week hair appointments. I’ve been considering quitting getting this mop of mine colored because of the cost. Lord knows now we could really use that eighty dollars every other month. I can cut my own bangs (and believe me, my forehead needs bangs). The rest I can maintain as well though I will not let WS cut any of it. The last time I did that, well, let’s not talk about it.

If need be, I can cut his hair and did so for a several years prior to 1996. I’d prefer it if he got his cut professionally because he has a professional type job. But we’ll do what we have to do. That would be twenty-five dollars saved every six weeks.

I’ve further reduced our bi-monthly grocery shopping budget. It’s already stretched terribly thin but I think we might be able to save an additional twenty dollars a month if we shop very carefully. Anyone know the requirements for getting free food from a local food bank? We seriously may need to investigate this soon.

Cut basic cable TV? Hmm, this costs us $12.58 a month. But how much do we watch TV? It’s an ingrained habit. WS was practically raised on TV. We’ve come to like watching “Biggest Loser” but if we wanted to, we could watch this from hulu.com, the ‘free’ NBC Internet channel. I watch the local news every day. Again, we could watch this online since we’re keeping our Internet connection (currently at the slowest and least cost connection speed available in our area). Still, only twelve bucks a month? Yes, twelve bucks a month that could help make up our monthly shortfall.

And so what happens when the DTV thing happens this coming June? Well, we can still watch TV on our computers. Would we really care about DTV at that point? Hard to say but I think not.

Once we’re reasonably out of freeze season, we’re going to completely shut down our fountain. I’m hoping to save a minimum of thirty-to-forty dollars a month there though I might be sadly mistaken. I know our fountain’s water pump is relatively energy efficient compared to the originally installed pump that needed replacement about four years ago. We won’t know of any savings to our electric bill until after we shut the thing down and then only after we get our first affected electric bill. No more drinking fountain for birds and other wildlife. Sad but a necessity.

Effective immediately, no more pet food left out for stray animals. We must keep this for our own pets. Estimated savings – $3 a month.
No more grapes bought for visiting raccoons or opossums. Estimated savings – $7-to-10 a month.
No more bird or squirrel food bought after the remaining batch left in our cupboards is gone (we haven’t bought any since the last big batch purchased in October of last year). Estimated savings – $15-to-20 a month.
Bird and squirrel feeders will be taken down to lessen confusion. At least our trees have grown tall. All we can afford to offer them now is shelter.
No more yard debris pickup. Estimated savings – $4.50 a month. I won’t give up the can at $2.84 rental every other month. Not yet anyway. All yard debris will just have to find its way into our usual garbage pickup via very, very small bits.

Or, I could get a job at one of our local Jack-In-The-Box restaurants. I would surely make about four hundred dollars a month which ought to just about pay for our personal budget shortfall and the extra bus fare/car gas I’d need to get to and from work. Who knows? In continuing to reduce costs, maybe I could sneak a pickle or two for lunch!

Anywho, with all these cuts, we’re still going to be a little short each month. Just a tad, a smidge, a skosh. We realize these rough times won’t last forever but after hearing WS’ job news yesterday, it sounds like the soonest things will turn around is about five years out. We’re trying to remain positive. Any ideas you might have are welcome. In fact, I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

February 23, 2009

We’re still hanging in there though my creativity continues to take a beating. I’m trying hard to work and write through it but Hay-zeus in a hand basket and for the glorious love of dogs, can the talk of layoffs just stop? You know it’s bad when the local news reports it yet everyone at WS’ job denies it. Stop yanking us around already!

For the record, WS has survived sixteen layoffs in just the past three years. He’s good at what he does, as long as all this crap doesn’t get to him. With his MS, he doesn’t need the stress on top of his pay cut AND more talk of layoffs.

All I can wonder is if the company lays everyone off, who the hell will be left to run the company? I see a resurgence in the signs I first saw posted in the early 1970’s – Will the last person left please turn off the lights.

So, allegedly, the final steps left to be taken if needed in the worldwide technology and financial crisis for companies like the one WS is employed with are as follows:

Mandatory days off without pay.
Elimination of 401K programs and benefits.
Reduction of headcount up to forty percent of all work force.
Further reductions in salary.

Things I think will happen after that; things no one wants to even think about right now (though I do because I just went through this four years ago):

CEO and board of directors ‘talk’ of reducing their seven-figure salaries.
Sell the company for a song.
Unlikely adsorption of remaining employees into new company.
All items imprinted with old company logo rapidly disappears.
Fresh insurgence of eBay seller accounts set up featuring stolen office items.
Layoff of all remaining employees.
Last person left on premises, loyalty finally shattered, maliciously leaves all lights on and equipment running. Oh, and steals last pad of Post-It-Notes.

February 24, 2009

Oh, and did I mention that last week we were notified by our bank that our credit information may once again been compromised? Yet another stupid, careless bank employee lost a laptop with hundreds of thousands of customer data files on it. And yet again, no one is being held accountable. No one seems to care. No one seems to understand why this keeps being a problem. The only answer we can get out of anyone is that this is just a sign of the times.

Bullshit. Tell me again why I shouldn’t be angry at all of this?

February 27, 2009

While coming up with a list of things I’m thankful for, I heard that this site had been on the verge of being hijacked through our new web host. Good work guys. Thanks for catching it and letting us know. Too bad it was part of your own software that created the security hole.

Anyway, everything’s good now. They acknowledged their part and Blogeois.com was down less than two hours. WS was on top it instantly like he’s more apt to be than not. If at all possible, you need to get yourself a geek in your life then love ‘em and hold ‘em and squeeze ‘em and put ‘em in a box forever and call ‘em George. I know what I’m talking about here.

So back to that list. Um, I’m still working on it. In the meantime, I’m happy to announce I’ve dropped five pounds and kept it off for a week now. I’m sitting around 151 pounds now and couldn’t be happier. That’s a fib. I’d be happier sitting at 140 pounds or less. No worries. I’m confident I’ll get there.

I’m crediting two three things with dropping those five pounds. 1) Increasing my daily activity. I’m finally comfortable with walking forty minutes a day instead of twenty. Took three weeks to get comfortable but I did.

2) I gave up drinking my nightly senna leaf tea. Icky stuff it was and expensive but I truly believed it helped with weight loss because it makes you poop. Turns out it also binds up food somehow and makes some people retain water. Who needs that? And at nine bucks a box, I sure don’t. That’d just be crazy talk!

3)My own motivation deserved a smidge of credit. Usually, I’ve got lots but this whole budget strain/lay off threats/pay reduction thing has got my depression at an all time high. Or would it be an all time low? Whichever, most days I fight it fairly well. You know me, always playing the cheerleader for everyone else. I still don’t feel like I’ve got a creative bone in my body but that’ll come back once I feel we get a slight breather from the financial mess lots of us are in. At least I’m sleeping okay and feeling up to walking every day so it’s not all that bad. Exercise and good food is key here.

And I’ve finally made the decision on my hair. Having it blonde and strong and well maintained over the past three years, after learning there even was such a thing as hair stylists who actually knew what they were doing (as opposed to all those horrible women over decades who used my head as a personal art statement), was wonderful and I’ll never forget it. Wished I could have known about it sooner and longer.

But it’s time to move on and well past time to live within our financial means, especially since I still don’t have a job (though we’re both looking for something legitimate I can do from home kind of like the tech support I used to do). It costs a hundred dollars every six-to-seven weeks to keep my grey away and the color looking young and fresh. I still feel young and fresh but my hair won’t look like it any more. I’ve given up my hair stylist. Sooner is better than later in this regard or at least I’ve convinced myself of this.

The muddy grey color is already making a stripe noticeable under bright light or sunshine at my scalp level. It’ll get worse by next month.

But let’s have fun with this, shall we? Next week, I’ll start taking pictures of the color progress and post them here. My hair grows ridiculously slow so it might take a while before it gets really ugly, and then, it’ll remain that way for years. I mean, it took fifty-two years for it to grow past my shoulders and only then with a lot of help and care from my ex-stylist.

But I’m good with this. Really, I am. This will be fun!

March 3, 2009

I’ve been so busy with writing stuff I forgot to write here. Sounds nonsensical, doesn’t it? Silly but true.

I’ve spent the past few days getting ready for my second (of three) writer-oriented trip out of town. All I have left to do is pack my suitcase and load up some books and notebooks to take. I had planned on doing that this morning because I’m all about doing stuff like that way early but instead, I woke up with a raging headache that’s making my eyes feel all bulged out. A strong storm front blew through late last night bringing hail (that sounded wonderful on the skylight above me) and winds that knocked big trees down out of water-saturated soil a few miles east. Apparently, my sinuses were affected as well. All I want to do is sleep in a very, very dark and quiet room but no! I’ve got to be ready to drive north tomorrow morning. No time to sleep, little time to rest. Good thing I got all my writing preparation stuff done yesterday because I can barely think straight today.

I’ll be out of town through the weekend, typing and hobnobbing with published authors and writers deep in the drippy rainforests of Washington State. WS will be here at home, celebrating surviving layoff number seventeen which came completely unexpectedly yesterday morning. Again I ask, if everyone there is going to be laid off eventually, who’s going to do the work that keeps the company running?

Good dodge, WS. Kudos to you! Keep dancing and weaving and we just might survive this downturn yet.

Monday, March 09, 2009

It’s snowing, not too unlike Quinault Lake, Washington where I spent the last four and a half days. Unlike Quinault Lake, Washington, someone or something installed Outlook 2007 and Word 2007 on this desktop computer and both suck ass.

Yesterday morning, Sunday, I went to bed at five a.m. This came after a very productive night of networking with published authors and up and comers. During the hours spent losing playing Scrabble, listening to a presentation on the various scents, properties, and taste differences of twelve different kinds of scotch (of which I will never partake in again because I don’t think anyone in their right mind should intentionally consume anything that smells like the burning clutch of a 1974 Super Beetle struggling to get up California’s Grapevine hill), and lounging in my robe and pajamas (hey, it was a pajama party!), four inches of snow dropped from the rainforest skies.

Needless to say, I was a little freaked out by the thought of having to drive home in the stuff. Snow driving and I just don’t mix.

But WS’ car was sure-footed for the most part and I only had two bad spots to worry about: Getting back out to Highway 101 where the road had been scraped clean and the Kelso/Longview area where five inches of hail fell in ten minutes and a dozen car pile-up littered four lanes of traffic.

I steeled myself for the worst and got through it all and am taking the day or two I need to recharge. I’m also connected to the toilet because of something I ate recently. Home cooking here last night for dinner was the only thing I ate yesterday following a day and a half of near fasting because I refused to eat the sugary sweet crap the writing retreat people offered by the truckload. I think it was a combination of driving nerves and frozen broccoli. Talk about something sucking ass. I’m too spoiled when it comes to fresh veggies.

So after four days of writing while overlooking a gray lake under gray foggy skies and enjoying a gas fireplace that I didn’t have to pay extra to run as long as I liked, I’m back to wrapping my head around scraping by and looking to cut every penny into quarters, no, into fifths, no eighths.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

This month, bottled water delivery has been eliminated and we’re working toward getting the grocery costs down to two hundred dollars a month. It disgusts me to think back on when we used to spend three and four hundred every other week. It’s good to have memories. It’ll keep me going for a long time to come.

At the end of this week, we go in for a dental cleaning and check up. It’s been six months. WS’ benefits don’t pay as much as they used to and so I’m going to nix the dentist’s money-laden idea of taking fresh x-rays. They already do that (to me at least) three times a year and did just the last time I went. No one needs that many x-rays. And because we’ll have to pay for them now, they can wait. Don’t like it? We’ll go elsewhere. WS’ has been threatening to do so for a year now anyway.

Yesterday, we received a letter from our dentist, the only remaining one of the original group who started the business we came to love. Is it possible to love dentists? We did once. He’s leaving too now, not that we’ve seen a whole lot of him lately. He’s a young man and had a stroke two years ago. His business partners all abandoned him slowly ever since and he’s now sold out too, leaving the place to the dreadful Dr. Angel, the dentist with the bedside manner of a cockroach sandwich, and Dr. Kirk, who looks to be age twelve.

I found myself wondering today when I’m going to start seeing the direct effects of this economy on our faces. I already see it on a few here and there at that big-ass grocery store nearby that starts with a W. Will people start shrinking in size for lack of food? I doubt it. Will people start looking weathered and worn out like photos of dust bowl survivors showed? Are we raising a whole new generation of over-spenders who buy recklessly because they’ll remember back to when their parents lost everything? My parents never talked about their parents going through the Great Depression (oddly never talked about their parents at all). My parents weren’t spenders or savers. They just were, and eked out a living when not being fired because of temper tantrums or gender biasing.

I’m always been one of those kinds of people who will up-end a bottle to get the very last bit out of it, not because I was taught it was wasteful not to do so. I wasn’t taught anything about that, one way or the other. I do it because I always felt it was wasteful not to. Squeezing the very, very last bit of toothpaste from the tube, using the last toilet paper square; I’m glad of that natural behavior now. Over the past weekend, when I was out of town, you better believe I took all the free soap and shampoo and instant coffee I could take from my room. Anything to help stretch supplies at the home front. Anything to keep us going.

March 12, 2009

The other day, I decided I wanted to become part of a free, public finance forum. All I had to do was spill my guts about our budget plan and what we owe. No problem. I already do that here. In return, some very smart people who claimed they were once in our same shoes would comment and offer suggestions on how to make ends meet. I thought it was right up my alley.

I spent a lot of time reading other people’s financial tales of woe and I completely agreed with every suggestion offered. But here’s the deal: It was depressing as all get out. Not because so many people are in the same boat as us, but because so many of them can’t see the forest for the trees. All those unnecessary things they say they need to have are what’s making them come up short every month.

Countless people claiming to want help getting out of financial debt didn’t understand why they had to give up their hundred dollar or more a month cell phone plan. Or why they couldn’t keep stopping for coffee every morning and going out for lunch everyday. Or why they couldn’t fudge their budget a little on their weekly gasoline bill. “But I have to go here and there” (non work related trips seemingly to nowhere) seemed to be the universal reply.

People don’t get it and I seriously doubt they ever will. Too many generations were given everything under the sun it would seem, so much that now it’s practically mandatory that everyone own it all. If people weren’t given everything, then they were told they deserved everything anyway even if it meant living wildly beyond means of paying for it. Yeah, I remember growing up dirt poor and being sucked into believing I deserved the best of everything too. I deserve what I’ve got now – stuff and debt.

But what depressed me more, enough that I didn’t join the forum was reading over and over all the things a person needs to give up in order to show how serious they are about getting out of debt. Not because I’d have to give up any of them but because I never owned any of those things in the first place.

Never owned a cell phone, an SUV, or had a coffee addiction a couple of aspirin couldn’t cure. I rarely eat lunch; in fact, I haven’t eaten lunch out since 1991. I haven’t gone to the movies or theatre in decades and so rarely buy DVDs I wouldn’t be surprised to find out they no longer make the kind our ancient DVD player plays. We don’t buy clothes (in two years) or electronics (in five years) or even have our hair cut anymore. We don’t take vacations so I don’t have to give up any money I might have socked away for one. Ditto for any college fund. Double ditto for any retirement fund.

We shop at Walmart now and literally count every penny to keep to our hard budget of two hundred dollars a month to feed us and five cats and to keep us in toilet paper, cat litter, toothpaste, and soap. I hear you can wash your hair, clothes, and dishes alike with dish soap. Anything extraneous absolutely must come out of the grocery money because we don’t have it to come from anywhere else. Medication? Take it from the grocery money. Yearly dental checkup? Take what lean benefits no longer pay for from the grocery money. Don’t have grocery money this month? Fish enough nickels and dimes out of the change can and invest in a bag of popcorn.

What then really, really depressed me was to realize if I told the forum readers what I didn’t have to give up and what I owed, either no one would believe me or no one could offer anything any different from what we’re already doing, which is eating plain popcorn when we’re hungry, looking for extra employment, and struggling like a good portion of everyone else.

But on a happier note, it looks like my hair might be growing out a pretty silver. I’ll be certain in another week or two. Remember, it grows so slowly. Wouldn’t that be something?

March 17, 2009

An hour ago received an email from MsNoManagementSkills and it both pissed me off and made me hoot and cackle for a long time.

“I’ll be 33 tomorrow!!! So old *frowny face* I guess I already got one birthday prezzie. Laid off! Can’t believe it. My boss told me at 11 o’clock my employment would end today at 3. Don’t know how (co-worker’s name removed) is going to manage. Worthless.

I need birthday prezzies! The bigger the better! Make me happy!!!!!”

If I hadn’t been laughing so hard at the thought of her being laid off, I’d have stomped around the house and slammed some doors. I’m NOT supposed to be on her email list anymore. Geesh, just because I worked miserably under the woman shouldn’t mean we have to share an email umbilical cord.

Then again, how else would I have learned that she was laid off? HA!

Gotta go giggle for a while again.

(Yes, I know celebrating other people’s misfortune is bad. Let me be bad for just a day.)

March 18, 2009

Today definitely felt like a spring day. What better weather to start spring clean up in our backyard. My weekend and early week coughing and wheezing fits seemed to be at bay for the time being and knowing spring rains kick back in full bore tomorrow evening, I thought to see how much I could accomplish. All in all, I think my work went fairly well.

Last fall, we sucked up as many fallen leaves as we could in three separate attempts. Still didn’t get them all but I got most of the leftovers today. Most had wedged themselves down into the crowns of plants while others matted under low bushes. Since some of those low bushes needed a lower branch trimming anyway, I killed two birds with one stone. Still have to get along the back rock wall under azaleas and I want to rake up the pine needles from under the Vanderwoof Pine but I simply ran out of yard debris bin space, even with cramming every thing else in there.

Then, since it was completely a stinky, moss-and-algae mess, I thought I’d tackle the fountain (remembering full well that I’m thankful we have one and can still ‘afford’ (through savings) the electricity to run it until the end of freezing night temperatures).

I usually clean the huge thing by blasting a strong stream of water directly into the gravel rock beds to dislodge most of the gunk. The water that bubbles up looks like chocolate milk with dark, half-decayed leaves mixed in. The mucky water then runs downstream into the lower pool which drains into the underground filtered pump. Blasting water back and forth as meticulously as possible usually gets the best results but uses a lot of water. It also overwhelms the underground French drain and overflows the fountain onto our adjoining square patio pad. No problem with the overflow. I wasn’t planning to clean that area until the very end anyway. Can’t really do anything about the water use. Either I use the water to clean it now or use the water to clean it later.

The tall stone pillars in the fountain were thick with yellow algae build up. Nothing a little watered down 30-Second cleaner wouldn’t fix. I feel okay using that stuff for this job being certain no frogs, tadpoles, or newts were currently living in the fountain, but I wouldn’t have used it at all if I had seen or heard signs of any amphibian life out there. It’s just a matter of time before a frog or two or three return. You can hear the peepers every evening down the hill and over by the creek. So far this winter, nothing but silence from the fountain.

While the 30-Second cleaner was working, I continued thinning out plants that have set their minds to taking over. The winter snow and ice did a number on a couple of Hebes that grew too big for the space they were occupying so those had to go. I finally dug out three of the four old landscape roses I’d been trying to give away for years. As soon as I can find that last one, it’ll be gone too. And it turns out the only thing the temperatures killed over the winter was one of the Rosemary shrubs. No biggie. Still have three, very healthy ones left.

Trimmed the dwarf Crape Myrtle (which isn’t so dwarf anymore), Hydrangea, and blueberries and tried to take a fresh look at what’s planted around the top deck area of the fountain. Funny how when I first planted around the fountain, I couldn’t wait for things to fill in; now I’d like to return it to something similar. I think this’ll be the first spring/summer I break out the hedge trimmer back there. I go to town with it around the front yard. I might as well have fun in the backyard too. I really love my hedge trimmer. Almost as much as I love my Dremel!

Finally, I turned off the fountain to let it drain. It’ll be spendy to refill it with fresh water but we haven’t done that in years. It needs it like you couldn’t imagine without seeing (and smelling) it. While it was draining, I pulled wads of built up leaves out of hidden crevasses and curtains of algae from the shallows. If I had my way, I’d dig out the filter surrounding the pump, buried some six feet down, covered by a quarter ton of gravel, and clean the living crap out of that too. But it’ll have to wait for another time or maybe another financially-positive year. That’s a serious job and regrettably just not do-able by myself.

Next time we have a couple of days of dry weather, I plan on cleaning the cement walkways and scrubbing down the covered (and algae-covered) patio furniture. Can’t wait to enjoy morning coffee out there.

March 19, 2009

The rain returned much sooner than anyone predicted. Big surprise there. No more working in the yard this week. But before dinner last night, spurred on by how much I accomplished earlier, I transplanted a tiny evergreen where those Hebes used to be and took stock of what’s left to do before the temperatures warm up enough to live out there.

Other than cleaning the cement and scrubbing patio furniture I’ve got a few droopy branches to remove from the white bud (of which I’ve caved yet another year on removing – as crowded and misshapen as it is, it’ll stay this year), a branch or two off on our largest white bark birch that we don’t want hanging over into The Renters side yard (don’t need to give them any more reason to hate us), removal of that final pink rose that I rediscovered peeking out from under a tall, red grass, and giving WS’ Ceanothus it’s first serious shaping after allowing it to grow nearly unchecked to a height of eight feet

His Ceanothus, also called Wild Lilac, blooms with little spiky blue flowers that the bumblebees love. Underneath it, I have an azalea planted that covers itself with white flowers every spring. You’d think they’d look great together but unfortunately, this pair blooms at different times. I don’t think the Ceanothus knows it’s supposed to bloom when the white azalea does. It probably would if it got more sun but then the azalea would burn.

Back to those Hebes, they were a couple of compact, mounded growth bushes that were planted where we could enjoy the flowers and fragrance. After five years, they mounded themselves all right, a foot higher than advertized and wouldn’t you know it, they never bloomed. They were pretty the first three years, a nice apple green color, but then they got rangy and the snow at Christmas finally did them in.

When I first moved here from the desert southwest, everyone who gardened told me I simply had to have a Hebe in my yard; it simply was a “must have” plant, right after the cliché Rhododendrons and azaleas. Well, since I had never had a Rhodie or azalea, I didn’t mind being cliché in those. The first time I ever smelled a Hebe in bloom however, I knew I wanted one.

The thing was, at the time, I didn’t have the money nor did I live in anywhere with garden space. I should have written down the exact name of that Hebe –that would have cost me nothing – more importantly, it would have helped teach me not to trust my local plant nursery. Over the years, I’ve gotten more mislabeled plants from that place. One would think I’d have given up on them a long, long time ago. Case in point: The white bud that I was verbally promised twice was a red bud. That one still chaps my ass but I still can’t bring myself to chop it down. The tree wasn’t at fault. The grower/nursery workers were. Yes, I’m guilty of attaching human emotions to a few of my garden plants, but trust me, only a few. The white bud is one of the few.

March 20, 2009

Happy Spring!

After blathering on and on about gardening over the past couple of days, I talked myself into going out into the rain to whip our front yard into shape. Again, what’s with all the dead matted leaves? I find it hard to believe we left that much out there last fall but that seemed to be the case. Between piles of those and a few long, thin branches fallen here and there from the birches, I filled two garbage can-sized plastic bags that’ll have to wait to be dumped until our yard debris can has been emptied. Another bill.

The good thing is there isn’t much else to do out front except work on the lawn itself. That’s not my job and thankfully so because it’s in sad, sorry shape.

It would seem that there are dead, matted thatch spots throughout the lawn and it looks bad. All the piled snow we had in late December didn’t do it any favors. The lawn needs a serious hard raking, an aeration, and probably some grass seed to get it back into lush, green shape. Even then, it’ll take time, and without a penny to spend on it, it’ll probably take a whole lot longer. I’m sure WS wishes it would all go away.

It would also seem that we lost a second plant over the winter, an apricot New Zealand Flax. I won’t replace it. It was the second one grown there and although the spot in the yard isn’t a problem, the weather is. I’ve lost both to harsh winter weather. I enjoyed them both but it’s time to move on. I’ve got enough other stuff to move into the empty area if I really want something there.

March 21, 2009

We live in a densely populated neighborhood. Long time readers here have heard me go on and on about this. It’s not hard to overhear neighbors talking, particularly so when they have trained themselves to speak in that annoying cell phone volume level. I’ve been working on trying to shut off my brain when people are out and about because eavesdropping isn’t polite. But it’s not easy. It helps when I choose not to work out in the yard. Staying indoors prevents me from overhearing most of what goes on around us, except in the case of The Dimmers who seem to have a daily outburst over something.

We can’t ignore our front yard and so I spent the day out there yesterday doing spring cleanup. During those six hours, try as hard as I may not to, I witnessed and overheard:

Refusal of a letter requiring a signature hand-delivered by the postman to a family down the street; the family who leave not only their Christmas lights but Christmas yard decorations up year around. In fact, the large woman of the house yelled at the postman, saying she wouldn’t sign for it and to go away. Then she slammed the door in his face. I’ll give the postman credit for standing there patiently for several minutes before giving up. There were, as you might imagine, several other witnesses to the scene. I don’t know what that was all about. Those people keep very much to themselves and won’t talk to anyone else on the street.

Mrs. Dimmer tell her visiting mother that she’s taking care of her family’s finances now and all Mr. Dimmer had to do was find a job post-haste. She also thanked her mother for continuing to pay the bills. It all makes sense now. Sounds like all his lawsuits aren’t paying off yet.

Mrs. Howler Monkey is pissed at ‘that black man in Washington” and said “it’s not fair that our children should suffer because of his incompetence.” Not suffer? Hmm, maybe her two kids, ages six and eight, both with cell phones and iTouchs of their own, need to learn to suffer a little more. She’d done a great job of raising a couple of Napoleons who excel at demanding and getting everything they see. And as I understand it, “that black man in Washington” kind of inherited the country’s problems. But what do I know?

She also said her family is struggling to make ends meet and has to reevaluate their situation every day. Her salesman husband has had his territory significantly reduced and her home business has all but dried up. Minutes later, she got into her big, old SUV and drove the two hundred feet to the community mailbox to pick up her mail before returning the short distance to her driveway. That might have been half a gallon of gas better used elsewhere.

The only people living nearby who don’t seem to be affected outwardly is the Dry Cleaners whose dry cleaning, housecleaning, and yard services continue weekly. Good for them. Now if they would just ask their housecleaner or maybe one of the yard maintenance guys to remove the large, rotted Halloween pumpkin from their front porch, I know I’d think better of them.

How could they not notice that thing? Is it a science project? Is it warding off demons or something? It’s gross, it’s moldy and half-caved in, and it’s barely even orange anymore. A person might as well have a bucket of puke sitting out there for the smell occasionally wafting out from the decayed thing. Try as I may, I’ll never understand people…but silly me, I’ll keep trying anyway.

Grim news from the dying neighbor: Last month, a tumor began growth in one of her elbows. Within three weeks, it had grown large enough to prevent her from moving her arm. At all. This was when she drove into her garage door after coming home from a chemo treatment. (Again, I question whether she ought to be behind the wheel of a vehicle at all.) This month, the doctors are advising her on possible amputation. Of her arm. I couldn’t begin to imagine. Then again, she said this was tumor number three hundred and sixty something. Now I REALLY can’t imagine! Hug your loved ones today!

March 22, 2010

I decided I really don’t want to spend any time out front sitting on my own small porch watching the world go by. The Howler Monkey kids ruined it for me. I could no longer avert my eyes.

The oldest, age eight, came out his front door in full camoplage, complete with beret, loaded backpack, and a bright green B-B rifle with orange tip. His younger brother came out a minute later looking much the same.

“I don’t want you playing with me,” the older one said. The younger brother started a high-pitched whining. “Okay, baby. You can play but you have to be the towel-head and I’m going to shoot you.”

NICE talk. What the hell are they teaching their kids over there?

The younger brother went back indoors and the older of the two walked around, pointing his rifle at birds, neighborhood cats, me sitting quietly enjoying a morning cup of coffee. I glared back but kept my mouth shut. Those kids have a habit of getting facts wrong when talking to their parents afterward.

Next door at The Renters, the required yard maintenance service seems to have been eliminated. All winter, I pulled their yard debris out of our front yard, blown there by the winter winds and literally thrown there by the liar kid. I’ve witnessed both firsthand. We can’t afford to pay for our own yard debris pickup. We sure as hell can’t afford to pay for theirs either. So every branch of theirs I’ve had to drag out of our yard, I’ve tossed over their side yard fence, into their ‘dead’ zone area of yard where crusty stuff The Wall Streets didn’t take with them is piled, all abandoned, all green with algae, all behind the unmovable gate The Renters busted the first day they moved in.

Yesterday, a new pile of yard debris mysteriously made its way back into our side yard. It’s obvious to anyone paying an ounce of attention that none of those branches came from anything we’ve got growing at our place and all have come from the hacked down bushes they’ve got over there.

One guess as where those branches are now? Hint: We’re still not paying to get rid of their stuff. Next time, I’ll call the rental agency to complain. Again. I’ll write up notes beforehand so I stay on track and will try not to rip into them in a screeching tirade. No one listens to people who do that. Not really. And especially old women.

March 24, 2009

Recently, I listened in on an online personal finance talk show. The commentators were nice and polite if a bit wordy about their own personal backgrounds in lieu of talking to call-in listeners. I also watched the simultaneous chat which bounced almost instantly from finance dribble to chat room flirting. Thankfully, there were a few who tried to keep the topic on track. But was it really about finance?

Yes, but not for newbies, certainly not for people in trouble over their heads. I saw a few users try to participate, making personal statements rather than to ask blunt questions and for the most part, they and their statements were ignored. That’s not to say financial advice wasn’t flying – it was, but what does any of it mean to a newbie who doesn’t have time to read this or that latest and greatest book on how to get out of debt? I’m wondering what any of that mumbo-jumbo means to someone who needs help today, this hour, this very minute? I sure wish someone, anyone, had been online in that chat room to help translate any of this to us newbies.

At one point, user ages were inquired about. Since most of the users were young with student loan debt, the conversation turned abruptly to paying off student loan debt…and stayed there. Any talk of older users was met with a ‘oh, retirement’ brush off retort and went back to talk of student loans. Uh, is 47 years old and up considered retirement age now-a-days? Because it sure seemed like that was the consensus there.

Here’s the deal, kids: You think you’re young and have tons of time but you’re wrong. You’d better pay attention to all that talk about paying off student loans in lieu of how to get out of any other kind of debt because before you know it, you’ll be in my shoes, wondering how you got to be my age when you weren’t looking and wondering not about retirement (Who the hell can retire today? What the hell is retirement anymore?) but how not to have to eat cold beans every fricken’ day of the week because you can’t afford to pay your monthly bills. We’ll just see how irritating it is to you then when you are looking for help, only to have to listen to and read one hundred percent personal finance crap for young people that doesn’t help you one bit.

March 26, 2009

It’s spring here in the Pacific Northwest and reportedly, going to be a rare, dry day. Even though my allergies have been bothering me on and off all week (why, with all the rain we’ve had, I don’t know) just as soon as this morning fog burns off and the WatchTower women harassing canvassing the neighborhood go away, I’m going out there to try to finish up all the yard work.

On today’s list: Cleaning the cement patio and remaining walkways. Uncovering and setting up all patio furniture. Scrubbing the gawd-awful looking, crusty-thick patio furniture covers and packing away for next fall. Raking up the rest of the leaves along the back rock wall. Hard raking the front grass, dethatching it basically, mowing, edging, and fertilizing. Rake side yards to freshen old bark mulch. Give a hairy eye ball to the east back side yard that’ll be tackled over the next dry period. Sit back and enjoy the fruits of my labor.

Will I be able to accomplish all this today? Probably, but only if I get out there this very minute.

Note to self: Take lots of Kleenex out with you.

March 27, 2009

Yesterday’s cleaning of the cement in our backyard was delayed six hours. I couldn’t get the frickin’ pressure washer started. Cap’t Dan watched from his bedroom window as I pulled my arm half out of it’s socket and brought on an asthma attack trying to get it to do anything. A hiccup would have been nice, anything to let me know it was alive after the winter.

Yes, there was fresh gas in it. Yes, I checked the oil. Yes, the throttle was open. No, there’s no choke. No, I didn’t check the spark plug because WTF? Why doesn’t this Briggs & Stratton engine have a standard spark plug size? I know B&S isn’t an American-made company anymore but c’mon. I used to race these exact same engines. I know my way around them. Yet the spark plug is some weird size that naturally, I don’t have. Grrr.

Didn’t matter. None of it mattered. After WS got home and after dinner, he went out, gave it three tugs and it started right up.

Okay, fine.

So we took turns pressure washing the main cement patio, the one that runs the entire length of the house, and gets absolutely zero sun during the fall and winter months. I also did a few feet down the east side walkway. This leaves the dreaded 12×12 foot square patio that sits next to the fountain and the entire back walk. Both of these areas are green with winter algae and notorious for taking a lot of work to get back to gray cement color.

I really wanted to pressure wash our small front patio this year, heck, this week. It’s taken ten years but it’s got that slight green algae tint to it too. It can wait. Rain is expected back later this evening and throughout the weekend and next week. I’m still way ahead of where I was last year at this time; a fact that thrills me to no end.

While the pressure washer and I weren’t on speaking terms, I whacked the living shit out of that blue-flowering Ceanothus. Geeze, what a messy plant. I’m practically giddy that I have it planted exactly where it is instead of elsewhere like I was musing last week. If I had to look at that thing every single day, I would have ripped it completely out by now, regardless of whether it’s WS’ plant or not. Flowers – pretty, bush – not pretty, at least not the variety we have.

I also uncovered the patio furniture and discovered one of our big furniture covers had mildewed so badly, it was falling completely apart. It also reeked. I guess that was a bad move on my part of storing it right where the raccoons feed from the squirrel nut box. Rotted nut shells, raccoon urine, and rainwater sure make a horrible soup. 30-Second cleaner didn’t do a thing for it and once I saw the seams had rotten apart, into the trash it went. Luckily, the furniture underneath seems perfectly fine, clean, dry, and fresh as a petunia. Don’t know how that happened but I’m not complaining.

I’ll wait another couple of weeks before putting out the table umbrella and the outdoor pillows. No need to get too anxious for summer.

March 28, 2009

I completed all the backyard pressure washing yesterday, ALL of it. Did it in the rain even. I didn’t care. I just wanted it done. The pounding and drumming from The Renters next door will be louder now that I also removed the muffling moss carpet from the east side yard brickwork. On the other hand, our subwoofer will be less muffled to them too and I just might feel the need to watch something loud this weekend, something very loud.

I have to say here that if I weren’t already in love with my Dremel, and if the pressure washer didn’t already belong to WS, I think I might fall in love with that thing; meaning I’d wash it and polish it and give it a name and guard it night and day. It’s the instant gratification factor, I think. Seeing how fast it dissolves dirt, muck, and algae excites me in that sad, so sad “I love power equipment and tools” kind of way. I’m not ashamed about it. Have I mentioned lately I have no life? Huh, could be worse I suppose.

Already today, our area has received a half inch of rain. Good. Get it out of your system, Mother Nature, I say. Rain all you want now. Just give us a little break in about two weeks so what’s about to flower can do so without drowning. Our PJM Rhododendrons are showing their magenta color, the Star Magnolia is unfurling long-petal flowers, and the first of the daffodils is trying to hold its head up. Meanwhile, the very last plant I bought for this place, a white and magenta Hellebore loves the cold rain. As soon as I can get out there with a camera, I’ll get shots of it. This is the first year it’s bloomed. I’m happy with it.

Just because it’s raining out doesn’t mean it’s a nice drowsy day to spend indoors. I’ve got a writing critique group meeting to attend down in Portland in a couple of hours, then it’s back here to get through more of the required reading/critiquing I have to finish by next week. Add in a little laundry, vacuuming, cleaning up cat barf, pulling tonight’s dinner menu out of my butt, you know, the usual day-to-day stuff and then, only then, can I call it a day.

Sure feels good to have that pressure washing done. Did I mention that?

March 30, 2009

I caught part of a newscast two weeks ago that talked about credit card companies making changes to customer accounts. No big surprise there. But what interested me was the report that AmEx was going to get rid of their reward points system for most cardholders. The timing was weird because not too long ago I was finally able to get into my AmEx reward points account after not being able to do so for about five years, and I had just the evening before looked at all the crap I could get for ‘free.’

I say ‘free’ because I already paid for/am going to pay ten times over for this crap; stuff like cheap toasters and pen sets. Of course, if a cardholder has lots of points, they can get ‘free’ stuff like Play Stations and iPods. If they have more points than anyone in their right mind knew what to do with, front row center seats at a Lakers home game sitting next to Jack Nicholson might be more your speed. Personally, I’d probably go for the around the world balloon trip with Richard Branson just to give him a piece of my mind. Bets are he’d dump me overboard after two hours.

Reality is I don’t have a use for Play Stations and WS already has an iPod (I’m still not overly impressed) and Jack and Richard are safe from me bending their ears. I was happy to see that I had a fairly decent amount of points, but what to use them for? That was the question and feeling overwhelmed by all the uninspiring choices, I chose not to do anything.

Then I heard that news report and instantly, I knew what to cash those reward points in on. Something useful, something we need – food, in the form of restaurant gift cards. And today, they came. Thirteen $25 dollar gift cards. We’re going to use them sparingly, you know, for when the beans get to be too much. This is so exciting!

Since then, we’ve discovered we had a couple of other credit cards that quietly offered reward points. And if chances are this benefit is going to be taken away soon, why not use them now?

That broken toaster, the one with the lever that needs to be held down so the thing will work? Soon to be replaced.

That rapidly emptying coffee canister? A nice little Starbucks gift card is on the way to help with that.

That WalMart gift card that would have allowed us to save nearly a month’s worth of grocery money? Too bad. Those points sat around (without us realizing we even had them) over twenty-four months and expired. Use them or lose them. Lesson learned.

So, if you’re feeling the crunch and you use credit cards, look to see if you’ve been racking up reward points of some kind. If you do, make them work for you. Unless you really want to sit court side with Jack but word has it, he won’t talk to anyone he doesn’t know.

March 31, 2009

We made it to the end of the month without going hungry once. Can I get a woot or two? Grocery trip on the horizon, the list has been made, and we have a couple of dollars more wiggle room this time around than in the past because since January, we’ve been very tough on ourselves. We’ve had to be tough. WS’ big salary cut kicks in tomorrow.

Outside, I got the front cement pressure washing done after all and just in time. It’s blustery, cold, and wet out there. Next Saturday we’re supposed to get a day dry break, then more of the same wet weather. Typical spring around here. Can’t have them all sunny and dry nor would I want them to be.

It’s also spring break around here for the younger kids. If it were sunny out, so would be the kids. And their scooters, bikes, balls of various sizes, tennis rackets (because nothing says idiot kids like intentionally whacking balls into people’s yards, off houses, windows, and cars), skateboards and improvised skate ramps (even though we now have a dedicated skate park just a quarter mile away), hula hoops (who would have thought these things would still be around?), and sidewalk chalk.

Next week, the older kids are off. Let’s hope for more rain then too because this is the really loud and obnoxious crowd. Last year’s spring break had some twenty-plus skateboard and BMX bike kids next door at The Renters, all completely unsupervised. Combine that with The Liar Kid’s bad, open air drumming and you *might* get a feel for what this street deals with on a daily, afternoon basis.

Having all those kids over there all day long for a week is more than just a little much. I thank my lucky stars and visionary landscaping skills for having the sense to plant holly and barberry shrubs along our dividing property line. Although those shrubs have taken a beating (because nothing says true idiot kids like intentionally riding bikes through bushes sporting one inch thorns), overall, the plants have held up better than I thought they would. Still, why I should even have to worry about my own landscaping in my own yard shows how little respect people have nowadays for anything.

Some of the things I’m thankful for:

Not having kids. Couldn’t afford them then, couldn’t afford them now.
Pets who purr. Extra thanks for rescuing declawed ones.
Friends, both online and live.
A recently found jar of pocket change.
Helping people who needed it a few years ago even at the expense of being burned by it later.
Exercise equipment we actually own.
Electricity.
A sense of rhythm.
Clothes that fit.
A beautiful house. Don’t own it but that doesn’t make it any less beautiful.
Not owning rose-tinted glasses.
Books and the ability to read.
Available clean water and a working nose that tells me when it’s time to shower.
A good, although perhaps skewed, sense of right and wrong.
A life without much fear, certainly one now free of physical violence.
Time.

April 2, 2009

Ten years ago: The foundation for our house was poured regardless of the inch of hail our area received. Also, wiring estimate comes in at six thousand dollars over budget. Contractor thinks he has customers with more money than sense. Contractor told where to go.
Nine years ago: In the middle of a nasty exacerbation that kept him from walking, WS tells a couple of friends he was officially diagnosed with WS last fall. After assuring him they will be there if he ever needs anything, those people choose to end their friendships with us. I up my dose of St. John’s Wort to stave off depression and start work on brickwork for our east side patio.
Eight years ago: On a plane for a company business trip, a tall, sick man wet-sneezed on my head the entire three hours. I come down with the mother of all ear infections. I also realize the company I work for has a fun headquarters. Who knew? It’s a day and night difference working under MsNoManagementSkills back home.
Seven years ago: A red house finch couple built a nest under our front porch eave. Under feng shui trust, we begin a long string of mostly good luck.
Six years ago: Along with my car club friends, I continue with the Atkin’s diet even though I’m going on an eight-week plateau.
Five years ago: First time I’ve ever witnessed a hummingbird bathe up close. I have my hair professionally colored for the first time ever and love it. I start to read “Under the Tuscan Sun” by Frances Mayes. My boss, MsNoManagementSkills proudly tells everyone she’s just like all her friends now because her doctor has prescribed her an asthma inhaler.

April 3, 2009

Another whine alert. Nothing that isn’t my own fault. I’m just feeling the pressure today for some reason. I’ll get over it.

I’ve come to the conclusion that my ability to write this year has been and will continue to be impacted by multiple things and influences.

The economy and our personal finances are on the very top of the pile. Yeah, there’s some depression there but it’s April. I’m always depressed a little in April.

WS’ lack of enthusiasm toward much of anything, particularly toward his and my writing both takes second place. He never has time, it would seem, to write, never has time to read anything I write, never has time to talk about or help me find answers I need about writing. Plus he’s felt like more than just a little of an outsider when it comes to talking about writing with anyone because every single time he thinks he’s got a writing idea, something big and bad happens at his job that takes one hundred and fifty percent of his wits to keep on top of.

Everything that happens to affect his job negatively affects our home life negatively. WS’ got a huge negative personality, always has. Of my own choice, I’ve spent twenty years playing cheerleader to counterbalance that personality but it hasn’t changed a thing.

Unfortunately, little good at his job had happened in the past two years other than he still has one. But with veiled threats of lay offs and building closures coming every three weeks, it’s gotten a lot more difficult to keep faking the happy camper faces. Everyone’s going through it, not just us, so we can’t cry foul. Times are just very, very hard right now. Daily, I put pressure on myself to come up with and to write fictional stories about these tough times, but the pressure only adds to the problem. This doesn’t improve my motivation to write.

Lastly, although technically tied in somewhat with the number one reason I’ve felt creatively blocked is that I’ve signed up to do too much this year. I had no business going to any out-of-town writing conventions. They took time and lots of energy. I see that now but after the fact, I wouldn’t change those experiences for anything. I doubt I will attend too many more in the future.

This year, I wanted to read more, having little time to read much of anything last year. Boy, did I ever step in it this year, having signed up to help judge an annual area book award. I’ve constantly got assigned books to read now.

I’m also a member of two local, professional writing critique groups, groups I continue to want to be a part of. Can’t critique what I don’t read and not offering critiques aren’t an option. New stories and novels are submitted every three weeks and these take top reading priority. Lately, everyone seems to be going through a huge productive streak. Me, I can barely keep up with the increasing mountain of reading let alone getting any personal writing in. This has prevented me from reading stuff I want to read, stuff I need to read to improve my writing (not that I don’t learn from reading other people’s stuff – it’s not the same), stuff that’s stacked and collecting dust on my own shelves. Can’t breath, drowning in words, glug, glug, glug.

I’ve got a writing event coming up this fall, the first of its kind that I’ve ever dealt with. I need to create words to get information out to a lot of people I don’t know. LOTS more words will be submitted back to me for that event, words I’ll have just a month to read, comprehend, sort, and assign, hopefully correctly, elsewhere. I guess I had better get my shit together long before then, huh? Do I get to come up for air anytime before December? Oh wait. The year will be over by then. A little late to get a year’s worth of personal writing in. Damn. Just damn. All are lessons to learn for next year.

Just feeling a little overwhelmed and pathetic at the moment. This is not my usual mode of operation. Don’t worry. It’ll pass.

April 4, 2009

It was a glorious day today. Okay, in reality, it took until after 3 p.m. before it was truly glorious. Late into the morning, the roofs in the neighborhood were white with thick frost. Outside, it was colder than a witch’s…well, you know, on the left side, over her cold, dead heart.

We took our time getting up even though it was earlier than I thought we’d be getting up. Some days, the brain fires up long before the body does and you can only hope both will come to a mutual agreement before the day is through. We had coffee on the front porch and talked while the sun, yes, we had bright sunshine today, warmed us. Then we got to work.

Since both The Renters and The Dimmers seemed to be out of town for the weekend, we took full advantage of the opportunity to trim our property line trees. We didn’t have to worry about branches dropping down on anyone’s vehicles. WS did a quick pass with the push mower on the shaggy grass and we moved on to the backyard.

We lopped off more branches than I thought we would, a whole lot more, but we succeeded in opening up some space along the back rock wall, space that was sorely missed by both myself and the visiting birds. We’ve got a couple of evergreens that have nearly hidden the main nine-foot tall bird feeder. We’re hoping that by opening up that area with the removal of several key branches that birds will rediscover the seed mixture that’s always waiting up there.

That’s not to say we want every bird in the county to visit. We buy our bird seed in bulk, once every 6-8 months, and we get a good, fair price for the weed-free stuff. The last time we bought seed, we bought enough to last us through mid-summer easily, longer if we’re careful to not put out too much at any given time which is key right now because I can’t see much in the way of future seed purchases. You know, that whole cutting out the fat in the budget thing.

After lopping branches, we raked and swept walkways, then made broiled tomato and cheese slices with olive oil for lunch with leftover pizza (Delicious!) courtesy of Kami from Jestablog who visited last evening for a writer’s group meeting.

Time then for a short walk around the neighborhood to see whose houses looked ready for spring and whose didn’t. Back for another spell of sitting and talking outside while sucking up even more sunshine. It’s been so long since we were both able to sit outside, I had forgotten exactly how nice that is.

The really cool thing is tomorrow is supposed to be even better with the added bonus of not having to do any yard work whatsoever. Just sit and enjoy.

April 6, 2009

I fired my muse today. He was a wily one, pulling himself up and out of a permanently flattened, ass-shaped couch cushion and away from a predictable Dr. Phil episode. He came at me with a contract and all, saying I couldn’t fire him because I still owed him a case and a half of pork rinds and some 241 viewing hours of American Logger.

Leroy was good for one story. He promised more, a trilogy, but could only cough up half-baked ideas with zero plots and even less in the way of endings. He was all about the characters, and there’s nothing wrong with that in my opinion, until they all started sounding the same.

He stuck out his tongue and waved me away. “You’re kidding,” he said and went for the refrigerator looking for gawd-only-knows-what; there isn’t anything in there but healthy food. I told him to get out before I physically threw him out. He tilted his head back and squeezed the contents of a mustard bottle into it. Then he wiped his mouth with a stained, red bandana and vowed I hadn’t seen the last of him. I’m not afraid.

Another muse will come along sooner or later, perhaps one who doesn’t mind gardening or dance music or Tuscan-style home cooking with an occasional glass of fine red wine. It’ll be a breath of fresh air from the old one that often insisted that I make midnight runs to Walmart to pick up a sixer or three of malt liquor coolers and Little Debbies.

April 9, 2009

That was a very nice few days in which I was able to nearly complete everything I’d ever want to finish outside in our yard, both front and back. I spent a lot of time sitting in the sun reading. I took my car out for a short spin. I made friends with a revisiting robin, or so I thought until, in flight, it aimed its poop at our sliding glass door and nailed it square. I almost gained the respect of a skitter-ish new orange and white male cat by not chasing after it but talking softly and not making any fast moves. I’ve seen him twice in the past few days. He’ll be back again and will get used to seeing me, I’m certain.

Saw a hummingbird take a bath in the fountain of which I have cleaned, twice, and found two frogs, both very quiet but very much alive. WS put up the patio table umbrella and I put out the chair pillows, a wind chime, and stuck flowers in the window boxes. Then I sat out there and took in the sights of blooming daffodils and early rhododendrons and the borrowed landscape of all the neighbors flowering plum trees.

We’re about as ready for more warm weather as we can be. A rainy spell is coming up though, not that we don’t need it after five dry and sunny days. Having all the patio furniture set up out there this early in April sure seems wrong but it gives my soul a warm hug to know all that work is done already.

April 15, 2009

Apparently, I’ve been off by one day for half a week now and didn’t know it. Good thing we did our taxes back in January, huh?

Several odd things have happened around here over the past couple of days, things that have my already heightened awareness even more on alert. Yes, I’m a semi-paranoid sort with damned good, life-long learned reason to be. No excuses, just reasons.

1. Around 6:30 a.m. Monday morning, someone knocked very loudly on our back sliding glass door. No one has ever done this before. This means someone had to have walked through Cap’t Dan’s unfenced backyard, climbed over our relatively short boulder wall dividing our properties, and pushed through the screen of trees to get here.

WS slept through it. I didn’t get up to see what was going on or to peek out a window. With our blinds, there’s no sneaky peeking; it being obvious that either you are looking or not. Our home alarm was armed as usual and that door is well barricaded. After a few minutes, whoever it was making the racket went elsewhere. I lay awake for a while longer listening for unusual sounds and smelling the air for smoke in case someone’s house was on fire. That’s the only reason I can honestly think of that someone would pound on our back door.

An hour and a half later, WS woke me up to tell me there was a helicopter circling less than a mile east of us. We couldn’t find anything on the news about it via TV or online but later I found a report that said an assault victim had called 911 that morning and an hour long manhunt had found the responsible party. Hmm, could have been related. Probably not but why take the chance? Yeah, you could say I don’t trust people.

2. Monday afternoon, our unincorporated area was switched from the small bin recycling program to a large bin on wheels plan. A noisy truck drove slowly through the neighborhood dropping off a big tall recycling bin at everyone’s house…except they skipped every fifth house (which is basically every house with a driveway that butts up against a next door neighbor’s driveway).

I picked up on the pattern quickly as I watched the truck deliver the bins down and across the street first. Because our driveway and The Dimmers driveway are so close together, I figured only one of us would get a bin and I wasn’t proven wrong.

In a steady downpour of hail and as soon as the truck dumped the bin, I was out there wheeling it in behind our fence. The Dimmers did not get a recycling bin and even though I knew Mr. Dimmer was home at the time, he probably never noticed one way or the other. It’s more than just a clever name.

3. Tuesday night, at 9:30 p.m. to be exact, I was downstairs and heard our doorbell ring. Not only is this odd because of the time but quite simply, no one comes to our house regardless of the time. Frankly, our neighbors are not the ‘Can I borrow a cup of sugar?’ kind of people. None of them are.

Additionally, we haven’t turned our front porch lights on since last fall (cutting back on electric use) and even though the houses in this development are close together and everyone else burns their lights all night long, it can still get dark at our front door.

No way in hell was I going to open our dark door at that time of night.

Two well-spaced apart rings later and a healthy, loud jiggle of the glass door handle, whoever it was this time went away. Five minutes later, I crept back upstairs to tell WS, who again, wasn’t aware of anything amiss. He came downstairs, opened the door and reported back that he didn’t see a thing. Well, no, ya think? I seriously doubt someone would stand there for five-to-ten minutes waiting for someone else in the house to hear the doorbell over the TV and to come open the door.

The part that pissed me off about this incident is that I being downstairs, had no way of getting a hold of WS who was upstairs in our back bedroom behind closed doors with the TV on. I had to outwait whoever was at our door and then after sneaking back upstairs in my own house, if WS should decide to check on things, no one would be there.

Probably should have had an intercom installed long ago, probably shouldn’t have had a house built with the staircase located right next to the front door windows. Probably, probably, probably. The only true probably I feel good about is that whatever either ‘visitation’ was, I probably didn’t put myself in a potentially bad situation. In my mind, there ain’t nothing wrong with that.

April 16, 2009

Over the weekend, I was unofficially invited to write and submit a story for an upcoming anthology of short stories. Today, the official invite went out to nearly all writers asked. I didn’t make the short list but I’m going to write the story anyway. For short story writers, it’s all about creating inventory.

Early this week, WS and I received emails from our old boss saying most of the rest of the stock payout money The Big Ass Corporation owed the old company’s employees was being freed up. This is wonderful timing, but naturally, comes when taxes for such things is high. Looks like out of some four thousand plus owed us from 2005, we’ll be lucky to see eight hundred after taxes.

I’m not complaining. I’d rather pay the tax now rather than owe it later.

MsNoManagementSkills has emailed everyone on her list asking that anyone who knows of the final stock payout not discuss the matter with her husband, DorkMaster. Apparently, she doesn’t want him to know she’s getting money. He might make her go out and get a job or something, anything to keep her from doing lunch five days a week with her girlfriends (every invite email of which I’ve received for whatever reason).

Tuesday, I received a notice in the mail saying I have to have my car emissions tested again. Didn’t I just do this two years ago? I’ve put less than fifty miles on the thing since then. Then again, maybe they’ll get the odometer reading right this time around (It’s seventeen thousand miles, not a hundred and seventeen thousand miles).

Today, I got up and discovered our fountain out back had shut itself off sometime overnight. Good for cutting electric use. Bad for the water bill. Another four hundred plus gallons for refilling, please. I dread what that bill is going to come in at.

Finally, we were promised five days of sunny weather this week. We got one. But after rain tomorrow, we’re supposed to reach 80 F. Sunday and Monday. Yikes! An air conditioned electric bill is in our future. I’m trying not to stress over it, knowing we can’t change anything. WS with his MS must be kept cool or suffer horrible exacerbations as a result. Still, we’re going to raise the thermostat one more degree from 74 to 75 and see how he’s able to handle it. I predict this summer I’ll be lying on our bare laminate flooring a lot, down low where the air is cooler and taking sponge baths during the day. It works!

April 17, 2009

In case you’ve been living under a rock somewhere, or are MsNoManagementSkills who believes all the money in the world belongs to her alone to spend, spend, spend, you know the world’s economy isn’t doing so hot. But instead of whining and complaining about it, what better time than now to seek out and partake in some good ol’ comfort food?

Today’s question: What kind of comfort food do you think B has enjoyed more than once this week?

1. Grilled Cheese Sandwiches.
2. Clam Chowder.
3. Lentil Soup.
4. Meow Mix.
5. 98% Unsweetened Cocoa Nibs (which some would argue taste like Meow Mix).
6. Homemade Lasagna.
7. White Rice.
8. Mac & Cheese.
9. That partially swollen can of Sockeye Salmon found in the back of the pantry.
10. Pez.
11. Something else that you’ll leave a comment about.

April 21, 2009

The real answer to last week’s question; What kind of comfort food do you think B has enjoyed more than once this week, was: White rice. Non-nutritional, uninspiring, anti-South Beach diet but gut-filling plain Minute Rice. I raided one of our Emergency Kit boxes. When we can afford the extra food again, I’ll replace it with nutritious rice this time. No more Minute rice for us.

The weather here has been absolutely beautiful the past couple of days. We eked out a few extra dollars from the grocery budget so I could buy two small tomato plants and a little tray of petunias. And now I’ll shut up about wanting those. WS is, no doubt, thrilled.

So, this morning, I was out back watering in those planted tomatoes and I happened to notice the air had that cool, yellow-light tinge to it.

“Cool!” I said aloud and then quieter, just to myself, “Just like artists describe the light in Paris, I’ll bet!”

And as I watered I noticed the trickle of water running at my feet was also tinged yellow, a strong yellow actually that quickly looked as if I were standing in urine. Holy crap, it’s pollen!

The patio table, just cleaned yesterday, was so thick with yellow pollen you couldn’t tell it had a glass top. Parts of our white house siding has a caked, yellow tint. The ‘red’ pillows on the ‘brown’ patio chairs were more orange than red as are all the ‘red’ tulips.

I’m not complaining. After all, I’m the one who just had to plant all these birch and maple trees, all which are flowering. I’ll own up to the responsibility.

I’d just watched our local morning news and weather programs (all of them) and the rain we were promised tomorrow through the weekend isn’t going to happen for another seven days or so. Seven more days of pollen drift, or perhaps at this rate, drifts of pollen. So I did what I told myself I wouldn’t do much of this year: I hosed off the back cement patio and walkways, and boy, the runoff was every bit as bright yellow as the result of taking a strong dose of Vitamin C.

That yellow-light tinge is mostly gone, nearer the ground as makes sense. I didn’t, nor would I spray the trees and undoubtedly, the whole place will look the same as early this morning tomorrow morning and the morning after that and so on and so on until we get a cleansing rain. (HA! I just noticed a FedEx truck barreling down our street and what do you suppose was billowing up behind it? Thick yellow clouds of pollen.)

It’s an allergy sufferer’s nightmare out there! Except maybe not quite so much in our back yard…but only for the next half hour.

April 22, 2009

I need to quickly come to terms with the fact that I will never get a straight answer out of WS again for the rest of his life. He has allowed his obsessive/additive behavior toward work to rule every aspect of his life, pushing out anything and everything else. I am now part of that later group.

I knew that was the case over a decade ago.

Moreover, this man taught me multi-tasking, yet he can no longer do that himself, or at least, when it comes to our relationship. His brain is always elsewhere. He is always elsewhere. I used to have to stop and ask what he was talking about; he would change gears so rapidly in conversation. Now he says he can’t keep up with me.

The problem is, HE STILL CHANGES GEARS IN CONVERSATION, yet he gets mad at me for doing the same thing.

The rules have changed. I realize I am no longer important, certainly not to the degree of which I thought I was. And if that degree is no longer met, I don’t need to bust my ass to make sure his life is comfortable. He needs to carve out time in his own head to do that on his own, time he once, long, long ago, used for me.

Of course, he continues to say it’s his job. He doesn’t want to own up to the responsible hard work it takes to maintain both a job and a relationship. He knows I’ll just sit back and wait for him to return, for his job to be over with. Except I know it never will be. This is where his obsessive/additive behavior comes in, and like any addict, he will deny he’s doing it and will defend reasons to keep doing it ABOVE ALL OTHERS, including at the expense of a relationship and marriage.

Our marriage is a sham anyway.

Now, moving forward, I could do like millions of other women do and sit back and enjoy the benefits of having a nice roof over my head, tuning out talk of work, the shallow, almost guilt/obligatory small talk of the cats or whatever he thinks I’m only capable of bantering on and on about. To keep luxuries like my car, this computer, nice clothes, a tiny amount of money in the bank, the ability to not have to work. Or I could stir up the pot, try to make it better in my eyes with he will not, for whatever reason, choose not to see or understand and cause more grief and frustration.

My god, Dan was right. He does have issues. And I’m the idiot who stayed by his side anyway. Now I’ve got issues too.

So, he can’t keep things straight, he doesn’t want to work hard in order to listen to what I say whether it be babbling crap or direct instructions for simple tasks, I can no longer talk to him while he’s driving (which thankfully isn’t often when I’m in the car – too scary), nor while he’s doing anything because he can no longer talk and do anything at the same time, nor can I bring up his obsessive/compulsive/addictive behavior around work and the Internet. We can’t travel anywhere together because of his bladder (even when he takes his medication) and all the farting, farting, farting. I’m sick to death of it already. I feel like I’m living in a nursing home.

My choice is either to figure out how to get out of this marriage and yet again, start all the fuck over with my life with nothing, no income, no career now that I’m nearly 53 years old, or just shut up about it and try very, very, extra hard to live my own life without worrying constantly about him regardless if I feel it’s my job.

Let’s see. This is just about the time when the shit hits the fan and he has a MS exacerbation requiring me to drive him all over the planet and wait on him hand and foot. When the fuck do I ever get to have someone do that for me without having to expel a 20-pound piece of tissue? Huh? Jesus, this life sucks.

April 23, 2009

In the neighborhood, anyone with an outside cat might have upcoming problems if The Renters’ seven year old kid has anything to say about it. The kid is going around telling all the other kids he’ll kill any cat he sees, that in fact, he can hit and kill a cat with the baseball he often carries with him, because he hates cats so much.

Nice talk coming from a seven year old. For all the times I miss him, I am thankful Limpy, The Howler Monkey’s ignored (and deceased) cat isn’t still around.

I truly believe kids repeat what they hear from their parents. Why? Because I’ve witnessed the behavior first hand for decades that’s why. It now becomes all too clear as to why The Renters don’t have pets. Their oldest kid is a pathological liar and now the youngest may be an animal abuser/killer (first step toward serial murderer?). The parents still refuse to get involved in their kids’ lives. They’d rather buy them electronic things and shoo them out the door. Out of sight, out of mind. We can only hope the middle child, a girl, doesn’t reveal some awful trait of her own.

And in other possible disturbing news, we received a flyer that shows a picture of our new insurance agent who took over for our old retiring agent, and he looks just like Mr. Renter!

We’ve been trying to find a time to personally meet with the guy to go over our coverage but time is something we haven’t had much extra of lately. Sooner or later we’ll get to it but I’ve already announced that I’m not going until we find out with one hundred and ten percent certainty that he isn’t Mr. Renter.

Oh, the tragedy that would be for all parties involved.

April 24, 2009

An all-too brief bit of rain this morning has done little to wash down all the pollen. I’m not concerned though I did have to hose down the area around our front door last evening. The welcome mat had turned from black to orange.

Our temperatures over the next few days have also dropped almost thirty degrees (Fahrenheit) since Monday and we’ve been given light frost warnings through the upcoming weekend. Yesterday, I went out and covered those tomato plants and petunias. They’re fine this morning and I’ll re-cover and uncover every day until next Tuesday when the night temps should rise a bit again. Jeesh, I hope this won’t be another green tomato summer.

Now, you can all do me a huge favor if you’re up to it. Next year, when I start whining about wanting tomato plants, please, please, please remind me of all past years when I had to protect them from late spring frost. Tell me to wait until May 1st. Tell me it’ll be less stressful. And then tell me to shut up about it already. In return, please accept these serious thanks in advance!

http://www.hallmark.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ecard|10001|10051|664858|147551;-102001;11443;-102034;183075|ecard|P2R4SO|ecards?cardType=premium&template=n&categoryId=183075

Earlier this month, WS and I thinned out the tree branches surrounding (and covering) the tall, main bird feeder and this week, we feel we’re being rewarded for it. We have bright yellow Goldfinches once again. After last year’s disappointing turn out, we’ve counted a dozen or more in the feeder and hanging thistle sock every day. Now, if we could just get Evening Grobeaks, Northern Flickers, and the occasional lapis bunting back, I’d find it hard not to want to spend every waking moment out back with the camera. Unfortunately, I think those birds have flown on to denser treed areas while people around us find more reasons to chop down the meager remains of what was once acres of nearby forest. Things to remember for the next residence, should there be one.

I’m expecting this to be a low key weekend. WS needs it (when doesn’t he?) and I could stand to get some reading done. There’s a car club event going on just a couple of miles from here at one of the Competition Boys’ homes, nothing I’d want to take my car to (not that kind of event anyway). But I had considered briefly showing up just to reconnect with people I haven’t seen since January. That said, good old Drill Sergeant Dave will be there and I used to enjoy his company from time to time. But now, he’s embraced religion for all it’s worth since Obama was elected and while I’m happy for him, I don’t at all appreciate the countless right-wing religious spam email he’s sending out every week telling everyone why allowing a black, Democratic man with Hussein as a middle name is leading us all down the path to Muslimism. Where do people get this stuff? If for the sole purpose of stirring up the hatred pot, shouldn’t these people be held accountable for spreading crap like this? And when did Drill Sergeant Dave become a racist? Color me disappointed.

April 27, 2009

Just when I think I’m finished with laundry, a cat reminds me otherwise.

Every day, our barfy cat Zooot reminds me that any slight change in the routine of her life has upset her. Usually all over one of the thick towels we use to cover the orthopedic pet bed, sometimes on one of the soft, sheared wool-like pads lining the open door pet cages, more often than not, also in piles on the laminated floor. Blech.

During obvious season changes, cold to warm, warm to hot, hot to warm and back again from warm to cold, she works overtime to demonstrate her dislike of any change to routine. Blech, blech. Also affecting her routine is that dastardly sunset which comes later and later in spring and back again going into autumn. How dare life be disrupted every day? Blech, blech blech.

Dear Zooot:

I understand you are a creature of habit and prefer steadfast routine. I understand you are orange and have been very spoiled since being hand-raised from the time you were a mere eighteen hours old. We realize you are not prone to accepting change especially via advice of such from your parents. But please consider giving our washing machine a break more than ever now that it may be nearing it’s final fill, shake, and shimmy.

Love,
Mom & Dad.

April 28, 2009

Nothing but heavy drizzle outside today and tomorrow. Pollen is being washed away. Sheets of yellow water are running down our driveway and filling the gutters. Good. My eyes can’t take much more of the stuff this year.

An hour east of us it’s snowing but that’s normal. Mount Hood lies that way. Two and half hours south of us it’s snowing too and that isn’t usual. Our temps here have only risen four degrees (F.) since overnight. Thankfully, it didn’t get all that cold last night. I mostly uncovered the petunias yesterday but left the greenhouse tents over the two tomato plants. Everything still seems to be doing well but I’m kind of antsy to let those tomatoes cut loose. Grocery story tomatoes have little-to-no taste.

Over the weekend, WS and I went to the car club’s tech day event for about two hours. It was cold and uneventful for the most part and typical in that there were too many chiefs and not enough Indians. A couple of the men who were new to the club last year have graduated into the ‘Look at me! I’m a Big Dog!’ clique while the rest of us see all too clearly the degree of which each suffer from Little Man’s Disease (because you know, that’s what everyone thinks whenever one of these sports cars is seen on the road). But sometimes, it really is true.

Naturally, I laugh at all of it because I’ve seen all the Big Dogs in this club drive. Only two could handle their vehicles in case of a true road emergency. The rest can’t drive. They steer, and usually in the wrong direction. Yet that doesn’t stop these steer-ers from publicly pointing out how poorly their wives drive. Most wives won’t even drive their husbands’ sports cars. Scared to death to sit behind the wheel. And this neatly explains why I’m generally ignored by all the wives. Good. All they want to yak about anyway is grand babies.

I expected Drill Sergeant Dave to remind me about Autocross season that begins next month but he didn’t utter a word. I was prepared to tell him to keep walking. Don’t have the money to Autocross, don’t have the money to fix anything that may break while Autocrossing. Besides, I did that last year and proved to myself, WS, and this car club that I’ve still got it from decades past, and that I’m more than capable of knowing what I’m doing. Turns out, I’d be a Big Dog driver too. But they only give me part-credit because I did it in WS’s car and not my own. They still don’t understand that I want to keep my car looking nice and not torn to hell and back like most of theirs are. Misery loves company, I guess.

It strikes me funny that this group of men who bitch 24/7 about women drivers, bitch about me not driving. Good. Nothing like adding a sprinkle of mystification to give them something else to think about, as if that would ever happen.

April 30, 2009

I mentioned counseling to WS last night, not for us but for him. I didn’t want to; I abhor the thought of counseling but I feel as though I’ve been pushed into a corner with his attitude and flip-flopping conversations. I never know what he’s going to change his mind on, what he’s going to get upset at, or how he’s going to react to anything anymore. I can’t keep going on like everything is fine. I just don’t think it’s fair to me or to our relationship. That said, this, if he goes and we can afford it, will be a crushing blow to our relationship. I just don’t believe in counseling. It speaks of mental illness and a weakness in a person. I have a hard enough time with trying not to be weak myself. I can’t be close to someone who’s weak-minded. I don’t have time to deal with that stuff nor do I think I should have to.

Dan was right. WS does have issues. I was stupid in thinking he just needed someone to show him a bigger, better world. All this time wasted on someone who never intended to want to see it or be a part of it. This is every bit as much my fault as it is his. I’m an idiot.

April 30, 2009

A sunny day today for a change. The Goldfinches are back in droves at the feeder, making me have to put up a second thistle sock. The opossum that visits in the evenings along with the raccoons are near-emptying the squirrel nut boxes once a week, making me worry a bit about whether we’ll be able to afford to keep feeding any of them through the summer. We’re cutting back on how much we set out for the wildlife and I am keeping in mind that they are wildlife, not pets and that I don’t have to feed any of them at all.

It’s just that enjoyment we seem to get out of it, of seeing them – from the birds to the raccoons to this area’s first opossum in a decade. This was why we’ve worked so hard this past decade; to bring back wildlife to a very barren, very worn-out, over-grazed and over-trampled 125-year old cow pasture.

Perhaps it is time to start to let go. Perhaps not.

May 2, 2009

I’m not a big fan of lazy, unproductive weekends. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy them every once in a while, particularly after spending a few slaving upon some project such as painting, building, or whipping the yard into shape.

It’s the “we don’t have money or the gumption to do anything” kind of weekend I’m not fond of, yet that’s exactly where I find myself today.

But happy official boating season to all you with boats regardless. And to you horse race fans, please drink your mint julep responsibly.

May 4, 2009

WS did grocery shopping alone this weekend because I we didn’t think it’d be a good idea to potentially expose both of us to WalMart’s version of swine flu. You know, the kind that everyone there will have and will be ever-so-happy to share. Considering we’ve only shopped there five times and I’ve gotten sick afterward twice, I think it was a good idea.

He said he only saw one person coughing uncontrollably, spraying the bakery goods shelves and the usual hoard of bakery-buying patrons with micro droplets of who knows what and that several shoppers throughout the store were wearing surgical masks. Scary.

Yet every morning since, I’ve asked if either he woke with a sore throat or had the urge to oink loudly or wallow in mud and he continues to answer with no. I guess we’re still physically healthy for the time being. Go us.

Lay off round number 18 coming this week for WS along with major company restructuring number 9. In reporting good news for a change, we sent an extra hundred dollars to the principal on WS’ car loan. Only 18 more of those to make and we’ll be free and clear of car payments…unless the coddled washing machine goes first. Then it might take a little longer.

May 5, 2009

Yesterday, I brought my first bird back to life. I don’t expect it to happen again anytime soon. I don’t have that much luck playing god.

A couple of weeks ago, I gave up a couple of grocery bucks and bought our pets a bird, a toy bird, not a real one. This toy bird has some kind of mechanism in it that makes it coo and chirp when you rub it just right. I figured it would be a fun treat for the cats as opposed to all their ancient cat toys that initially got drooled over and now, crusty and dusty, go ignored.

The youngest boys, Seth and Maxx liked the furry toy well enough and contrary to what we originally believed, the chirping didn’t drive us insane, even at night. After a week, I thought I’d bring it upstairs for the other, older cats to investigate.

The Queen is deaf so I rubbed a little catnip on it so she’d take to it right away, which she did for a brief time. But she’s a fickle Queen and she finds picking fights with Maxx more up her alley.

I was afraid Zooot would barf on the little thing and ruin it right off the bat but she chose to ignore it too. She’s been an indoor pet all her life and never really understood the appeal of birds. Just pet her and let her scratch the hell out of your lap and she’s happy.

Cameron is a whole ‘nother animal though. Being as he’s a rescued feral cat, I figured he’d know everything there is to know about a bird which is to say catching and eating are numbers one and two on the list and anything else is irrelevant.

But he was frightened of the toy, particularly when one of the others made it chirp. One of them would pick it up and it would chirp. Another would cradle it in their paws and it would coo softly. Each time, Cameron would duck and sling away and burrow under one of the cat beds. I wondered if he just needed time alone with it and so I did what I said I wouldn’t do: I left it overnight in their bedroom. Just before we went to bed and turned off the lights, I heard the chirping sound coming from the cat room. I fell asleep smiling at the thought that he had figured out what it was for.

Oh, he figured it out all right.

In the morning, at breakfast, WS found the toy bird…sunken at the bottom of the cats’ water bowl. I just know Cameron did it. A mother knows her kids, er, pets. No way could that thing have been put there by anyone else.

WS fished it out and changed the water while I dried the soaked toy the best I could. I gave Cameron a big lecture about how he wasn’t that different from spoiled kids nowadays who didn’t appreciate gifts bought with hard earned money and he gave me a look as if to say, “If it was that hard to come up with the money, why didn’t you spent it on something more important, like food?”

Kids. What do they know?

So, imagine my surprise when halfway through rubbing the toy dry, it started chirping again; a little more high pitched than before its unplanned bath but steady and clear and definitely bird-like nonetheless.

After two days of air-drying, its sound is back to normal. Even smells better if you ask me. And I’m keeping an eye on it now, letting Seth and Maxx play with it until they lose interest before putting it away for later. Yeah, I know. It wasn’t like I brought a real bird back to life but it’s close enough for some of us here.

May 7, 2009

It’s not news that I wasn’t the one who wanted to buy a house. When my mother died back in 1986, full executive power for her estate fell squarely in my lap. Unbeknownst to me, she had casually mentioned to the rest of my family that because I was the most level-headed, I would be the one handling affairs upon her passing. She had no idea that within the year, she’d be gone. She had never said a word to me about any of it. Then again, she never told me she thought I was the most level-headed either. I just remember all the years she told me I was her biggest mistake

When it came down to paying off all her bills, I was surprised to see she owed less than twelve hundred dollars on her home, the house we all grew up in. The monthly mortgage payment was forty-seven dollars. She made sixty thousand a year which was big bucks back in the mid-eighties for a single woman with five kids. Unfortunately, most of that salary was eaten up by seventeen years of my father’s hospitalization. We kids never saw as much as a dime and learned to live with hunger.

Still I couldn’t help but wonder why she just didn’t pay off the mortgage and have one less thing hanging around her neck. Some people said it was the tax write off, something I still don’t understand to this very day and looking back over her tax statements, I don’t see that she ever really got any tax benefit from a $47 dollar a month mortgage payment. Then again, the IRS refused to acknowledge her as the head of the household, something she was from the very start of her marriage in 1956 because back when he was able to work, my hot-headed father couldn’t hold down a job. Back then, from what I was told, women weren’t supposed to be breadwinners or filing taxes or expecting breaks from paying for a house on their own. This could all be just more lies I’ve been told. There’s been so many over the years from my family, it’s hard to sort out what might have been what and I’ve found it’s best to not try to make sense of any of it to keep from giving myself a migraine and high blood pressure.

But then she suddenly died and never got to enjoy owning her own home, regardless of how cockroach infested and run down it was. She was so close to owning what’s been called the American Dream. Sad.

This, in my mind, solidified my stance on homeownership. Unless someone can pay off their home within ten or fifteen years, it’s just a big, heavy millstone hanging around one’s neck. That was how I felt then, that is how I feel now, and I think I’m right in believing lots of other people in today’s current world market are thinking the same thing. But I couldn’t have known this back then.

WS made the decision to buy a house ten years ago after we spent years of renting one crappy place after another. We fought like the Hatfields and McCoys over that decision; he convinced we should, me certain we shouldn’t. But in the end and after a good five years living under this roof, I came to accept this place, dare I say perhaps even love this place.

Now I’m having my doubts again because now, our supposed 30-year roof is losing shingles. Could wildly expensive water damage be right around the corner?

We’ve had a couple of high wind days around here. Usually, we hear lots of flapping from the shingles on the roof. For years actually, but to date, we’ve been lucky and haven’t lost a single shingle which is pretty remarkable given that nearly every house in our development has had shingles missing for years.

But, in this, the ten year anniversary year of when this place was built, and this very week marking the exact ten year anniversary of when the roof went up and shingles nailed down, I’m certain this is the reason why the shingles are now flying off. Irrational? Perhaps. Is a $475 repair bill irrational? Who knows? This is one of the many reasons why I never wanted a house.

Am I still whining? Oh dear.

We’ve lost a couple of shingles along the top ridge line and the whole string is loose and flapping in the continued breeze. We saved what blew down into the yard and consulted the Better Business Bureau for a local roofing contractor. Trust me, if I could get up there myself, this would have been fixed yesterday. But I can’t get up there. We don’t have a tall enough ladder (wouldn’t have anywhere to store that tall of a ladder afterward) and the pitch of the roof is too steep. We’ve called around, had a reputable guy come out, check the whole roof out, and give us his bid. We’re just going to have to eat the cost.

I wonder how shingles sprinkled with popcorn salt taste.

May 8, 2009

It’s going on the second week of May and we should be outside enjoying all the flowering things before they stop flowering but it’s still cold, windy, and rainy. Frankly, it still feels like winter and if it weren’t for the windows, or my cleaning of the windows last week specifically, I’d have no reason to believe it was anything but still winter outside.

The daffodils are already done for the year as are most of the tulips. Just didn’t get to enjoy them much up close. Perhaps I should have cut down the whole bunch and brought them indoors for a week? I already miss them! The azaleas have started blooming now, including my favorite Exbury types (although I thought it was a tad bit early for these to start, it was just my poor sense of season). We’ve got perhaps, maybe, possibly two days of dry weather this coming weekend and then it’s back to a week of rain.

Now I loves me some rain. Loves me lots and lots of rain but usually during the winter months or even better, when it’s particularly hot and dry. I know I can’t run the world as I’d like it to be run and I really don’t mean to complain, especially about cooler, rainy weather. But you know me when it comes down to not whining: I suck at it.

It’s just that I’ve worked hard over the past ten years or so to get to a point of liking spring because it was never my favorite season; actually enjoying it because of all the colorful flowers that can easily be grown here in a timed succession from February through summer. Yeah, I’m a control freak too. Since summer is the least favorite season for both WS and I, is it any wonder why most of our flowering displays occur in spring?

Sounds like I just need to shut up and get a good waterproof jacket. July and one hundred degree weather will be here soon enough.

May 9, 2009

A couple of weeks ago, our dying neighbor was rushed to the hospital with a breathing problem. Not by ambulance or anything but by her husband who is in the military and once, had a habit of only doing things on his own schedule. He’s almost a completely changed man, for the most part the better since all his wife’s various forms of cancer cropped up just four years ago. I think neighbors have noticed his change. He still keeps to himself but will offer an occasional ‘hello’ here and there.

Unfortunately, their kids, all teenagers now are still just as short, snappish, and rude as ever. The good thing is, they protect their mother. The bad thing is, they protect their mother. There’s no getting through them to find out if the family needs anything so everyone here in the ‘hood is shut out from offering help or support.

She came home from the hospital yesterday and it might well be for the last time from what I could see and overheard. She has a 24/7 care nurse now, her family no longer able to do everything she needs done to get through another day without complications. Husband has to go to work at the base having used up all his time off plus some, oldest teen has work and a summer wedding to plan for. Middle and youngest have school and friends. These are all teens and as all teens are, they have their own lives regardless of a dying parent existing in a hospital-style bed set up in the downstairs living room surrounded by tanks of oxygen and various medical machines that might well all go ‘ping!’

He’s cleaned out their backyard pond and has been running the waterfall for her. She begged him to landscape the backyard for nine years but he wouldn’t hear of it. Last year, enough money was raised through some organization so she could get the work done. Somehow, he finagled a boat out of it too. Again, none of us neighbors were let in on the fund raising until afterward.

May 11, 2009

This could be WS’ last roundup.

WS will be doing the layoff boogie in double-time over the next two weeks. This morning, in layoff rounds number 18 and 19, all his immediate supervisors and managers, save one, were laid off. All of them. The guy now in charge for the local plant is from another state and is bringing in more of his clique out-of-staters to replace everyone let go. Talk has it this guy planned to start laying off at the top and is working his way down to the grunts. WS is an in between manager and grunt.

Anyway, WS will know if he’ll survive this next round, number 20 for anyone other than me keeping track, before the end of the month. If he’s out, he’ll have one month to find something else within the company, either here or at another location around the U.S. The closest location within the company is southern Oregon, then Idaho, northern Colorado, and the wildly expensive Bay area. No, the company no longer helps pay for moving costs. They basically have a “don’t let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya” mindset. Nearly every place thinks that way anymore I think.

I’m wondering if we really ought to be fixing our roof right now. And when did it become standard business practice to keep employees under these high levels of stress 24/7, not for getting product out to customers on time but for keeping one’s job?

May 12, 2009

In our neighborhood, several families have assigned their kids the job of bringing in the family trash cans when they get home from school. I don’t know of a single parent that enforces the job. Cans and bins are allowed to drift, roll, and blow all over the street, usually some 24 hours after city garbage pickup.

You might imagine that I’m pretty tired of hearing parents say they are teaching their kids a lesson by refusing to bring in the trash cans themselves. I can’t help but wonder what lesson that would be, exactly, seeing as how the cans, bins, and more than likely trash from within said cans and bins are, nine times out of tine, residing in the middle of our front yard for much of that time. Would it be the lesson that it’s clear that bringing in your own trash cans isn’t important and that you don’t care that it’s ruining someone else’s landscaping? If it’s not important to you, why should your kids think it’s important enough to do themselves?

Because how I see it, you’ll care just as much if I happen to toss your crap back out of my yard and onto the windshield of your SUV. Thanks for snapping apart half a flowering azalea bush with your constantly ignored yard debris bin.

May 13, 2009

We tried negotiating with roofing contractors for a lower repair price but it would appear we’ve already been given the lowest cost. All this tells me is that everyone’s okay with where high costs currently sit. Yet I realize repair costs will only go up the longer we drag our feet in getting the missing shingles replaced. I think the roofing companies know this too so what else is left to do but make a decision and get a signed contract with a small deposit included as requested in the mail.

Done. Jeesh, I hate being a homeowner.

Our zillow.com home estimate dropped another thousand in the past two days. At this rate, it’ll be worth less than when it was built ten years ago this coming July. In fact, zillow shows the house next door where The Renters live as actually higher in value for the first time ever than our place.

All this tells me is that I ought not to get too wrapped up in what zillow.com says. Only what the county says matters, for taxing purposes, don’t you know, even if you and the real estate market believe its worth a lot less. A person could be driven half-mad by all this economic stress.

Too late. It makes me want to closet myself up, go hermit myself, and shut out the world by way of reading and doing mindless things like yard work, eating, and playing computer games until everything blows over. But I won’t do myself any favors by doing that. Okay, maybe the reading isn’t bad. Depends on what I’m reading, doesn’t it? Good stuff I can assure you. Classics, history, fiction and nonfiction alike. Just no more financial crap. I’ve already read it all and it’s all horribly outdated now anyway thanks to the collapse of, well, everything. Advice heavily recommended just four months ago is seen as pure folly today and anything advised a year or more ago? Well, as the line goes: A fool and his money are soon parted.

Enough whining. Here’s a mindless observation: For the past three days, we’ve had a small flock of five male Evening Grosbeaks visiting our bird feeder. We haven’t seen this kind of bird in about four years. Maybe thinning tree branches out around the feeder was a much better idea than we originally thought. If so, go us.

May 14, 2009

Eight years. That’s how long Cap’t Dan’s wife said she’s had to be on various medications before she felt comfortable enough to go out into her own backyard. And within five minutes, I had squirted her with our garden hose. This is so typically me!

It wasn’t intentional. No really, honest. Stop laughing.

You see, I was out back getting our small backyard into shape for the upcoming dry and very warm weekend, hosing out our algae-prone fountain when I saw one of the roaming neighborhood cats trotting down the far back walkway toward our bird feeders. I called out to the kitty who stopped briefly before weaving his way into the thick bushes along the back boulder wall. Visually, I lost track of him but saw the bushes moving close to the feeder. I had the hose in my hand, its nozzle set on jet, and I thought I’d just lightly squirt the bushes just in case the cat thought a nice, feathery meal was soon to be served.

The bushes stopped moving all right and up popped Cap’t Dan’s wife’s wet head instead. Oops! Apparently, she was weeding her side of the boulder wall, a first ever for her.

“Sorry!” I called out. “Sorry about that. I didn’t see you there!” To be honest, my first thought was that I had hosed down a homeless woman who had taken up residence under one of our trees.

“It’s okay. It just startled me,” she said.

I’ve never talked to this woman, not once in the eight years Cap’t Dan’s family has lived there. I vaguely remembered what she looked like from the one time I saw her holding a lit cigarette out a tiny opening in her back sliding glass door. To be honest, I’d recognize her hand rather than her face. She keeps holding the cigarette out, but keeps the blinds tightly closed.

Me not talking to her sooner wasn’t for trying, mind you. Early on, the second time (of the three times total) we’ve heard from Cap’t Dan, he let us know that his wife had issues and literally never left the house.

First day out in eight years and I squirt the poor woman. Good grief!

I couldn’t have known it was her first day out and wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t felt it was my responsibility to apologize better than just to holler ‘sorry’ from across the yard. We talked for about five minutes and she mentioned her condition and her cute, but yappy dogs. I told her if there was anything we could do to make cleanup easier on her side of the boulder wall or if there were ever any large branches that fell down on her side, to let us know. She said she loved our trees and felt she lived in a wildlife sanctuary with all the birds and squirrels. I didn’t ask if that was a good thing or not; I hope it is but I’m not going to fret over it.

Then I told her to have a good afternoon and left her to her weeding, hoping she won’t think I was crabby or weird or anything but again, I’m not going to worry one way or the other. I made my apology and let her get a good look at me in the process so she’d know who spent the most time out there. I guess I’m hoping she’ll keep feeling safe enough to venture out into her own small backyard again without worrying about neighbors reactions.

Look first. Squirt later. My new rule to live by.

May 18, 2009

After my neighborly faux pas last Thursday and me saying I wasn’t going to worry about it, I went about the rest of my day…and pretty much pissed off everyone I came into contact with. This is nothing new. I seem to go through these periods where I, inadvertently for the most part, chap people like sandpaper underwear. The only course of action I can take to get through these times is to lie low and wait for the planets to misalign once more.

Last Thursday evening about three hours after squirting my shut-in neighbor, I decided to attend the sports car club meeting across town. I took WS’ car; nice, safe, quiet WS’ car because, you know, I hardly ever drive mine. I hadn’t been to a club meeting in a while and I thought to see what everyone was up to. I found they were up to about three-quarters full of snark and rapidly topping themselves off with piss and vinegar. Once again, I seem to have fallen out of favor with this bunch, not for anything I’ve done but for what I haven’t done; that being financially supported the club by attending club-sponsored functions, all of which cost money I don’t have. And I’ve got no sympathetic ears there on that account. I guess all those old people are doing well with their retirement accounts to afford gallivanting off to hotels and casinos every weekend together. More power to them I guess.

So after the meeting, close to home, a crazed woman driving a mini van (and on the phone which is supposed to be against the law here but no one’s being stopped for it) took exception to my right of way driving and nearly rear-ended me over and over again to make the point that I was in her way. Apparently, by driving straight through my green lighted intersection, I had caused her to have to come to a complete stop at her red light before she could turn right, and so, for the final half mile to the entrance of our development, she rode my bumper so close, I literally couldn’t see her vehicle’s grill or headlights, just her angry face and universally recognized hand signal, which might any sane person to guess as to what she was using to steer with.

Now, anyone who knows me knows I’m not easily intimidated, if at all, behind the wheel. Nor will I allow anyone to drive me off the road. And given what I could see of this woman, I wasn’t about to stop on the narrow farm road to ask what she was all bent out of shape over. People get robbed and shot for that kind of thing. And besides, we were nearing my turnoff and not a moment too soon for I could hear her engine racing just as I hung a quick right down our street as though she had planned to finally ram me. Fortunately, she kept going forward and I was home free.

A mere two houses past the entrance to our development is a four-way intersection; one notorious for drivers to barrel blindly through and escape near accidents with each other all the time. I always, always creep through this intersection for just that reason. I mean, I can see that intersection from our house and I know how many times each day I hear the squeal of tires and brakes from two hunks of metal trying to be in the exact same place at the exact same time. So even after nearly being pushed around the corner that Thursday evening, I slowed and crept through the intersection just like always.

Thirty seconds later, I was safely in our garage and had started to tell WS about my interesting trek when someone started pounding on our front door. I looked out the window first, like I do, but didn’t recognize the pickup truck jutted out half in the street, half on the sidewalk at an angle that told me another six inches and it would have been up on our lawn. The guy at the door looked reasonable enough, in a sweater and dress slacks and didn’t have anything in his hands. So I opened the door.

“I hope to hell that isn’t how you always drive through the neighborhood,” he said.

My first thought was to ask, “Excuse me? Who the hell are you?” but I didn’t want to come across as having an attitude. I mean, I kind of already had one by this point.

“Excuse…?”

The guy interrupted me to repeat himself using extra emphasis. “I hope to HELL THAT isn’t how YOU ALWAYS drive through THE NEIGHBORHOOD.”

I just looked at him.

“Didn’t you just arrive home?” he said. He started to bob side-to-side in a pre-aggressive monkey dance. “Wasn’t that you who raced around the corner?”

He pointed back up the street and recognition of where the house was that his truck is normally parked in front of came to me. There was no way he saw me from there. Unless he was standing on that corner, and no one was when I came around it, he couldn’t physically have seen anyone coming around the corner. He didn’t actually see a thing. He had simply heard a loud engine and because I was nearby, he figured it was me.

I unlocked the screen door and took a step out onto the front porch toward him. I pointed the same direction he was. “Yeah, didn’t you see the road rager who pushed me around the corner? If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a police report to call in.”

He took a step back and looked flustered. “Oh, well then, I just wanted to see that you don’t plan on making speeding through the neighborhood a habit. I don’t want to have to tell you again.”

I’ll admit that’s when I think I balled up my fists. Now, I recognized the guy through his pretty dress clothes. This was the idiot who drives up and down our streets on his ATV, sans helmet I might add and at a high rate of speed himself, every time it snows, every time it hails, every other weekend throughout the summer. This guy’s lived here two years, tops, and hasn’t seen a thing. I’ve lived here for a month and half short of ten years and have seen everything. He’s got no room to talk or to make rules. And yet, he’s gonna tell me what not to do? He’s going to insinuate that I regularly speed through our neighborhood?

“No,” I said. “I’M the one who tells people to stop speeding through the neighborhood and you can ask any one of my neighbors if that isn’t the truth. Have a good day.”

I might have peppered that statement with a bit of sarcasm. I didn’t wait to see how he might have interpreted it. I closed and locked the door and then had to explain the whole mess to a waiting WS whose one response wrapped up my thoughts exactly: “WTF?”

May 20, 2009

My final encounter with pissing people off and my theory of the universe being misaligned came last Sunday. Thanks to an enticing grocery store mail flyer we had received earlier in the week, I decided to go out and pick up ingredients to make homemade pesto. I later discovered I was actually supposed to be somewhere else at that same time but the date had been misquoted and I didn’t think to question it. Just as well. That’s a group I’m trying extra hard (or was trying) not to piss off.

After finding a great parking space, just two spaces from the entrance – something that never happens to me, I got into and out of the store quickly. And as I was pulling back out of the space to return home, I saw a couple in a car waiting nearby. I assumed they wanted my parking space. Good enough, I’m leaving.

Only it wasn’t that easy.

Somehow, unbeknownst to them – maybe because their attention was so focused on me, they failed to notice a woman nearby pulling out of her parking space…obviously not looking behind her where the couple sat waiting for mine. It was clear that if the woman didn’t stop, she’d t-bone the couple directly in their driver’s door.

I saw all this unfolding before me. So I stopped pulling out of my space, and being as the couple were too far away to yell at, I quickly rolled down my window, and pointed first at the couple, then more insistently over at the woman backing out.

The couple pointed back at me just as insistently. I pointed again at the car coming closer and closer to the driver’s side of the couple’s car and honked my horn.

The couple pointed again at me and I saw the driver mouth the words, “I want your space.”

There was no time for me to point again. I laid on the horn and the woman backing up gunned her car. Sure enough, she t-boned the couple sitting there so adamant about wanting my space. The impact was violent enough to rock their car. All I could do was shake my head. I tried. Honestly, I tried to help but there was nothing I could do to stop motion.

A crowd gathered quickly and yelling started up between both drivers. English was not the preferred language. At one point, someone threw produce onto the hood of one of the cars, both of which were still tangled, a mating of shards of plastic bumper and metal trunk to metal door and crumbles of glass.

I would have had to fight my way to the front of the increasingly ugly crowd. A part of me still feels badly that I didn’t anyway. But there you have it. I got my frickin’ basil and whole wheat pasta and didn’t do my duty as a good citizen. Someone else got a smashed car and oranges thrown through their windshield and may or may not have had to give a statement to the police. It’s hard to tell on that last item. Unless major bodily harm occurs, the cops generally don’t show up to such things around here. They have their hands full of other things, things much worse than grocery store fender-benders and wayward oranges.

May 26, 2009

We spent the long weekend, not sitting quietly reflecting on those lost at war as a lot of people tell us we all should be doing, but in supporting another kind of war – the world economic one. Yes, we’re still struggling just like most everyone else but after careful and repeated conversation mixed with a little bit of hand-forcing, we spent money we don’t have.

First off, there was my hair. It’s grown out enough to show that the natural gray wasn’t yet that pretty silvery color I admire on some of my friends but that greasy-looking no matter how freshly washed it was, more pepper-than-salt color. And WS hates it. I’m not fond of it either but before you go thinking we are both trying to capture time past by living fake, I can assure you that’s not it. It’s complicated even though it shouldn’t be. To each his own and my own says I feel better when I don’t have a skunk stripe down my head. There, I said it. Call me shallow, call me vain. Just don’t call me late for dinner. My hair’s all one color again. It’s anyone’s guess for how long.

Next up: Home décor. This story is a longer one.

After replacing our bookcases two years ago, we dreamed of completing the look with the addition of glass doors on the short cabinets opposite the tall, glassed cabinets on the other side of the room. The problem was that the company didn’t make glass doors for those short bookcases.

Until recently.

No problem. We’ve waited this long. We’ve got no problem waiting longer.

Except those short bookcases aren’t selling well in the wood color finish we adore, heck, the whole line isn’t selling well in that beech finish, the finish that most closely matches the woodwork of our entire house. So it’s being discontinued and that’s where we felt the hand-forcing came into play. It was now or never.

Eight glass doors at thirty-five dollars each. One additional tall bookcase without glass doors, eighty-nine dollars, for the computer closet that was so packed with WS’ stuff, a person took a chance on continued life if they opened the door as much as a crack. Two additional narrow bookcases, short ones without doors at forty-five dollars each, for the opposite computer closet that houses all the home network electronics and gets all that stuff up off the carpeted floor (a no-brainer there, in my opinion).

Here’s the justification part, or maybe it’s more like my enabler’s side: [Mercifully cut because it was long and full of whine].

Here’s the justification part: We’ve worked hard for over ten years, longer than this house has existed in fact, to create a dedicated library room. After WS talked the home builder into changing the plans to make one of the bedrooms into a loft that we could turn into a library, we scoured stores and catalogs, both online and in person, to find the exact bookcases we wanted, all without success. For years, we talked about hiring a cabinet maker to create built-ins but the thought of flakey contractors and bidding wars that don’t benefit the customer as always seems to happen to us, kept us just dreaming.

Then we found IKEA, a place we were certain wouldn’t have anything we’d ever want. I mean, IKEA is just a European version of Target or Walmart, isn’t it? Maybe it’s the over use of primary colors that made us think that. And no one was more surprised to see that they had exactly the bookcases we’d been dreaming of in the dark cherry wood color we wanted. We were excited and because they weren’t local at the time, we mail ordered a set of three short bookcases. All arrived damaged. We sent them back and the next batch came just as damaged and then some; damaged enough that they couldn’t be assembled.

So we sent back that batch too and a month later, got back a batch that was only partially damaged. But it was on the backside where no one would see and besides, I’m pretty good at propping up shelves with stacks of books so it doesn’t look as though that’s what I’m doing.

Five years later, an IKEA was built in our area and we thought to buy matching tall bookcases, only this time, we’d hand-pick them to assure no damage was done. And we’d rent a truck to bring them home. Oh, the cost just kept mounting. That’s when we discovered another problem. IKEA no longer made that wood color finish. We’d have to continue to have mismatched bookcases or we could pull the trigger and replace the entire batch.

Suddenly, our cost for five hundred dollars worth of bookcases plus truck rental rose to twenty-five hundred dollars. The good part was that we discovered we could fit the unassembled bookcase boxes in WS’ car (making several trips into Portland and back), thus saving the rental truck cost, and we fell in love with the lighter, beech-wood color that closely matches our home’s woodwork.

We mulled over the decision and chose to go with the beech finish. We haven’t regretted it since and in fact, I’ve talked often about never wanting to replace these bookcases ever. To me, they are all that AND a big bag of chips. To have the entire room completely done from top to bottom in the same finish, all with glass doors, is to add two big bags of chips to all that, the kind of chips with all the greasy goodness but none of the fat or calories.

Then we went out for lunch, without using a coupon, and then stopped at a liquor store. I know, we’re living the dream and that dream will turn into a nightmare come the first of the month when the credit card bill arrives. But we’ve reined ourselves back in and we’ll pay this spurt off and keep plugging away at everything else we owe. We’ve got our heads back into the thought of living lean again; a long, lean summer spent surrounded by books behind glass at last. *sigh.

May 27, 2009

Here’s a fresh shot of our library with the completed bookcases, all now with glass doors. Let’s see if that’ll cut down on the dust accumulation (doubts). It’s a small room, meant to be a small bedroom originally with one wall half removed and the ceiling vaulted to create an open-air loft feel. It’s the most used room in the house.

Today’s observances: If you were to stand at any open window here and listen, you’d swear you were listening to a scene out of ‘The Birds.’ You know, the scene where the teacher character is trying to get the kids back inside without them all being pecked to death? It’s baby Starling time around here and we’ve got a bumper crop of them this year. Their constant screeching cries for food while flying around with their parents are deafening. The sound is driving me and the pets crazy, so today marks the first day of the season we’ll be keeping the windows tightly shut.

A couple of thug-looking teenage boys were just walking down our street as if they owned the place (yes, today is a school day) and one’s pants actually fell down around his ankles. The other one laughed. I did too, but from the inside safety of my own house.

I don’t watch the TV show but I’ve been saying for years that the voting on American Idol is rigged and/or is set up to be rigged from day one. So why’s everyone upset now over the latest finale and who won? What? Have people really been this naïve all along?

Another television show, one I don’t watch either, mostly due to not having satellite or cable anymore: Jon and Kate Plus Eight. Any relationship in which one of the first things out of one of the parent’s mouths is a whiny complaint about the constant crying and demanding kids, isn’t going to end well. That’s what I was saying years ago when I saw the very first commercial for the show. Now everyone’s up in arms. This is reality. This is TV. Really, isn’t there something more important to be upset about?

And finally, to be filed under Overheard Things Not To Say To Cancer Patients:

“Gee, God must not have liked something you did.”

Our dying neighbor who is suffering with not one, but two rare forms of cancer recently took a turn for the worst. She’s home now but requires a 24/7 live-in caregiver. Her family can’t provide all she needs. The caregivers come in shifts, three a day every day and all look very professional. On one hand, it’s looking like our neighbor won’t need to go back to the hospital for anything. On the other hand, it’s looking like she won’t need much of anything for very much longer.

A friend of mine was recently re-diagnosed with cancerous tumors and I’m angry about it. Not at my friend but at the situation and what tends of come out of some people’s mouths as a result.

Gods don’t punish people by giving them cancer. No one wants to or needs to hear that kind of crap come out of anyone’s mouth. You know who you are. Stop it. I’m just sayin’.

May 28, 2009

One year ago: Laid retaining wall block out back and threw a public hissy fit at The Renters which resulted in no change in their kids behaviors. I’m pretty sure my fit had nothing to do with the nasty allergic reaction I suffered after consuming a tuna fish packet.
Two years ago: A second pet died within a month of the first. Thirteen-year old G.B. suffered heart failure and died suddenly at home three weeks after having Old Man Skitters put to sleep. Skitters was twenty years old.
Five years ago: Lots of spring rain. Work at The Company is frustrating as usual but made even more so when my boss, MrSmartButFakingIt goes on vacation and put MsNoManagementSkills in charge. Within hours on the first day, she sent out email telling us we all ought to be fired. Just her typical way of ‘motivating’ her coworkers. Used to her meaningless tirades, I take a long lunch and polish my car for an upcoming weekend show.
Ten years ago: WS and I were sent down south to Company headquarters to talk to some engineers about the technical support aspect of our jobs. Almost missed our return flight. Drove by our house being built to see what had been done over the last week before heading back home to the rental house.
Thirty-three years ago: I got married the first time. Epic fail.

May 29, 2009

It’s going to be 90 degrees Fahrenheit here today so I got up early with WS and got busy watering everything by hand. It feels good to have made it almost to June before needing to water everything. Sure has felt good on the water bill too.

A couple of early visitors accompanied me out back while I was out there, a sure sign it’s going to be hot today – Cedar Waxwings. I absolutely love these birds. The couple looked young, small, and were fairly vocal. I hurried to finish up and left them to drink and bath in the fountain unbothered.

Next week, the sprinkler guy stops by to set up and check out the sprinkler system for the summer. He’s very late in getting to us this year but our wallet sure isn’t complaining. Why don’t we do this yearly sprinkler maintenance ourselves? Our county government requires a professional check of our backflow system; that’s why. Of course, if that didn’t cost eighty bucks, more people would comply. Anything to make money, I guess, including putting liens on homes with sprinkler systems that don’t comply. I don’t even want us involved in that.

Some drama will be coming to our neighborhood street as early as this afternoon. I can’t talk much about it; I’m just pleased that it won’t involve us much at all, but I will say that other neighbors have finally had it up to there ^ with The Renters and in particular Big Fat Liar kid’s daily drumming. I expect ugliness and am fully expecting to be blamed one hundred percent. Spitting on our property and hand gestures may well get worse. Blood may or may not be boiling by the end of the day but it won’t be ours. Aren’t close-by neighbors fun?

May 31, 2009

What is this compulsion people have with setting up things normally reserved for the privacy of one’s own back-yard in their front yard instead? Barbeque grills, tether ball poles, tents, swing sets, junk cars. All of this is dangerous close, in my opinion, to setting out in the middle of the front lawn an old stained toilet and using it as a beer bottle cap and cigarette butt receptacle.

I’ve been trying to figure out why people do this. WS says it’s a combination of wanting to attract attention to one’s self and being a slacker. In our neighborhood, driveways are located next to front yards. What better location-wise than to pull into one’s own driveway, open the SUV or Mini Van doors and simply dump the newly purchased barbeque grill/pop tent/Fisher Price swing set/American Standard toilet right there? Why waste energy putting such things in the back-yard where no one else can Jones over these purchases? C’mon, don’t you want a urinal set up in your front yard too? Comes in handy when us manly men are knocking back a few and barbequing meat.

I agree with some of WS’ reasoning, not sure about other parts. I don’t know or understand why I even care one way or the other. Oh wait, yes I do. Because it all looks like white trash behavior. Maybe what I can’t understand is why everyone seems to be clamoring to out-do each other in this regard.

June 1, 2009

Happy June! We’re beginning the month by saving a bundle on our electricity bill. How cool is that? Actually, it’ll be hot shortly. Our air conditioning fan went out this morning and our area’s temperature is slated around ninety degree today. Nope, I’m still not loving this homeowner thing, not at all.

Tomorrow, the roofing guy is coming to replace the missing roof shingles from the windstorm we had three-four weeks ago and the sprinkler guy is coming as well to turn on the pipes. Our weekend was hot, a little over ninety here, and I had to water wilted stuff by hand. Today, I had planned to pull all the matted algae out of the fountain, the icky, long hair-like algae that grows once or twice a year in there, probably because there are years worth of decayed organic matter down in the gravel trench that acts as a pre-filter before the pump filter. And then I’d spend the rest of the afternoon cooling off and reading inside.

There’s still a chance of that happening, I suppose. WS has called the air conditioning repair company. No word if they can come out to fix it today but WS is choosing to work from home so he can be here should they come out. He seems to like talking to and watching those guys work. Secretly, I think he wishes he was an air conditioning repair man.

All the non-sunny windows are open and we’re trying to capture the cool-ish morning air. Current temperature inside is seventy-five. The real bitch will be this afternoon when it’ll get to be every bit as hot inside as it will be outside, not for comfort’s sake but with trying to keep WS cool so his MS doesn’t kick in. Heat, along with stress, is one of the sure things that brings on an exacerbation and frankly, with layoff round number 21 up around the corner, he can’t afford to be without his legs, sight, or speech.

June 3, 2009

Three hundred seventy-one dollars and thirteen cents. That’s the bill for replacing a fried controller board for our air conditioning. Took the repairman less than twenty minutes from start to finish. WS found the same board online for one hundred sixty-some dollars. This is the second air conditioner controller board in less than five years that’s burnt out. If we weren’t needing to watch every penny, I’d insist he buy one because, as they say, you can’t take money with you.

Four hundred fifty-seven dollars and fifty cents. That’s the bill for having shingles replaced on our roof; shingles we were originally assured would match the rest of our ten-year old, southern sun exposure roof. They don’t match but probably will in about three years. S’kay, more than likely we won’t be moving anytime before then and who knows, maybe by then, we’ll find reason to need to fork out another seven grand to replace all the rest of the shingles on the roof. Because, as I always said, if money were meant to be saved, they’d have made it square so it would stack better.

Sprinkler start up cost: Who knows? Our schedule was postponed due to a client emergency elsewhere. Getting a new appointment scheduled is like trying to stuff twenty pounds of shit into a five pound bag; Might be better not to try. In addition, the landscaping/sprinkler company called us back early this morning not with a rescheduled appointment but to tell us they now charge a seventy-five dollar an hour visitation fee when evaluating or troubleshooting a system whether that be lighting or irrigation.

It might well be is time to find a new landscape service company. We love the service guys who come out but getting past the company office appointment setters is a royal pain in the ass. Anything scheduled, when not ‘lost’ or dropped into a circular file, takes a minimum of three weeks to set up. Even then, the service guys are only given half the information we provide, leaving us to try to schedule further appointments to get farther along into the job. This is why our landscape lighting and our sorely mis-aligned sprinklers still aren’t operating to their potential. WS has always seemed fine with letting this stuff go and piling up. He forgets about it, can’t stay on top of it, etc. But not me. My job is to make sure everything here runs smoothly and this is anything but smooth.

So why don’t I just call and keep calling until they come out?

That was called year 2007 when I did just that. Five months, for an entire growing season, they wouldn’t call me back. Five months. Whenever I would mention it to WS, I got his infamous irritated sigh and some comment about how he couldn’t deal with it at the moment because of something going on at work. Blah, blah, blah. Something’s always going on at work. It’s now 2009. Different year, same problem. I don’t expect any change.

I’m not holding my breath waiting for the landscaping company to call back. So much for WS working from home again today just so he could talk to the sprinkler guy.

June 4, 2009

Yesterday I threw a bunch of old catalogs and paper stuff into the new, tall blue Recycle bin and flipped the lid shut. From the corner of my eye, just as the lid was coming down, I saw a flash of green movement. I reopened the bin and in horror, saw that a small tree frog had mistimed its jump toward the opening and the plastic bin lid came down on it, pinching it in half. I hadn’t thought the lid was that heavy or the thick plastic rim that sharp. Then again, I’m a bit bigger than the two-inch frog.

After burying it in a quiet, honorable place in our backyard near the fountain, I felt horrible for the rest of the day.

June 5, 2009

Our area had a huge storm yesterday evening, just in time for rush hour. I saw the National Weather warning on TV when I finally gave in to my pounding, ceaseless sinus headache and went to bed a little after four in the afternoon. I called WS at work immediately and he chose to shut things down and head home. The main route he takes to get home is lined with tall fir trees and if the coming storm was half what was predicted, he’d had a heck of a time getting here. Turns out that was a good decision.

Funnel clouds and rotation clouds were reported all over the area. A tornado is suspected in a couple of spots way down in Central Oregon. Power went out all over the place and out front it looked as if someone had turned on a huge water faucet. Sweet, glorious summer rain. If I had been feeling better, I would have done a happy dance. While thunder and lightning was reported everywhere it seemed, we only heard thunder once and saw one far-off lightning bolt.

After the main storm which brought with it a twenty-four degree drop in temperature in less than ten minutes (we were actually watching our outdoor temperature gauge reading move for a while), another wind storm followed and brought gritty dust in the air, probably all the way up from Salem, Oregon where we heard they had a dust storm beforehand. Certainly, enough soft, steady rain fell overnight to water the yards and rinse down trees and houses but the cement patio and walkways out back are coarse and crunchy-sounding to walk on. I’ll give it a day or two and then, a quick hose down might be in order.

No tree limbs down here and nothing I can see from my vantage point in the neighborhood though it wouldn’t surprise me if I were to hear chainsaws working today. We really got pounded but what I’m really happy about is that our new roofing shingles survived wonderfully. Thank goodness those bare spots were fixed Tuesday!

June 7, 2009

After spending an hour and a half mucking mucus-y hair algae out of our fountain last week and then finding out that there’s now no way we can afford to convert our halogen landscape lighting into electricity-saving LED lighting, mostly due to the landscaping company’s new seventy-five dollar an hour visitation fee (In this economy? WTF?), I find my attitude and mood pretty much in the toilet. According to our own extensive research into LED landscape lighting, this should simply mean swapping out bulbs, halogen for LED. No replacement of transformers OR wiring necessary. The bulbs, although something like thirty bucks each, were designed for easy conversion in landscape lighting applications. I have no doubt our soon-to-be old landscape company knows this and wants to make it as profitable a deal as possible for themselves. I didn’t insist on a price of the LED bulbs (That information, they say, requires a visitation from the lighting engineers – seventy-five dollars, please. Cha-ing!) but I’m willing to bet it was a pretty penny over thirty bucks a bulb.

And if matters were looking up last week, they are right back in the gutter with the letter from Chase that came in the mail today saying our credit card interest rate is going from fourteen percent to twenty-nine percent as of July first. Double. Of course we can opt out if we want to incur a nasty hit on our reasonably high credit score and can come up with a twenty-five grand pay off amount within three months. Like that could ever happen…

Okay, remind me again. Who exactly is getting help with this economy thing? ‘Cause I don’t see anyone around us getting a hand out.

Again I ask: All this in this economy? WTF? What? Someone at the top need to keep their kids jet setting and hobnobbing with Mylie Cyrus this year?

June 10, 2009

Got an email from MsNoManagementSkills addressed to some private, colossal email list she seems to still have me on:

I need to call in an emergency favor. I missed my mani and pedi three times aready and [DorkMaster’s] daughter is home sick with fever. I need someone to come watch her drink water while I’m out. When I signed her out of school yesterday, the school nurse said to get her checked for swine flu but her doctor isn’t available until Friday. She’ll be fine until then. Someone call or email me before noon!

Demanding bee-yotch, isn’t she? HA! Calling in a favor. This woman doesn’t understand the meaning of calling in a favor because I seriously doubt she’s ever done one for anyone in her life. And swine flu? Hello? If she’s there with DorkMaster’s daughter and the daughter has swine flu, MsNo has gotten it herself. She just doesn’t know it yet. So she expects someone else to expose themselves (not to mention then expose other people later)? What is wrong with this woman?

But perhaps most disturbing of all is, I have no idea what the hell a ‘mani and pedi’ is. What is this? Street slang for something? What code is this for? Google offers up nothing that explains what this is.

June 12, 2009

I was almost completely sidelined by some kind of allergies yesterday. I got in four hours of writing and created a two-foot high pile of used tissues at the same time. Then I lay down to stop my muddled head from spinning and to quell the sparks flashing before my eyes after every hard nose blow. WS kindly attended a meeting for me across town. I was too wiped and because my nose was literally pouring fluid, I had to sleep with tissue nose plugs to keep our bed from becoming a water bed. Yes, gross. Ew and all that.

Layoff round 21 commencing this week. No pattern found yet as to what the preferred day, or even hour, for receiving the bad news is. It would seem the company’s only pattern is not to have one.

WS’ has lost two friends thus far. Well-respected employees, the both of them. But not respected enough to be the last left to turn off the lights.

Our dying neighbor was taken by ambulance to the hospital yet again yesterday, the third time in as many days. Her doctors have given up on her and keep telling her the reason she’s having a hard time breathing is because of all the cancer. She insisted she had had a pulmonary embolism and was proven correct after a CT scan. The doctors still won’t treat her and in fact, noted on her file that they have removed her from making her own decision on whether or not to be resuscitated should she need to come in again.

Doctors orders over dying patients’ wishes. It’s a scary world that awaits many of us, I fear.

Back here in the neighborhood, the weird thing is that of all people, Mr. Dimmer is crushed. Yes, Mr. Dimmer. After the ambulance left yesterday, he wasted no time telling us the only reason he’s been in-training to be a firefighter for the past year (apparently other than he can’t seem to hold a job elsewhere because of his temper and chemical abuses and our county is sorely hurting for firefighters) was because he wanted to be a ‘hero’ for our dying neighbor.

Somehow, he’s gotten it into his head that he, and only he, can save this poor cancer-ridden woman by being EMT trained and by living just across the street. ‘If she passes before I’m hired, it’ll have all been a waste,’ he told us. ‘I need to be a hero.’

Okay, my opinion here: This guy’s fucked up.

In other nearby news, Mr. Dry Cleaner called the cops on Little Drummer Boy, the liar kid of The Renters. Unfortunately for Mr. DC, Drummer Boy wasn’t home doing any actual drumming at the time. The sheriff didn’t seem too happy about coming out for nothing but Mrs. DC said that he’d come back later in the day to ‘catch the kid making all the racket.’ WS noted that the sheriff did not come back. Mrs. DC says her husband was instructed to create a log of loud drumming. Mr. DC said he already had been doing that for a year.

No word where any of that’s going but I suspect once Mr. DC’s seasonal work is done and he’s home for the summer, he’s going to find out what the rest of us have had to put up with for a year and a half. Last summer, Mr. DC spent every waking moment on the local golf course. With the steep rise of greens fees this year, that no longer offers a quiet refuge, and if there’s one thing we’ve learned from The Dry Cleaners, it’s that those people demand peace and quiet. Poor choice of neighbors, I say.

June 13, 2009

Dear Internets,

If a middle-aged person wakes up every morning for the past five years with a theme song running stuck through their head, from a show they haven’t seen since they were four years old, does it mean death is right around the corner? Or does it just feel that way some days?

If you could let me know, that’d be just…super.

Thanks.
XOXOXO

My allergies have morphed into a bad head cold. A very, very bad head cold. Can’t hear well, can’t talk well, and well, thinking is nearly right out too.

Oh look, more DayQuil. Pretty, shiny, orange DayQuil.

June 18, 2009

Still suffering this cold which, thankfully, has begun its migration farther south within just the last hour. Items consumed over the past week include:

Two full rolls of Bounty Select-A-Size paper towels (My lungs blow through all forms of tissue [equally waste and extra cost]).
Six DayQuil LiquiGel caps (Would have taken more if it didn’t kick up my asthma about five notches).
One NyQuil (Ditto above).
One bottle of Robitusson DM plus Mucus Control.
One half asthma inhaler.
One half asthma steroid inhaler.
Three books and three short stories.
Countless dairy-free meals prepared by WS. The guy really is a great chef.

Absolutely no dairy has been consumed since last Thursday thus once again, breaking my cheese habit. I love cheese. My body’s fat stores love cheese even more. I need to remember this before I jump back onto that wagon and perhaps add olive oil as well. Both go straight to my jowls, boobs, and belly. Ugh.

I suspect I’ll be coughing nasty stuff out of my lungs for at least another week. Needless to say, hermit behavior will continue. I don’t feel like going anywhere.

June 20, 2009

Welcome to summer. Time for some changes.

Since my head has cleared a bit from the after effects of my summer cold, I’ve rededicated myself to my writing, my chosen craft that I’ve not taken too seriously since, oh, January or so. I’ve been working my way through a four-foot high stack of reading material that I both wanted and needed to read before this fall; a combination of fiction (science fiction, high fantasy [of which I’m not a fan], horror and historical fiction) and non-fiction (writing how-to and what’s wrong with today’s customer support).

I’m not reading as fast as I should. I keep tripping up over outside influences like my cold, the economy, WS’ possible layoff, our budget, laundry, Angelina and Brad’s sleeping arrangement, cuteoverload.com, what’s for dinner, and the next school bus coming along which looks suspiciously like a Mack truck.

The school bus reference is something I read the other day on a writer friend’s blog. This friend admitted to being a bit behind on their next book outline due to the tragic loss of family they have suffered lately. That much was true. Three close family members gone in less than a year. That’s bound to slow down anyone, I’d think. But it seemed that this friend has had a hard time getting pen back to paper and their editor (and publishing house) was getting nervous.

This editor, who sometimes plays the role of helpful psychologist, shared advice that got the ball rolling again. “There’s always a school bus…” they said. I believe this is to mean, ‘There’s always a school bus coming along. These are things to learn from. Hop back on board.’

I, in my pessimistic/optimistic way, believe the school bus is, in fact, a Mack truck coming along. I take this to mean, ‘There’s always a big reason barreling down the highway to keep you from doing what you know you should be doing.’ In short, there’s always an excuse; the Mack truck and your impeding flattened state being the excuse.

I’m not calling death in the family an excuse, or bereavement of any length an excuse not to write or paint or ever do laundry ever again. But eventually, you need to accept that life goes on and your own life will go on, preferably before the next real or perceived Mack truck tries to run you down because surely, you know one’s coming. Yes, take some time, or better yet, use the time to your advantage. Absorb the experience, jump back on board, heck, take over the wheel and steer yourself into something meaningful, something better. Don’t be reactive. Be proactive. You won’t be sorry you did.

I’ve been using the economy, WS’ possible layoff, and our budget as my own personal fleet of creative-killing Mack trucks. Not so much, truth be told, over Angelina and Brad or the latest basket of cute, sleepy kittens. Sure, I’ll keep reading, planning on finishing another big book this weekend. There’s no reason why I can’t also be pecking away at some nagging stories at the same time if for no other reason than to get them to shut up.

Shh, listen! Do I hear tires screeching in the distance? No matter. I’m writing.

June 24, 2009

Hmm, what’s been happening while I was out with a nasty cold (which left for vacation elsewhere today I think ‘cause I feel better).

We discovered that Chase credit card we have that raised its interest rate to something ridiculous is the one card we never use. Has a balance of zero. Go us. Now, next quarter when Bank of America raises their rates, we’re screwed. But really, what can you do but learn? Not worth shooting yourself over it.

The procession of visiting friends and relatives has begun in earnest over at our dying neighbor’s home. After four trips to the hospital via ambulance, allegedly everyone; the hospital, staff, and ambulance drivers, have been instructed to ignore further calls for help per doctor’s orders…which has me thinking. Wouldn’t putting such a patient-overriding order on one’s file directly violate the physician’s Hippocratic Oath to protect life? I certainly think so.

MsNoManagementSkills and DorkMaster ran across last weekend’s Gay Pride parade in Portland and guess what? She came out. Guess that honeymoon’s really over now. Doesn’t really explain her attitude toward other people though. She went back to the festival the following day, she said in her email, and stayed for nine hours, in downtown Portland, alone for DorkMaster refused to attend. She’s always claimed to be scared to death of Portland. Hmm.

Tragically, strong winds the other afternoon knocked down several birds nests up and down our street. Nothing survived.

I drove my car today. I like it still.

Our basket-growing strawberry plants have been putting out handfuls of fruit for two weeks now. Usually, we get one-sy, two-sy, here-and-there berries. Not this year. Next month, the blueberries ought to be ready. Just as long as half the bush doesn’t come down with blight like last year, ruining half the crop, we’ll be eating our morning oats with the freshest of fresh blueberries.

Two weeks from now, we’ll be celebrating this house’s ten year anniversary. We’ve been working on repairing stuff and sprucing up the place where we can(with little-to-no out-of-pocket cost) in preparation to take photos to add to our house-building photo album. Boy, has this place ever come a long way from a rolling hill, 125 year old overgrazed dairy farm flat spot.

June 25, 2009

My brain feels frazzled today for some reason, and is filled with the sounds of Bang, Crash, Bang as the Renter kids next door continue to unsuccessfully learn Ollie jumps on their skateboards. This is been going on for over a year and a half. You’d think they’d be better by now.

There was a minor commotion over there earlier this morning as Big Fat Liar kid (also known as Little Drummer Boy) was caught in a lie by one of his skateboard friends. Apparently, BFL told his friend sometime in the past he was part-black and related to President Obama. This morning he admitted that was a lie and said his real parents were “wet backs.” Nice talk around the much younger kids who idolize this punk.

Yes, BFL is part-Latino. His adopted father is as white as a ghost and as wide as a barn. There is no adopted mother. The other two Renter kids are white kids and are Ms. Renter’s biological kids. BFL won’t have anything to do with that woman who is the live-in girlfriend of Mr. Renter. Confused yet? Okay, good. I won’t even mention the third man living in the house then, relationship unknown.

BFL, now 15 years old, is sporting a full mustache and prefers black wife-beater t-shirts, pencil-thin black jeans, and black high top sneakers for attire, every day. He’s dark skinned and when not spitting left and right, flashes gang signs at passing motorists. His skateboard friends used to think that, as well as staring down motorists in the street and forcing them to drive up and around on the sidewalks, was funny. Now, only one hangs around and that one took off mad after catching BFL in his heritage lie. Me thinks his lies might be catching up with him, though I’m not holding my breath.

If only The Dry Cleaners would get sick of all the skateboard noise too and call the cops like they did on the loud drumming, our street might stand a chance against these rotten neighbors.

June 28, 2009

Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays, and now, our neighbor. Our neighbor has died at home of cancer. While our neighbor wasn’t famous or even well known, they were a part of this development, the first, in fact to buy and build a house here. The family is busying themselves with fixing up their house now which will be open to mourners Thursday. Today is pressure washing day. Yesterday, they hauled multiple trailer-loads of fake flowers and what was described to us as roomfuls of Phoo-phoo shit. Sounded like that had been eating at the survivors a long while.

Not terribly good news at WS’ place of employment either. The property has been sold to a local, large manufacturing company. The company WS works for has signed a lease for four years. We expect them to move out of the area after that.

With the introduction of management changes I whined about last month, employee ratings have changed as well and WS has been downgraded from his stellar, ‘layoffs can’t touch me’ level. No one in the department seems to know what they’re supposed to be doing or what direction to take because the voice of the new management has been vague at best, and because of that, ratings were affected and wouldn’t you know it? New rounds of layoffs loom. Doesn’t seem fair but there it is anyway. You can always count on HR to find better, more cryptic ways to get rid of people. Thumbs up to them. They really pulled an admirable fast one this time around.

And you know, I was just ease up on worrying and get back on track myself. Cue sound of screeching brakes.

July 2, 2009

The neighborhood memorial service for our neighbor is today. After running errands, we’ll attend briefly. I was planning on taking cut flowers from our yard but the heat over the past couple of days has blasted nearly everything to withered brown. All except the daylilies that is. Funny thing is, I’ve got a not-too-flattering story about my daylilies and our dead neighbor that makes me want to take a bunch over there anyway. Would that make me a bad person? I doubt anyone would even notice and those who did, the teenage kids most likely, well, they don’t like me anyway. That’s a different story for a different time.

When we moved into this place, I brought all my daylilies from the old rental house. Armfuls of daylily plants, too many really for our plot of land that didn’t have a single blade of grass growing on it at the time. So I looked toward my new neighbors who also didn’t have anything but bare ground surrounding their new homes. We were, after all, built on an overused, 125-year old cow pasture.

Only one of our new neighbors accepted the bare-root plants, an entire tub of them as I recall, which I helped them plant. And like I knew would happen, those tall daylilies took off and started blooming heavily within the year, tall, gorgeous orange daylilies with the faintest of apricot striping.

The following summer, we were shopping at a now-defunct local grocery store when we ran into our neighbor talking to a friend about the daylilies. Our neighbor was saying how much they loved the plants, not that that would be a surprise to anyone since they had grown them at their previous home. Loved them so much, they had to dig them up and bring them to their new house…the house on our street, the very daylily plants I had shared and helped plant. In fact, the only thing they had growing at their new house as they weren’t very much into gardening or landscaping at the time.

I believe WS stopped me from speaking up and setting the story straight. He’s good at things like that. We’d learned that lesson at the old rental house neighborhood where I often spoke my mind about injustices I perceived happening around us (abused animals, vandalism, assaults), without thinking of consequential fallout later. And boy, did we suffer fallout later.

So I didn’t say anything. Probably shot an unnoticed glare or two as I was apt to do back then. But I didn’t forget easily. Now, I’m not angry, or even mildly annoyed. In fact, I see it as just another one of those things I’ve never received credit for, and there are so many, in my not-so-humble opinion, it’s quite ridiculous. I simply don’t let bother me.

Today is the right day to let that one go. I feel honored that my neighbor liked the daylilies so much and that they continue to bloom beautifully for everyone to see. Perhaps it would be fitting to bring a bunch of my long-stem beauties to the memorial service to honor our neighbor’s memory anyway.

July 3, 2009

My idea of taking daylilies cut from our own yard over to our dead neighbor’s memorial service was nixed by WS who wanted to give something better. One trip and forty dollars later, we hand delivered a sunny, bright, spring-like bouquet…and was promptly shut out from the neighborhood memorial service.

I feared one of the teenage kids would answer the door and that’s exactly what happened. She accepted the flowers, mumbled ‘thanks’ upon which WS said ‘take care,’ and the door was closed in our faces.

Okay, then.

In a truly, very selfish moment, I thought to myself, “But I wore a dress and everything!” I haven’t worn a dress in ten years.

Apparently, the Celebration of Life memorial party going on in the neighbor’s backyard was by special invite only. Good thing we watched their house earlier in the day as they had asked us to while they were at the cemetery. Good thing none of the people who stopped by the house while no one was home, and whose vehicles and personal descriptions we jotted down, didn’t rob the place blind ‘cause I might not be so inclined to give them our eyewitness accounts.

So we walked back home and heated up leftovers from last night’s dinner. I’m trying hard to remember that the day (and the expensive flowers) wasn’t about us.

July 4, 2009

Every year, I bitch about the noise on the Fourth, and on the Third and Second and every day up until about September Twelfth when fireworks, although long past the legal lighting timeframe, finally seem to die down.

Well I’m only going to say one thing about it all this year. Yes, I understand the economy has affected everyone and I would expect fireworks displays to be cut like Fort Vancouver’s massive yearly display, but I hope all you city official realize that this simply translates into every idiot in every dink neighborhood across this town of ours thinking they can rival anything Fort Vancouver has ever put on.

We had a guy over in the cul-de-sac setting off half sticks of dynamite yesterday. The street patchwork will, undoubtedly cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars. We’re just one neighborhood. Think of the implications next time.

July 6, 2009

Received via email yesterday afternoon:

“Thank you for your registration.

Sorry, we regret to inform you that your registration to attend the Public Memorial Service for Michael Jackson was not selected.

Hundreds of thousands registered, but only a few can be in attendance

To see what might happen, I registered for tickets for the M. Jackson memorial service held down in L.A. My name wasn’t drawn which is just as well because there’s no way I’d actually go to L.A. I guess I’m still out that one important item to sell on eBay to help defer costs for my assisted living apartment when I’m 75 years old. Maybe this email will be worth something…

July 8, 2009

Happy Day after Ten Year House Day! Our house is celebrating ten years of existence this week. Before and after pictures will be posted here soon (as soon as we dig the scanner back out of the now-organized closet).

Yesterday’s MJ memorial service, shown on almost every one of the seven TV channels we have, was one of the most raw, emotional yet human spectacles I’d ever seen. Because I don’t do well with heavily emotional events, I cried like a baby and now, a day later, my eyes feel a little too big for my head. Enough of that, other than to say I know in my heart, MJ’s body was not in that casket. And good for the Jackson family to keep that under wraps. The world needs more celebrity mystery.

Yesterday was supposed to be a writing day, full of promise and glee over the near-thirty degree drop in temperature and the blanket of clouds smothering dry, blue sky.

But then a mole got in the way. We’ve had a mole issue for a month, in the front yard mostly or rather, the front flower beds. The grass has too much sand and gravel and netting in it for a mole to find that attractive, not to mention the granular grub-killer/grass fertilizer we keep on it throughout the year. Moles love grubs. We probably ought to sprinkle that stuff over everything, especially if the freshly turned earth piles keep popping up every half hour.

The mole, which I have named Edna (no relation to Edna 2000 who comments here upon occasion), has burrowed under the house and moved to the backyard. Her younger brother, Allard, is still out front pushing dirt piles onto the driveway every other day or two. My wishful thinking has them moving onward from the front yard and close in portions of the backyard down to Cap’t Dan’s dead summer lawn. He could probably use the distraction since being out of work again for some time now.

I’m worried about all the excavating Edna seems to be doing in and around the fountain. We don’t need to wake up one morning only to discover the fountain empty of water due to a mole-breach through the thick rubber liner, and the fountain pump burnt out. The game will be over then; the repair expense completely out of our budget range.

I miss Limpy whom even without claws, always put an end to any attempted rodent invasion around here. You’d think that with the addition of five new outdoor cats to the neighborhood, we wouldn’t have a mole problem. But apparently, moles are what I get for no longer leaving cat food outside my door. Then again, that’s what the mole should be – cat food.

Thank you for stirring up my clay-compacted soil, Edna. But wouldn’t that tasty grub-laden lawn beyond our rocky fountain be much tastier upon your palette?

July 9, 2009

You know what? I didn’t do a darn thing today.

Slightest of fibs there. I actually did several things but none overly important, something I try very hard to do every single day. Really, I should probably lighten up on myself.

Things I actually did:

Got up at 3:30 a.m. after a bad dream.
Went back to bed a quarter to seven and slept fitfully until ten.
Did a load of laundry.
Clean kitchen counters after Seth’s cat litter feet made a mucky mess of them.
Ate a bowl of Rainer cherries – heaven!
Watered outside front and back.
Scooped up the latest MoleEarth ™ piles squeezed out from between retaining wall blocks around the backyard fountain.
Read half a book of short stories.

Things I should have done (additional to all those above):

Vacuumed. It is Thursday, after all.
Made the bed.
Write.
Exercised.
Read more.
Dug out the scanner and tried to figure out how to use it.

Okay, so spank me if I’m so bad for not doing more. At least I didn’t take an afternoon nap. Don’t need to screw up my sleep schedule at this point.

This evening I have a Car Club meeting in which I will have to defend my actions of last Saturday when I worked on other people’s cars all day. I didn’t do anything wrong; in fact, I taught a couple of guys some new polishing tricks. But the old men in the group (I say old but most are within ten or fifteen years, one way or the other, of my own age of 52) don’t like it when women know more than they do and tend to pick, pick, pick just to see if they can raise hackles.

I’ve one or two supporters. I’ve proven myself to Drill Sergeant Dave and he’ll usually stick up for me, unless it’s too much fun for him not to. Anyway, now that I mentioned it, no one will probably say a word and that’s fine too. At the beginning of next month, I suspect I won’t see too much more of this group until fall, perhaps even as late as Christmas. It’ll be too hot and I’ve got other, more important mountains to climb.

July 10, 2009

Like I said, because I mentioned what may be brought up at the Car Club meeting, nothing was said about me at all. And I won a wad of Micro Fiber towels. Can’t have enough of those. Beginning early 2011, my plans are to begin the re-polishing, re-detailing process on my car for the 2012 car show season. It’ll take about a year for me to do it the right way – all by hand. 2012 will be my car’s ten year anniversary and I think, a good time to reintroduce it to the world on a somewhat more regular basis. Other reasons include knowing there are few shiny black models of my car left on the road to attend car shows, making it more unique, and because surely the economy will be better by then, affording me the money I’d need for show entry fees, right? I can only hope. That said, I will not compromise our budget by paying to sit for hours in some broiling-hot parking lot in the hopes that people will still drool over something I own.

Some sad wildlife news to report: I haven’t seen a single squirrel around our place in a solid month. Methinks the five new cats we have wandering around the neighborhood have ended that little ‘return to nature’ streak we had going here. And when you think of it, six years after reintroduction into our neighborhood with relatively few threats at the time, the squirrels had become not quite fearless but probably less wary. I miss them something fierce. Our wallets, however, do not. We may have buckets of nuts going into the fall months. There’s nothing bad about that. Additionally, there’s nothing much to clean up after, regarding nuts pulled out of the feeding boxes and discarded willy-nilly around the patio.

The loss of squirrels around here might also be an indication of why the wandering cats aren’t interested in catching our moles. When you think about it, why would a cat go to all the trouble stalking and waiting, stalking and waiting for a mole to pop an earth-encrusted nose or paw up out of the mucky ground when a squirrel is more apt to skip, hop, and jump along a nearby fence top? Most cats, even outdoor cats, prefer to keep themselves clean. I can imagine one’s thoughts after digging up a mole. ‘Pew, pew, spit, whorf. Who put all this dirt in my mouth? Pew, pew, spit.’

Or maybe that’s just me over-thinking the situation again.

The plus side out of this is that while the squirrels appear to be gone, none have been killed and left in bits at our place. This is a first, and something worth celebrating in a macabre sort of way. Longtime readers here remember my emotional struggles with having to clean up after the daily and often gruesome murder of everything and anything that flew, hopped, and/or moved by a kill-for-the-sake-of-killing neighbor cat. Our backyard is basically a graveyard filled full grown rabbits, rodents of all local kinds, and dozens, if not hundreds of birds.

Then, a couple of years after that cat finally left the area, our backyard seemed to become the final hospice house for sick, injured, dying birds. I got through that period by convincing myself the poor things ended up here not to stab me in my heart, but because they knew our backyard was a safe zone, providing food, water, and shelter through to their demise.

Anyway, we miss the squirrels, don’t miss the cost we’ve come to accept with feeding them, don’t miss cleaning up after them, by one way or the other.

July 12, 2009

Apparently, the summer is ripe for insomnia and I’ve caught it. Twice last week, I went to bed at a good, reasonable time only to snap awake three hours later and not able to get back to sleep until some five, six hours later. I never take naps and consume the bare minimum of caffeine anymore, when at all. Nope, this insomnia is stress and overwork induced. Been there before, know this to be true.

But, but, but, you’ll say, but B, you don’t have a job. How can you be overworked? Jeez, if things are bothering you that badly, just skip laundry for a day and stop watching for the next bothersome thing coming from your neighbors. Get over yourself. You’re not the only one with stress, you know.

Yeah, yeah, I know all this. It’s a broken record playing in my head. It’s all the crackles, snaps, and pops that trip me up. I want to write but I have too much reading to do. I have too much reading to do because I’m in multiple writing groups and reading is required. I’m in writing groups because I want to learn writing but I can’t write because I’m spending all my brain-power trying to understand what I’m reading.

Lots of writers can divide their time between writing and reading and enjoy both at the same time. Me, not so much. I love to read. I love to write. In order to do a reasonably good job on both, I have to do it on my own timeline or else, both suffer. Right now, my writing is suffering horribly, worse than horribly. But the time-sensitive reading material keeps pouring in.

Trying to keep up is starting to feel like death by potato peeler; a little top layer slice here and there followed by days of pain and swollen redness as a scab forms, then just as the scab is almost ready to fall off on it’s own, another cut is made. Over and over.

That analogy is true enough and reason enough why I will never be able to post this entry. Too many writing group friends read here. This would be my writing group participation death warrant, and with me running Writer’s Workshop this year, I can’t let that happen just yet. After though, all bets are off. They simply have to be for my mental health.

July 12, 2009

I’ve bitten off more than I can chew and no one is angrier about that than I at myself. There is no relief forthcoming until December and only then if I grasp life’s potato peeler and shave off parts. I need to become comfortable with saying no. I need to become comfortable with being a heartless bitch.

P.S. After half a day spent and hundreds if not thousands of gallons of water used, Edna, our backyard mole, continues her destructive path. I tossed and turned all night believing I had, at last, drowned her yesterday. This morning proved that assumption wrong.

July 14, 2009

Mole Wars: Day 25 – Backyard location.
Score: Edna and Allard Mole – 25. Humans – Zip. Nada. A big fat goose egg.

Yesterday, after reburying, firmly reburying, the latest batch of discharged MoleEarth ™ I spread granular insecticide everywhere except along the back boulder wall. That’s the area I want the mole to move to because just a little beyond that is much greener pastures where Edna and Allard can frolic and play their days away undisturbed by us – Mole Paradise, I’m certain.

This morning’s backyard check showed a little MoleEarth ™ discharge from between retaining wall blocks over on the west side where we were working over the past weekend. Within the time it took me to walk back to the garage to get the Official MoleStick ™ (about thirty seconds), more muddy dirt was pushed out. We’ve come full circle. I re-tamped the earth back in between the blocks with the blunt end of the Official MoleStick ™, adding a ridiculous amount of gravel from around the fountain this time because even though I know Edna’s not having much trouble pushing out rocks, it does slow her up a bit.

Then I re-watered the area, making sure water was left standing in those holes. Now I wait. In about forty minutes, I say because if Edna’s anything, she’s punctual, she ought to start excavating further down the retaining wall block row. Or she’ll take the tunnel that runs under the large patio square and push out along the back of the fountain like she did last Saturday when we were convinced we had her on the run.

It’s the other way around. The Moles have us on the run. As if I didn’t already know this.

Next weekend, we’re going to dip into the grocery money and buy a few bags of sharp-edged gravel at one of the local home improvement stores. And from now on, instead of pushing just the clayish MoleEarth ™ back into each of the excavated holes, we’ll fill it with gravel too. As I expected would happen but hoped wouldn’t actually be the case, the double layer retaining block edging surrounding all the beds back there, is starting to sag in spots. Now we’ve got more work on our hands, as if I have time for any of this. I think Edna will have a field day with the gravel but overall, she’ll tire of the extra work and in the end (said because I believe there will be one for one of us) we shouldn’t be left with too much structural damage. As long as the house doesn’t cave in.

Switching gears quickly, I just witnessed a woman try to hand deliver a cake and a whole bunch of food to our dead neighbor’s house and get turned away at the door by the surviving teenage kids, similar to how we were treated two weeks ago when we took over flowers. Too bad this keeps happening over and over again when the surviving adult is away from home. Either this woman didn’t know our neighbor had passed away, or she’s two weeks too late for the memorial. Regardless, she wasn’t allowed in the house and the kids sent her packing. Glad it wasn’t just us but still, so odd.

July 16, 2009

News Flash: We have at least one squirrel left in the neighborhood. It hopped, skipped, and jumped through our backyard just moments ago, off to go shopping for cat toys, no doubt.

A few days ago, I found our very first live garter snake here. I’ve always liked garter snakes, clear back to that summer in 1960 when my grandmother made garter snake soup. Sure, I was only four years old but I remember the taste and it wasn’t bad at all.

Back to our neighborhood and a few years ago, The Dimmer kids who hunted down everything living down in the green space, before it was completely fenced off to humans, would kill garter snakes and throw them over the fence into our backyard. I think they thought it would scare us. Not a chance. The snake we had last week was living and uninjured from what I could tell but it was also very young and way too small to catch and consume a mole.

The bad thing was right before I saw the little guy, I had spread granular grub insecticide throughout the area in hopes of cutting off the moles’ food supply. I figured the snake was officially on borrowed time after that.

Haven’t seen it since but I was surprised by a large frog just this morning while I was out picking blueberries. It was big enough to make ‘splatting’ sounds as it hopped across the walkway. It stopped long enough for me to get a good look at it and I proclaim it as looking good and healthy. Don’t know what it’s eating exactly but probably not dead or dying grubs, unfortunately not moles either.

Mole wars are entering Day 27 with Allard Mole picking back up his activity in the front yard. Edna’s excavation continues out back but with a slight reduction of frequency for some reason. Its way too early to start believing I’ve made an impact on her preferred food supply.

July 17, 2009

Mid week, I attended a car event held in North Portland. Hundreds of hot rods and street rods attend, every Wednesday throughout the summer in fact. I don’t own either but they like my car enough to let me in and allow me to park on the ‘grass’ (mostly dead and patchy with dirt nowadays) next to some really sweet, shiny rides.

A large number of car club people went as well and we all parked together in a rather choice location. Having attended this event before with the old Monkey Car Club I used to belong to, I knew the options for the day: Sit for hours or walk for hours. For non-car lovers, it’d make for a terribly boring day. There’s no use spending any amount of time wiping and re-wiping the cars because there’s simply too much dirt and crap in the air. Such as it is when you’re parked on grass. And as it was, the nearby cottonwoods were releasing their puff and the dead grass was mostly covered in white, sneeze-inducing fluff. Amazingly, the stuff didn’t seem to bother my allergies at all. Must be all that good immunity I’ve built up after suffering through that bad cold I had a couple of weeks ago.

Anyhoo, I walked a little, not anywhere enough to see every last vehicle there but enough to keep from getting sore muscles or the dreaded summer leg cramps from being out in the hot, baking sun trudging across hard packed earth without enough water for hours on end.

Mostly I sat with our group, in a folding chair I brought along, people-watching, car observing, and jotting down notes for future story writing. Twice I was asked about what I was jotting down and twice I was teased about it, both inrather non-flattering ways.

You see, there used to be a guy in this club who came out of the closet a couple years back by claiming he hadn’t really been an insurance salesman for the last twenty years; he was an ex-assassin for the CIA and he had spent the last few years writing fictional stories about his adventures. No one believed him, least of all his wife until he put her on his short-lived ‘author’ payroll. Then, for a short while, she was his biggest fan.

It all went south when he couldn’t find a publisher to take him seriously. This is a pretty typical response when the basic concepts of grammar elude the writer, obvious in this case even to a newbie writer like me who regularly slaughters the English language.

This guy then chose a big scam company, the very biggest of these con businesses, to publish his work at a terribly high price. He thought he’d simply get around the publishing model, eliminate the middle man, and shortcut his way to riches. His chosen con company made wild promises that he’d be the next Tom Clancy, printed out a few copies, and took his money and ran. Dozens if not hundreds or more writers have fought to get their money back after going through the exact same thing, but I guess that company uses all those people’s money on lawyers, very good lawyers at that, since no one really has gotten anything back. Ever.

Writers are usually taught early on that the Number One Rule in Writing is that the money always flows TO the author, not the other way around. Never pay someone to publish your work. Never pay someone to represent you. Never pay someone to read or critique your work. Pay only if you are desperate or want to pay an editor or ghostwriter for some reason or you really feel it will help you in some way to become a better writer in the long run. Otherwise, and in my own opinion, it’s a scam.

Exception to this rule, and again, in my own personal opinion, is that you simply want to see your work in print and you have no intention of wanting to see it for sale on the shelves of your local brick and mortar bookstore like Barnes & Noble or Borders. On the whole, booksellers won’t sell self-published works. This supposed ex-CIA guy thought he’d be the exception to that rule and he failed.

Back to my stint at the car show, twice I was asked about what I was writing. Twice I said I was jotting down thoughts and impressions for a car book I’m working on. Twice I was reminded that I was going to be just like Mr. Ex-CIA and become the latest laughing stock of the club. At one point, someone said they didn’t believe I was writing anything at all because if so, I would have something published by now.

These are all pretty powerful words coming from people who’ve never written anything themselves or have read a single word of what I’ve written to date. They all seemed to think the process from idea to published book to blockbuster movie with lots of explosions and sexy movie stars is six months, tops. And if it’s not made into a movie, the book might as well remain a figment of someone’s defective imagination.

I was prepared for all of this though, or so I thought. If nothing else, these people are a reliable slice of reality, however skewed it might sound here, and yes, they are brutally honest in their beliefs. It’s all part of the tough skin a writer needs in a world overflowing with rejection.

I had printed out and brought along a chapter of the car book I’m working on. And had anyone said they read fiction, I would have handed it over for their amusement. But it would seem that the club is full of fiction-hating readers (odd since most profess to read anything that comes from Limbaugh). Too bad for me, I guess. I didn’t get the chance to become the latest laughing stock, at least, not yet. But the next time I’m caught going on and on about the car club being my target audience, someone probably ought to just smack me. My target audience is out there, somewhere. I’m still certain of it.

July 20, 2009

Three car related events in one week is two and a half events too many to one who hasn’t done that sort of thing in a while. It’s just as well I got it out of my system though. One hundred degree weather and our hermitic summer lifestyle is just days away. This is the time of year that sucks for us, particularly WS who, because of his MS and his love of being able to stand upright and speak without slurring, can’t allow himself to overheat a single degree. Me, on the other hand, grew up in hot weather and hate it with a passion. Plus there’s all that having to hover around WS and make sure he’s feeling okay every waking second of the day.

The insomnia returned last night. Or else it was the store bought pizza that I knew better than to eat. But I did because I was away from home most of Sunday and had had one slice of thin cheese to eat all day and all the foul-tasting water I wanted. When I got back home, I was irrationally hungry and ate the first thing pushed up under my nose. Bad idea.

I learned a lot over the weekend, car-wise and car club people-wise. Removing the entire front end of a 2008 Corvette isn’t as hard as you might imagine. Also, apparently most fiberglass custom companies haven’t improved their processes since 1972 and are still pumping out crappy parts. I remember my first fiberglass fender swap out and it wasn’t pretty. Yesterday, I witnessed a grown man cry over the pathetic excuse that was a set of fenders he received. Not sure if that was due to the overall poor fit or the fact that he had thrown so much good money after bad on his project.

Some people will always remain the same – mostly annoying and blind to what’s going on around them. Always complaining, forever believing (and unfortunately succeeding) in the ability to buy car show wins for themselves. Carrying on that ‘Us versus Them’ mentality if for no other reason than that it’s fun to stir the pot. Not believing that drinking and driving is worth worrying about ‘because they’ve always done it and nothing, in over 50 years of driving experience, has adversely happened, and besides, traffic cops are looking for young kids drinking, not respectable sixty or seventy year old drunks.’ I hate to generalize here but I’m coming out of this time of my life truly believing that every driver I ever see behind the wheel of a Corvette on the road will have had at least a taste of alcohol once already that day.

But there were good observances too, things that spoke to me, taught me new stuff, and reaffirmed old beliefs. I’m on the right track with what I’m writing right now. I took along a part to let people read but everyone was so busy working on cars, no one had time to sit still for ten minutes to read anything…

…which might explain why those new fiberglass fenders didn’t work out. Instructions? ‘Those are for dumb people.’ Or people with more money than sense.

July 22, 2009

I have a new friend. Introducing Mikey.

Every evening, Mikey sits outside our kitchen window for up to an hour on the rim of a tomato cage surrounded by inviting, hummingbird-friendly flowers. Every evening, I sit out there with him. Sometimes I talk to him, asking how things are going out there in the wild with everyone cutting back on costs, are there enough flowers, if he’s doing okay, if he’s a human imprinted bird. Sometimes he talks to me, squeaking on and on about the weather, how there’s never enough flowers but how yummy these flowers look, how he’d have arrived sooner but some upstart had cut him off in traffic on his way here. Then he poops on the green tomatoes and gets busy sipping nectar.

You do wash your homegrown tomatoes don’t you? Okay, just checking.

The other day, a low-level racket was going on out back, down in Cap’t Dan’s yard, close to our boulder wall property line, and after an hour or so, I had to take a peek. It sounded as if he might be trimming his shrubs but if that were the case, it was taking way too long. He had half a dozen three-foot tall shrubs evenly spaced along the back of his property, about two feet away from the boulder wall, in a wide, red-gravel filled planting bed. I thought they were Japanese Boxwoods. Over the past five years, they had grown nicely although, in my opinion, were in need of some shaping to remain so.

Imagine my shock at seeing that he had cut them all down, completely to the ground.

In addition, he cut down several tall trees he had planted six years ago along the sides of his backyard, including a beautiful, long-needled pine whose sprawled shape often reminded me of a high, lonely, wind swept steppe. The birds and squirrels loved that tree. I loved that tree.

I’m saddened by this destruction and loss of wildlife habitat. I don’t know for certain what Cap’t Dan was thinking but I’m sure it has something to do with being out of work and unable to maintain his property. His usually lush, park-like grass is dead. The red-gravel planting beds are overrun with weeds. He and his wife sit back there often, on their small deck, after the sun goes down, smoking and talking quietly, too quiet for eavesdropping, not that I would do that intentionally anyway. Mostly, they sit with their heads hung low and look as if they’ve been beaten down.

It’s a tough world out there. I don’t expect to see things turn around any time soon, but for the first time this year, instead of continuing to feel we’re in a holding pattern, as if we’re all in a holding pattern, I’ve started to look forward to this fall and the cold, cold winter because those seasons seem more appropriate for these economic times, when we’ll learn to make do with what we have instead of buying new stuff none of us can afford, and when thoughts of family and friends bundled close together, working together to help one another seem to be the highest.

I remember the economic impacts of the mid-seventies, again in the early nineties, and yet again in the dot-com meltdown summer of 2001 before 9-11. It could be argued that some of us have become addicted to that fear, that shell-shock of job loss and uncertainty. But others have become addicted to that warm, fuzzy feel of knowing we’re not in this mess alone, that everyone (well, almost everyone it seems) is taking a little more time, smiling more often, patting a shoulder here and there, listening with a compassionate ear to the woes a lot of us face.

We can all use more friends during these times.

July 24, 2009

My butt aches. My butt muscles, that is. And today, my brain muscle aches too. Sounds like the perfect opportunity to catch up on sleep, if all stuff I should be doing and am not doing would lay off their guilt trips.

Yesterday, I spend a good six hours working in the yard – mowing, trimming, hedge shaping, etc. The overgrown bushes needed a summer shaping and that gave me the opportunity to discover what is was about our Barberry bushes The Rental kids have been so enamored with lately.

They’ve been stuffing the interiors with plastic drink bottles. Ha, funny little shits, aren’t they? About as funny as the large, grade A chicken eggs they keep placing under the blue juniper tree between our houses. Only Santa knows what the point of that is. I can only assume they feel hilarity will ensue once the eggs rot, crack, and stink to high heaven. I sure am glad the rental agency still feels we don’t have a right to complain because as a childless couple, we couldn’t begin to understand the innocence of children’s pranks. I wonder if the agency will listen once someone gets hurt. I doubt it. I mean, c’mon, they’re only eggs, it’s only ten pounds of plastic bottles, it’s only a threat to kill wandering cats.

We have laws that supposedly protect children from adults. I want a law that protects adults from children. I think it’s only fair.

Anyway, all that bending and stretching doing yard work has my butt and upper thigh muscles sore today. I also overheard a bunch of neighbor stuff but I’ll save that information for another time. What makes my brain ache is a bunch of other stuff not related to all that stuff I ought to be doing.

WS is working twelve hour days now. I think he expects me to consider that the norm now, and I would if he were being paid hourly. But he’s not. Doesn’t look like any raises will be coming this year either which will put it at five years since employees there have seen one. That wouldn’t be so bad if WS wasn’t already doing the job two upgrades from what he’s being paid for. And let’s not forget that salary decrease earlier this year. I think another one’s coming. Lay off round 24 is just around the corner too.

So after a twelve hour day, WS comes home and is hungry for dinner. Me, having no idea when he’ll be home and wanting him to have a nice, hot meal, has either begun cooking when I ‘think’ he’ll probably be home, or I won’t start a thing until after I hear him pull into the garage, regardless of how long my planned meal takes to prepare. Here lie problems galore.

If I start preparing dinner when I ‘think’ he’ll be home, more often than not, he’s still two hours from actually arriving. You’d think a simple phone call on either one of our parts would help my timing here but ninety-nine percent of the time, he’s in a meeting away from his phone, and for whatever reason, doesn’t seem to get my recorded message that late in the day to return the call.

He himself has just recently said that his late working hours gelling with my dinner preparation plans are unacceptable and that he would call each evening to let me know when he’ll be coming home.

Hasn’t happened. The best laid plans…..and all that. Ask him about it and he’ll sigh like he does when he’s annoyed (and believe me, WS is annoyed at everything), and he’ll say something about how busy the day was, how horribly busy, how unbelievably busy, how challenging, how ‘insert worn out descriptive adverb I’ve heard a thousand times here’ the day was, making him unable to call. Problem One.

Problem Two. I can’t stand eating late, late meaning after seven. Yeah, I know. It’s so cosmopolitan, so European to eat late. I like cosmopolitan, I like European, but my belly fat LOVES it even more. I always feel, no matter how light the meal, that I’m a big, fat slug after eating late. This past couple of weeks unfortunately, we’re finishing up eating around 7-7:30 most nights. But then again, I’m not the one bringing home the bacon right now so I don’t have a right to complain. But for the past dozen years, I should have.

Problem Three and Four relate to lack of dining out funds and our codependence to one another. We ought to call for a new Rule: Unless we’re both home at a reasonable dinner hour, we fend for ourselves. This would include cleaning up (completely) after ourselves and not leaving a mess for the other.

Okay fine. I’m beginning to think this might work but then, really, why stop there?

After dinner, WS often works on his laptop in bed until midnight or well after. I usually watch TV in bed until after the eleven o’clock news. Sometimes I’m awake hours longer; sometimes I don’t even make it to the weather report. But the one constant is that he, on his laptop in bed next to me, is bothersome. As long as laptops have been in existence, he’s worked on one from bed. I’m not at all happy to report that for whatever reason, it’s gotten more bothersome the older I’ve grown. I mean, after fifteen years or so, I should be used to this by now, right?

I’m not used to it. In fact, I’m beginning to find it rude. So why just stop at fending for ourselves every evening for dinner? Why don’t I just ask for my own bedroom too? Away from glowing, blinking, drive-surging laptops, away from TVs left on until three or four a.m., away from snoring and getting up half a dozen times a night to use the bathroom only to fall asleep on the toilet and forcing me to use a different one in the house, away from showering sounds at dawn, and the jingling sound of dresser draw pulls, the metallic grind of the closet door handle, and the soft, muffled thud of closing bedroom doors. What would be wrong with having one’s own bedroom? What would be wrong with being one of ‘those’ kinds of couples?

My child-hating grandparents on my father’s side had separate bedrooms and I always thought that strange. I always said I’d never be one of those kinds of people. But then again, I didn’t have a husband who insisted every horizontal surface be covered and wrapped with thick, clear plastic, who stunk of rotten cabbage farts, and whose full-set dentures popped out every minute and a half as if they had a mind of their own. My grandmother liked flowery, phoo-phoo things that her husband couldn’t stand the sight of. She bathed herself hourly in thick, white, gardenia-scented powder, except for her blue-rinsed hair which she allowed only her half-blind hairdresser to wash and I’m here to say wasn’t nearly often enough.

As hated grandchildren, we weren’t allowed free rein in their home. We had to sit and fidget on the plastic-covered divan that looked like it might have been brought over the Oregon Trail from a brothel in St. Louis, across from an imposing seven-foot tall grandfather clock that thundered the importance of each second wasted. We never saw either of their bedrooms; those doors were always kept closed and locked. For all I know, my grandfather had dancing midgets in his while hers had dogs stapled to the walls.

If WS and I ever build another house, and at this point, I’ve given serious doubt to that ever happening again, I’ll investigate the possibly of having two master bedrooms created, each with its own full bathroom. Doesn’t mean we’d use them both. One would be ours and the other a nice guest room with private bath, just like the better Bed & Breakfast places have. But I think we’re through with new houses. I think we’ll end up in some small, single story ranch like WS’s mother because of health issues and because of financial ones related to elderly health issues, which I guess beats being confined in a bedroom with half a dozen or more of the same sex, with cranky, underpaid day and night nurses, and a convenient ‘bathroom’ anywhere you go, as long as it’s in your pants.

Last night, WS didn’t come home from work until after 8:30 p.m. I didn’t want to hear an explanation at that point. I didn’t want to hear anything at that point. Stupidly, I had started dinner at 5:30 thinking he’d be home around 6. At the very least, he’d call because he said he’d start doing that. Didn’t happen. At 7 I ate dinner alone, that is after I cleaned up the latest round of cat barf. I don’t know what it was but every pet in this house barfed yesterday. After WS got home, I told him if after eating his cold dinner, if he barfed, he had to clean it up himself. Then I left him to his meal and I came upstairs to answer email. Not surprising, he was on his laptop in bed shortly afterward, but put it away when I joined him. Soon after that, he was snoring logs while I fought through insomnia until two a.m.

Yes, I was mad, still am mad but not because he came home late, not because he didn’t call to say when he’d be home, but because this is just another one of those things he says he’s going to do but then, for whatever reason, doesn’t do it. I feel like two-thirds of my life I’m expected to live alone (which is not why I got married in the first place) and the other third I’m expected to wait on him hand and foot (because if I don’t, my job is doubled by having to clean up after him anyway because lately, he sucks at it).

More importantly, I feel as though I’m being lied to over and over and while I know I could be lied to about whole lot worse things, stating intentions and then doing them used to be a core, foundation component of our relationship. Used to be. I guess that’s gone the way of job place raises – out the window, and I, as the employee, just stick around and put up with it.

WS’s big company boss is in town this week and despite all the calls to not spend a cent, his department is being taken out to dinner (a last supper perhaps?). This hasn’t happened in years. It’s for department employees only, no spouses, significant others, or children allowed. So I’m on my own for the day and for dinner this evening.

I’ve marinated skinless chicken in Teriyaki sauce and plan on grilling those with fresh zucchini from a friend’s garden and Roma tomatoes from our own. I might enjoy half a bottle of wine with this or I might make a pitcher of Mojitos, muddling fresh mint from a planter out back. Then I’ll clean up, start the dishwasher, and call it a night. Just about the time I’m falling asleep, WS will probably come in smelling of Olive Garden pasta and salad, and with his laptop. Within the hour, I’ll be downstairs, staring a package of uncooked fettuccini in the face and wondering what, either from the refrigerator or from our relationship, could be substituted for cheese.

July 27, 2009

Thus far today, I have:

Fit into an old pair of shorts.
Rescued a honey bee from certain, immediate death.
Found new MoleSign ™ in our backyard.
Re-spread granular insecticide believing it’s the key to mole riddance.
Brought in all empty trash and recycling containers.
Hosed out uber-stinky yard debris bin. Must have been the neighbor’s rotten egg.
Deadheaded all flowers.
Picked one of last batches of blueberries of the season.
Had yesterday’s sun tea and air-popped popcorn for breakfast.
Exercised – weights, treadmill, first time in a month.
Finished weekend laundry.

The rest of the day shall consist of:

Staying cool. It’ll hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit here today.
Keeping the house as cool as possible. It really starts broiling inside after 4pm.
Wrapping up summer book reading in preparation for a month of manuscript reading.
Tackling an edit of a chapter of something I’m writing.
Light eating the rest of the day. Heat is the only thing that zaps my constant hunger.
Hopefully, another episode of ‘The Sopranos’ off DVD. Okay, so we’re late comers to that game. So what?

July 29, 2009

53. Still don’t have any problem with being this ‘old.’

20. Still like it here much, much, MUCH better than Phoenix. The amount of muchness can’t nor shouldn’t be measured too much due to the shear volume of muchness contained within the universally recognized much measure container. Let’s just all agree it’s a lot.

106. The temperature expected to hit here today. (Actual record breaking temperature was 108 here in Vancouver, WA. Luckily, we missed most of it when WS surprised me with wanting us to drive to the coast for the day.)

July 30, 2009

I ran into MsNoManagementSkills yesterday on my birthday, at WalMart of all places. My vain side dreaded the possibility of her seeing me there but now that that’s over with, I can live with myself.

After she commented about how I’ve gained weight and why would I ever dye my hair blonde and who did I think I was growing it long (all typical, socially-inept behavior coming from her), she told me that even with all their financial woes, having burned through every last dollar from divorce, stock option buy outs, inheritance, and ex-jobs, her and her husband [DorkMaster] bought a sailboat.

Originally, DorkMaster’s mother wanted a sailboat and she asked her son and MsNo to go in halves on the cost. Then, if and when she found another ‘investor,’ MsNo’s portion would be only a third of the cost.

But DorkMaster’s mother has bigger eyes than wallet or sense (I’m quoting MsNo here) because it turned out she wanted a forty thousand dollar boat and well, MsNo and DorkMaster couldn’t afford a ninety-nine cent bathtub toy boat.

But they all went looking and shopping for sailboats anyway and somewhere along the line, they ran across a five thousand dollar, 22-foot, salvaged sailboat. Salvaged. As in, its mast had snapped off and at one point, the boat had sunk. Possibly an insurance job. Amazingly enough it sounds, DorkMaster’s mother exercised some common sense and said she didn’t want it. She was still looking for that ‘fully staffed America’s Cup sailing yacht,’ not something that I pictured as an algae covered, water damaged and cracked fiberglass hulled craft.

But on the good side, MsNo said the salvaged boat had new sails and I guess that was good enough for them because DorkMaster bought it. MsNo was at WalMart simply to pick up a few things to stock the boat’s refrigerator since going out the prior evening proved that there was nothing onboard. Apparently, she thought, or was told, the boat was stocked. Stocked with what, I have no idea and I didn’t ask.

Years ago, when we first moved to the Pacific Northwest, I was certain WS and I would one day own a boat, one big enough to sail and live in here and there if we so choose to do so. I mean, there’s so much water here and I love water. At the time, I investigated the costs and upkeep maintenance and sailing school schedules and insurance and found the whole thing was just not in the cards for us. This doesn’t mean I don’t occasionally read up on boat stuff now and then. But it’s not like it’s a dream for me, just mental masturbation, I guess.

So in between MsNo going on and on about how cool she said she was now because she’s a boat owner, I asked what moorage fees would cost them and she stopped talking instantly. She didn’t know what that meant. I asked where they were docked and she said in at the downtown Portland waterfront, which means someone is paying or has to pay a moorage fee. I didn’t go further to ask about insurance or maintenance or what they’re going to do with it come winter. She’ll figure it out.

The best part of this story however, in my opinion, is what happened on their first sail outing. They packed up DorkMaster’s three kids and bought everyone but themselves lifejackets (because nothing fit, she said) and went out for a quick sail around Portland’s waterfront. How hard could sailing be with the Internet and all? She said DorkMaster had stayed up most of the previous night online studying and he was confident the waves would be his.

The two oldest kids loved it, she said, and tweeted about it the entire time. But the youngest, a boy age eight and MsNo’s favorite, wailed at the top of his lungs, screaming that they were all going to drown.

Nothing would quiet the kid. MsNo said everything made it worse. Hugs, promises, threats of violence, nothing helped. She said he just would not stop screaming. Finally, she said she couldn’t stand it any longer and demanded DorkMaster to do something, to do anything. At that point in her telling of the story, I’m thinking DorkMaster’s probably got better sailing skills than parenting skills because he refuses to parent his kids, and it turns out, I wasn’t far off course.

Instead of heading back to dock, DorkMaster begged a few of beers off a couple of guys in a passing boat. MsNo’s not a drinking woman she professed (yet she’ll down a bottle of wine like it’s water, but I guess she doesn’t consider that drinking) but she started right then and there. She said she learned to like beer after the first sip, saying it ‘felt like the right thing to do given the circumstances.’ It was only later that DorkMaster said his intention was for his son to drink the beer to relax and quiet him down.

Meanwhile, the boy had gone down into the cabin, had whipped out his cell phone and called his real mother…who called the police and the Portland Coast Guard and the next thing MsNo knew, a Coast Guard boat with lights flashing and sirens blaring was ‘bull-horning’ at them to lower their sails and prepare to be boarded.

So there they are, DorkMaster and MsNo, trying to figure out how to sail for the first time ever, and then how to stop on command all while chugging beer and with two underage kids on deck both of whom just happened to have taken their lifejackets off sometime previous.

And out of the blue, here comes the third kid, the youngest, the crying boy, clamoring up out of the cabin, across the deck, over the rail, and right into the river, screaming all the while, “They’re drowning me!”

I guess everything worked out after that. The Coast Guard plucked the kid out of the water, gave DorkMaster a ticket or two, and a stern comment about taking boating classes.

MsNo didn’t have much more to say about their first time out other than that she had to get back so they could go replace the youngest kid’s phone before they went out on the boat again in a few hours. She said it turned out the boy was afraid of the sound of the wind in the sails so they’re going to use the motor only from now on.

And before she left to get in line at the checkout, and with a move most unlike her because once she starts talking about herself, you can’t get her to switch subjects, she questioned the length of my shorts at my age. Yep, still glad I don’t work with her anymore and if I knew of a way to get her to move back to Eastern Washington and out of my town, I’d not rethink getting a boat, but on spending money I don’t have to make her move happen.

July 31, 2009

MsNo’s boating update:

MsNo sent out another one of her mailing list emails and it sounds as if I wasn’t the only one to whom she shared her new boat and DorkMaster’s kids adventures with.

“Just wanted to update every one on [DorkMaster Kid #3]. He’s okay now if we don’t hoist the sales. He and [DorkMaster’s ex-wife] said they were playing a trick on [DorkMaster] and they didn’t mean anything buy it.

This email is to reassure every one that every thing’s okay. I didn’t want any one to think we were psycho parents.”

Psycho parents? Me think that? Naw…

August 1, 2009

I just spent the past half an hour watching Cap’t Dan board up his house. Is he abandoning the property? Has he gotten paranoid about people looking inside? Is he preparing for a police swat team to flush him out? Is he trying to insulate the windows from the week’s heat? (Here’s a hint for Cap’t Dan: The heat is gone for the time being.)

Every year, he puts a little air conditioning unit in his upstairs bedroom window and plugs up the rest of that window space with raw, unpainted plywood. Yeah, it looks real ‘pretty’ to look at, I can tell you. The plywood also gets drenched several times over from rain by the time he remembers to take it down. Rain plus unfinished, unpainted wood plus hours of direct summer sun has got to equal a warped, splintery mess.

This year, he’s got the dinky air conditioning unit in the downstairs living room window and the plywood blocking the rest of the open window. But here’s the thing: He’s got another sheet of plywood up blocking the light from the other half of the window, and he’s plywood-blocked out the rest of the windows in his house too. No other air conditioning units, just plywood. Lots and lots of brown plywood (on a pale grey house – Très chic!).

Here’s a second tip for Cap’t Dan: If you hadn’t cut down all your trees last week, yes, even those two tall, leafy ones that grew in front of your now lovely, plywood-ed window, your house might have been a tad cooler inside.

I’m sure he’s got a very good reason for this latest handy work. I just don’t know what that might be.

We had an unfortunately run in with Mr. Dimmer the other day. He’s still looking for a way to become the neighborhood hero, now that our sick neighbor has died without his alleged soon-to-be-firefighter help. Knowing a smidge about animal behavior and having hand-fed opossums, both young and adults years ago, I’m not sure if I believe his story or not but here it is:

He said he was watching the opossum I told him about a month or so ago, climb along the top of his fence, during daylight hours (1st error in story, in my opinion) with a full load of eight babies straddling it’s back (possible 2nd error although I’ve seen something similar, I wouldn’t call it ‘straddling’) and he saw one of the babies fall off and land in his yard. The mother opossum froze on the fence and made clicking sounds, obviously talking to her fallen baby (Yes, they do this).

Mr. Dimmer said he didn’t want to let his dog out to get it (gee, how humane) so instead, he put on gloves and went out and put it back up on the fence in front of the mother who stayed still and watched. He said he was certain the mother would attack him (hmm, we’re talking about a opossum here, not a bear). Then he lost interest due to what he said was his ADD and doesn’t know if the baby climbed back on board or not but he didn’t find any more or the mother opossum in his yard later in the day (not that I would think it would be out and about when it was 108 degrees that afternoon).

But he was telling everyone and anyone he saw outside in the neighborhood that evening that he rescued a baby opossum and from the way he was telling it, which I noticed kind of changed a little each time I overheard it, I think he wanted a medal or a ribbon or something. Still looking to be publicly recognized as a hero. So I told him quite clearly that it was a kind thing he did and that most people would have let their dogs at it or like our neighbor behind us at the rental house, beat it to pulp with a shovel.

Before he could reply with anything further, our dead neighbor’s rude teenage kids came home and mouthed off something about their surviving parent replacing their dead one with a dog and that they had to go back out in the heat to pick it up at the airport. Whine, whine, whine, complain, complain about not being dog lovers, hating the thought of picking up dog poop, having to feed it and exercise it because no, a small dog that could ride in a purse wasn’t good enough. No, their parent had to go all the way to Michigan where apparently, they only grow big dogs. More complaining and then, after a quick trip indoors, they were off again in their dead parent’s car presumably, to pick up a big, expensive, unwanted dog.

I haven’t seen the dog out and about over there as of yet. I’m sure it’s cute and/or handsome as most dogs are, in my eyes. And perhaps the surviving parent does need the kind of companionship that can only come from a four-legged friend. The timing is rather soon after the funeral, less than a month, and not a soul living over there is of the athletic type, more the couch potato variety with strong video game wrists. But what disturbs me is that the kids feel their lost parent is being replaced by a dog while the surviving parent doesn’t seem to notice or care about that being the consensus. Ouch.

August 4, 2009

So, I’ve decided the dark green Scotch moss and the yellow-green Irish moss garden I planted under the Japanese maple in our yard five years ago has to go. The Irish and Scotch never really played well together anyway (the Scotch was winning hands down). I really loved the mounded look but the problem was that one of the batches I originally planted came with clover in it and try as I may, I have failed miserably at getting rid of the stuff. This year, it’s taken over, sprouting up thick and dense through what I thought would be thicker and denser moss. And now, the clover’s going to seed, again, due to the hot weather we had last week. I can’t keep up any longer and so, I’m digging up the entire lot of it, moss and clover both and plan to pin down newspaper in some spots and cover the whole area with fresh bark dust. And use Preen as needed. I’m not terribly happy about any of this but frankly, I’m more tired of it looking like crap; crap being a kind descriptive word here.

And every time I start digging away, something about the sound of peeling sheets of dark green moss back from bark dust that hasn’t seen the light of day since 2004, draws Rental Kid Drummer Boy out from next door to ride and flip his skateboard over and over and over again. And unless I rapidly wrap up the area I’m working at and call it a day, I’m apt to start thinking of wrapping up something else in the form of a skateboard up side someone’s head.

We, that kid and I, either have the worst timing on Earth to show up at pretty much the same place at the same time day after day, or the best timing. Anyway, now that it’s somewhat cooler, I hope I’ll only need two or three more shots at the area to call it good and about ten minutes to spread last year’s remaining bag of bark, which regrettably, won’t be enough to do the entire yard, let alone the entire ex-mossed area.

Once school restarts (oh, please, hurry!) and I have at least the morning hours to myself out there, I have every intention of thinning out mounds of creeping Phlox, cutting out branches of some evergreens, and completely removing a couple of Azaleas, blue junipers, day lilies, and ancient heather. All perfect timing for cooler fall weather ahead. Our favorite season is that much closer.

August 5, 2009

What a weather change from yesterday. We hit 88 degrees here yesterday, almost reaching 90 for what would have been a record hot stretch. This morning, nothing but cool air and heavy cloud cover. I’m wearing socks to keep my sun-lovin’ toes warm so what does that tell you? Yep, it feels almost cold.

The rest of this week is packed full of WS’ work things I said I’d try to help out with, if with nothing else but lots of support for a huge presentation he has to make, a few doctor appointments, and a much needed dental visit.

The Queen may need to visit the vet Friday or Saturday in an hour or two in between all those other things if she doesn’t start eating again. We think it might be due to that hot weather stretch we had, although I think we were champs at keeping the pet room comfortable at 75 degrees. The Queen has never been a lover of heat and even with the blinds closed, she can tell when it’s hot outside. We’re trying to get food into her every three hours but it’s a struggle more often than not.

Later this weekend, I’ve committed myself to learning how to flush my car’s brake system, not because I really want to, although I always enjoy learning car things, but because my car’s brake fluid is completely black and that’s a bad thing.

Brake fluid should be flushed every three years or more frequently if you drive daily and/or drive hard. I don’t drive my car daily or particularly hard (I don’t Autocross it, for example) but the brake fluid is the original stuff from the factory and that makes it over seven years old. For me who lays claim to being Ms. Safety First when driving, this is not good and borders on being dangerous.

So I get to spend the day with Drill Sergeant Dave and Competition Boy and other instructional car enthusiasts including Fast Fat Man who has rebuilt his car’s engine with dual superchargers, putting out something like 720 horsepower which is all fine and good considering he himself weighs over 400 pounds. His wife isn’t much lighter. The mind boggles when seeing them both stuffed into their sports car with the doors closed. But they scoot down the highways like no one’s business.

When I originally mentioned I knew I needed to flush my brake fluid, I specifically said I thought I’d do it in the fall, maybe early spring 2010 even. Well, this car bunch seems to be like most people I know – they only hear the first 8-10 words. ‘I know I need to flush my brake fluid…’ The rest was lost, and continues to be no matter how many times I’ve been asked about it since.

Okay, fine. I’ll learn to change the dang stuff if for no other reason than to get those people off my back.

Actually, other than the cost of a quart (minimum) of brake fluid, the timing works out well. Come fall, I won’t have time to play around with working on my car. My time is booked even more solidly through mid December. I won’t have time to try to schedule use of the car club garage or to try to pull together the car people who have the right flushing tools I’d need. To make matters timelier, this group of car people is making their once-every-five-years trek across the country to Bowling Green, Kentucky on the 29th of this month. If that trip is anything like the last one the car club made together, no one will be speaking to one another by trip’s end after Labor Day, making my ability to schedule garage time and instructors all the more difficult if not outright impossible.

Better to go with the flow this time, get the work done while I can, and pull back away from the group afterward so I don’t have to choose sides or have to rely on them for something for the next year or so that it takes for them to speak to each other again.

Then, there’s that little matter of upcoming club board member elections in September, and if I’ve learned anything from being in a car club, it’s that if you don’t want to be nominated for a board position with all the heat, political executions, and emotional crap that comes along with it, don’t be the tallest blade of grass in the room.

August 10, 2009

Saturday’s day long brake fluid flush education session had me surrounded by so many socially-inept people and so little supply of Sporks with which to gouge my eyes out. Later I chided myself and thought I’d better work toward upping my tolerance level. What are a few pointedly awkward people close at hand over one day when next Thanksgiving weekend, I’ll be intentionally neck-deep in hundreds of them in downtown Portland…while celebrating another wedding anniversary; this time our twentieth? Not exactly how I had originally envisioned that would happen but the worldwide economic meltdown changed all that and if anything, WS and I keep trying hard to be adaptable.

Between car stuff, a couple of huge WS work things, and a writing/fan/convention planning thing, we’ve barely spent any time at home since last Wednesday. One of us have made it here on and off every day in order to keep The Queen fed three or four times a day – she’s eating again and though very thin, is still just as loud, ornery, and mobile as ever. It’s Maxx and Seth who have missed us the most. After working on a project until 4 a.m., this morning, Seth won’t let me out of his sight. Even now, he’s close at hand and reaches out to touch me with his marshmallow paws every so often. The week ahead looks less busy. He’ll be sick of me by this time tomorrow.

While I was learning how to flush my brake fluid last Saturday, and in between all the hand’s-on ZO6 projects I was asked to help with (how so many older men have come to be comfortable with having a chubby, middle-aged woman work on their Corvette ZO6’s, I’m not absolutely certain), I finally got someone from the car club to read a chapter from the Car Novel I’m writing.

I would have preferred a man to read it since it’s intended to appeal more to them, but beggars can’t be choosers. Unfortunately, someone else’s unsupervised three-year old grand daughter constantly distracted the woman while she read through the five pages and I think after the first paragraph, she simply skimmed the rest and missed the impact of the chapter as a whole.

She said it was nice, ‘Okay,’ is what she said. She liked my descriptive style and ‘could see’ the car I was referring to in the opening paragraph. That’s good and with that part, I did my job well.

But she couldn’t really comment much about the characters or what any of them were doing which either meant I didn’t do a good job of writing the chapter or that she didn’t understand what was going on. Then again, I saw how distracted she was with that child running around, screaming and insisting upon throwing a big bouncy ball in between expensive sports cars, and her comment about how she never read fiction couldn’t have helped. Next time, if there is a next time, I’ll consider leaving the printed pages out of my car-oriented folder, which at the time of purchase, I figured would help attract attention, where anyone with half an eye and less than a brain can see them. Maybe someone will take notice and read more than the first three sentences. Maybe no one will say a word. I keep thinking these people are my target audience but are they really if they read nothing more than cookbook recipes or service manuals?

I’m tired and at the moment, it won’t serve me well to worry about this too much.

August 12, 2009

Yesterday was nothing but a big fat day of frustration. I got myself roped into doing several last-minute projects, none of which I wanted to do but chose to do anyway because I knew I could do a better job than anyone else. Isn’t that the way it goes with you too? Ha, that path leads nowhere, least of all recognition.

All this on top of several other projects that I have scheduled to do this month and feel I’m holding my own with just fine. No, I’m not getting paid for those either.

But the one I specifically worked hours on yesterday just to get it off my plate, creating what I thought would be a simple web page turned my head into mush. Could I really have forgotten that much HTML code? I mean, I do a little of it nearly every day with this site. I LIKE writing HTML code. But no! Nothing would seem to work the exact way I wanted it to. I dug out my books, my Idiot’s Guide, a few helpful websites that have gone popup crazy and eventually brought my entire system down. Twice. And reformatted, allegedly, my Word program. We’ll have to see about that one.

Anyway, after a good five hours working on something I swore should only have taken forty-five minutes tops, I got it up and running. And then I had to go ask for feedback and got nothing but complaints. The address wasn’t exactly wrong but it should have been this other one instead. Why did you do it that way? It looks boring (yet exactly to a T how it was supposed to look). Two hours later, I finally got a ‘good job’ compliment…but only after I screamed and ranted about not getting it. Jeesh people, I’m doing this for free so you don’t have to. Would it have killed you to say thanks without me threatening to beat it out of you?

Onto a different project. I’m supposed to finish it by September 1st. Doubtful, very doubtful. My heart’s not in it, also because of less-than-positive feedback way back in May. That one’s eaten at me a little. My fault in letting that happen. It’s been a rough summer and it doesn’t look like it’s going to improve anytime soon.

Later this month, we’ve no less than three things to attend, all of which will take us out of town for most of an entire day. All are events someone else paid for and if we don’t use up by this month, we lose. It’s not like we’ve dragged our feet. The economy had us believing they had been revoked. Even so, now the weather threatens to undermine our efforts. Scorching hot weather is being forecast for this time next week when one of those things need attending to and don’t you know I had to go and mention that and the fact that WS can’t risk getting overheated due to his MS? People seem to be very put out, almost as if we pulled the excuse out of our ass, people who have seen WS and his MS at its worst…but have chosen to evoke selective Alzheimer’s to the fact.

Look people, unless you’re willing to come live with someone with MS day in and day out through one of those exacerbations, usually caused by him trying too hard to do something he should never had to have done in the first place, shut your trap. I’m doing everything I can here to do everything I can by myself as it is so he can continue to stand upright, see, and talk without a slur. No, you know what? I just don’t think I can be bothered with you any longer. Here, here’s your shit back. Yeah, sucks to be me to miss out. Sucks to be you to have spent the money. Them’s the breaks. Should have bought insurance. Now, get out of my face.

August 13, 2009

Glad to get all that out of my system. Did I mention it rained, actually rained yesterday? How could I stay mad at much of anything with that going on?

BTW, this was the first rain in Portland in 31 days. At our house across the river from Portland, the first rain in 53 days.

August 14, 2009

I love food. I can’t say it any plainer than that. I could eat all day, a bite here, a gulp there, a bowlful of that, a heaping plate of this, and more please of all the above.

Oh, to live in another time when fat was a-okay and heart attacks at age 26 were considered normal…Or not.

I feel as though I’ve been eating my way through this summer although really, I haven’t been. It’s the economy, stupid!

Once upon a time, um, three years ago, I lost 37 pounds on the South Beach diet. I wanted to lose more like 60 and so I’ve intentionally incorporated much of the South Beach diet eating into my every day lifestyle. Only occasionally do I stray. That’s not what has put 13 pounds back on me since just April.

The South Beach diet is big on fresh veggies – squash, salad fixings, broccoli and cauliflower; all stuff I love. Any of the ‘naturally high sugar’ veggies are pretty much out: Corn, carrots, peas. Also out are potatoes, no white rice, absolutely no white flour, and sugar. Cut it out. Okay, fine. I handled all that with ease, way easier than I thought I ever would. So why couldn’t I lose the last 25 pounds? Why have I gained back 13?

Quantity. I simply cannot stop at a fist-full of food regardless of being able to eat 5-6 times a day. Just can’t.

As the oldest child and one born five years before any of my siblings, I was doing all the cooking in our household by age 7. By age 12, I was 100 percent responsible for preparing and serving breakfast and dinner for seven family members. At age 16, that number often swelled to between nine and twelve depending on what relatives might have arrived for the spring. And then there was keeping my obese mother fed. Boy, could she ever put it away.

When I married the first time at age 20, my then-husband was one of those kinds who, though rail-thin at 6 foot 4 and 130 pounds, could eat someone, hell, several someones under the table at one sitting. You know those ‘eat this huge steak and it’s free’ places? Yeah, he could eat two, no problem. My big breakfast and dinner cooking skills would have been well appreciated had he not had a true love of fast food burgers, literally by the bagful.

So without a family to cook for and not understanding the appeal of fast food (I know, unbelievable but that’s what a stunted childhood will do to people), I cooked for myself – enough food to feed seven – and ate it all, alone. My favorite? Three boxes of Mac & Cheese, all at once.

Is it any wonder I gained thirty pounds in those three years of marriage? He said I gained weight because I was like my obese mother and because I was lazy. I remember laughing at the lazy comment because if there’s one thing I’ve never been, it’s lazy.

But the comment about obesity in my family? True and to this day it scares the crap out of me. The problem is, obviously it doesn’t scare me enough.

At 5 foot 5 inches, I’m 162 pounds. Anything over 150 is considered obese, yet that’s the weight I’ve been struggling to achieve for the past 3 years.

With this economy, it’s been much, much harder for us to afford fresh veggies but strangely enough, not too hard for us to afford lots of fruit, lots of whole wheat flour and brown rice – all of which is South Beach friendly up to a point. But all of which seems to stick to my ribs as badly as eating gallons of ice cream; another something we’ve scratched up the money for a time or two this summer (and it’s only August!!).

Once again, I come back to quantity. We make well rounded, South Beach friendly meals but really, why do I insist on overfilling my plate every night? Where’s the vanished habit of using small plates instead of big-ass dinner plates? Why do I eat as though I’m unconscious and only later, realize how stuffed I feel? Why do I continue to subconsciously feel like if I don’t eat a lot and eat it fast, someone else will take it from me (something that happened over and over again growing up – culprit? My mother). A lifetime of bad habits are so incredibly hard to break but break them I must. I’ve been doing this, and worrying about eating like this, for too long; in fact, most of my life. That’s a lot of time wasted on worry and gluttony. What else could I have accomplished, on the positive side, with that same about of brain cells?

This madness has got to stop. Hopefully by the first week of November because quite frankly, I can’t afford to buy new clothes to replace what I can no longer fit into today which just happens to be all but one pair of shorts and three stretchy tank tops. Ouch!

And if I do have to get a job, something that is a very, very real possibility and probably before too much longer, what am I going to wear? I don’t fit into anything I have! Jeesh, but this past year of stress has really done a number on me.

August 17, 2009

Last week, our ten year and 6 week old refrigerator’s thermostat quit working resulting in the whole side-by-side unit becoming one big, giant freezer. It took us four days to discover this and then only because our soy milk wasn’t pourable. It’s not like we use the stuff every day; once opened and refrigerated, soy milk lasts at least three weeks.

We both kept adjusting the temperature setting of the refrigerator side of the unit until finally, we realized something was wrong. All along, we wondered if it wasn’t because our freezer side was full of food and freezing efficiently while the refrigerator side was near empty of food and wasn’t being efficient. Grocery shopping has been more than a little lean over the past month due to further reduced income. A trip to the store wasn’t due for another week.

The damage: Half a gallon of soy milk; froze into a solid brick. Fresh lemons and limes became oval popsicles. Onions and heads of lettuce became round popsicles. Half a bag of celery resembled a handful of green kindling. Eggs are white rocks. Jars of pickles, mayonnaise, mustard, soy sauce, and all that other condiment stuff most people have in their refrigerators froze or semi-froze into icy slush. Tortillas because whole wheat Frisbees (Freeze-bies of Doom?). Shredded cheese; a cube in a bag. And that package of white fish I took out of the freezer ten days ago is still hard as a rock.

The positive: Kami of Jestablog pointed us to a repairman extraordinaire. Honest, full of integrity, old as the hills, and snappy dresser (tell me, who can wear a dress shirt, suspendered shorts, and black socks and sneakers anymore, and somehow pull it off?), Repairman Cliff rocked our financially-lean world by coming out within the hour, finding the problem, giving us a temporary solution that works while he waits for the right part, and then, has yet to charge us a cent not even for the service call. The bill will come next week, after our refrigerator is fixed. Expected cost: Three hundred dollars or less.

Damn. Sure beats having to buy a new one. Ever price these things lately? Ouch, ouch, ouch!

Today, still a week away from having the funds to go grocery shopping, yet having a bunch of frozen food in the refrigerator side, I took the opportunity to create something out of what would be waste once everything defrosted. The lettuce, mayo, and pickles are a loss but everything else is a win.

Here’s my impromptu recipe for B’s Frozen Tortilla and Black Bean soup:

Two tortillas (hopefully, yours aren’t frozen)
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 large, deep stock pot

Heat pot and add olive oil. Slice tortillas into 1-inch strips and fry in oil until slightly brown and crispy. Remove from oil and allow to drain and cool on paper towels. Set aside.

In same pot, sauté the following:

6 stalks of celery, sliced thin
Half an onion, diced
Half a red Bell pepper, diced
1 large tomato, diced (or half a large can of tomato sauce – another frozen object in our refrigerator at the time)
1 sizable pinch of dried thyme
3 teaspoons of dried onion
1 teaspoon dried parsley

Add another tablespoon of olive oil if needed and sauté all until soft and somewhat translucent.

Add to sautéd ingredients:

2 cans of black beans
2 cans of white (navy) beans
2-3 cups of water, depending on how soupy you like your soup

Stir. Then, using a submersible food blender (or old fashioned hand-potato masher), blend/grind/mash everything into a chunky soup consistency. Bring to a simmer.

Once soup is simmering, add:

2 more cans of black beans
1 can of white beans

Add chili powder or salt to taste if desired or let the soup speak for itself.

To serve:

In an empty soup bowl, place 4-5 fried tortilla strips on the bottom. Store leftover tortilla strips in air-tight container or Ziplock bag. Add 1 tablespoon of shredded yellow cheese on top of tortilla strips in bowl. Ladle soup over strips and cheese. Garnish with a spoonful of sour cream, sliced green onion or a spoonful of fresh salsa, cilantro, feta cheese, or chili powder. Makes approximately 8-12 cups of soup. Freezes well (thank goodness!). Eat up!

August 19, 2009

Cliff the super repairman came back with our frozen refrigerator parts this morning. The fix he left us with last week, unfortunately, regrettably, didn’t do the trick and we had a side-by-side freezer freezer unit throughout the weekend. Everything that hadn’t frozen previously, did freeze over the weekend. Of no surprise perhaps, we didn’t go grocery shopping but were still able to make great meals from what we had in the house. As Mary Lou pointed out in her comment, better to have everything freezing than everything frozen thawing. I couldn’t agree more.

Cliff said the broken part was broken in that it couldn’t shut itself off. His temporary fix last week couldn’t have helped that because no one knew that’s what was happening. No fault of his, no fault of the temporary fix.

The good news is that the repair bill came to two hundred five dollars and some change; a far cry from eight hundred or even up to six thousand dollars for a shiny, new refrigerator with all the bells and whistles. The bad news is that the fridge is empty, way empty as you can see and we have to wait a day or two to see if the parts fixed the problem. More beans and rice for dinner, I guess, and with our hectic schedule this week, no grocery shopping until the weekend at the earliest.

So, boo for frozen garlic, eggs, mustard, and that last lonely tortilla. And yea for Cliff who saved us a wad of cash.

August 25, 2009

Life is just not getting any easier around here; not that I ever thought life was easy. With our finances completely in the toilet now that all our credit cards have raised our interest rates to ridiculous levels and thereby increasing our required payments to them, with WS under the worst office stress I’ve every witnessed and still no raise or salary reinstatement in sight, and with everything we’ve given up and everyone seemingly wanting a piece of us, is it any wonder that for the first time ever, I’m feeling like sticking my head in the sand. All I want to do is sleep or eat. Surprisingly enough, sitting and crying hasn’t entered the picture yet.

We’ve never been late on a single credit card payment, mortgage or insurance payment; we’ve always paid everything on time yet I feel like we’re being punished, that we’re big, fat failures. We’ve given up phone and TV cable service, significantly reduced electric and water use, cut back on insurance, security, gas use – both natural and petro, and food. We still haven’t gone grocery shopping since having the refrigerator fixed last week. But as long as we keep occasionally getting other people’s garden offerings in the form of unwanted squash and tomatoes, we’re fine with the cans of beans in the cupboard and ten pounds of flour on the shelf.

I haven’t renewed my asthma medication in months. I only shampoo my hair once a week. With that recent refrigerator repair bill, we’re now down to our last few dollars to stretch through the end of the year. We’ve had to put the kibosh on everything else, every single last thing. At the end of the month, we’ve got a free pass for two to something we’re using the celebrate WS’ birthday. I have a pre-paid, non-refundable ticket ($25) to a convention in Portland for the end of November and I’ll be taking my lunch both days to get through it. That’s it.

We’re convinced we’ll get through this. We just hope our friends understand if we can’t do this, can’t go there, can’t host that. We haven’t fallen off the planet – that’d be too expensive! We’re still here, struggling just like everyone else, but we’ll be fine if everyone lets us be. This is nothing new.

I’ve always had the bad habit of sharing the wealth with others around me when I have it, at the cost of losing it all. Rarely, if ever, has the feeling been reciprocated, and I’m sure that’s my fault. You train the people around you to treat you like they do. My habit is to shoo people away when they ask if they can help. Is it any wonder that when I might actually need it, they shoo me away right back?

We did a risky thing today and had this been any time in the past couple of years, we’d celebrate with rich food and fine wine and we might invite friends to join us. Not today. Today, it barely registers a blip on our radar.

Today, we withdrew my meager nine thousand dollar retirement fund and used it to pay off WS’ car. For the first time in seven years, since WS’ last car was paid off less than three months before a woman totaled it, we don’t have a car payment. That should be a good thing, like a raise, more money in the monthly pocket and all. But it’s not and that’s because all of our credit cards have raised their interest rates, therefore keeping our finances in the red. By paying off WS’ car, we put ourselves in the black, but only every other month, by less than fifty dollars. You do the math. Try not to feel alarm or revulsion at how badly our budget was bleeding every single month for the past year and a half. We have nothing left now. Should this decision go wrong, we’re pretty much done.

Again, we’re determined to get through this, to make this work. And here’s how: We’ve already budgeted our every last penny throughout the last year and forward through 2010. It’ll take us until 2013 using that extra fifty dollars in the months we have it and if nothing unexpected eats it, to pay off a couple of those high interest credit cards. Stuff that could make that easier would be WS’ salary being reinstated to pre-financial crash levels and an appropriate raise for the job level rating he’s been doing for the past four years over his old job, but has yet to receive any compensation for. In addition, after Thanksgiving, I’ll probably be looking for a job. If it weren’t for the commitments I made between now and then, I’d be hitting the pavement today.

Any additional reduction of cost in anything we can find. In a typical good/bad WS and B scenerio, WS was just denied the second of two medications he takes for a condition brought on by his MS. This saves us money. Unfortunately, it also renders him unable to travel farther than eight-to-ten miles. Good thing he’s never been one to like going much of anywhere.

Things that will certainly screw this up: Wrecking or having the car wrecked like the last one and having to buy another car. We absolutely cannot afford a new car payment, or car repair bills. Used cars, ANY used car, and us are a notoriously bad couple. We can track years of near-financial ruin and painfully slow recovery to being nickel and dimed to death by various used cars. Way to go, to all those who haven’t had a problem. That wouldn’t be us.

An unexpected medical emergency, either for one of us or any of our pets would be disastrous. Guaranteed bankruptcy there. I know the old saying. If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s the unexpected. Don’t I know it. Can’t do anything about that right now though, can I?

So, that’s how the road ahead looks today. We’ve still got a roof over our heads and food for the pets. We own both of our cars outright. I have no retirement money but then again, how far would I have gotten on nine thousand dollars anyway? (See? Still sharing my ‘wealth’ when I have it.)

We’re still hoping for mystery zucchini to show up on our doormat once a week or so. We’re hoping for continued good health for our pets and ourselves. And we’re hoping that we’re at the bottom with nothing but prosperity awaiting discovery on every step of the way back up.

August 28, 2009

Today marks day 70 in our Mole Wars. We’ve claimed about a dozen days of victory without a single MoleSign ™ sighting. All other days had mounds and tunnels popping up here and there. Like the two new ones I found just last night. In all, Edna and Allard Mole have destroyed two entire flower beds; one containing forty ex-tulip bulbs and a group of Hellebores, but now consisting mostly of hardened mud.

The evening after I pulled up the last of my clover-encrusted moss under our Japanese maple, the fresh bark dust was crisscrossed with raised mole tunnels. This even after I spread another round of granular insecticide.

I still believe the way to get rid of moles in a small yard situation is to cut off their food supply. Get rid of the grubs they love, have some patience, reapply insecticide every six weeks, and the moles will find greener pastures. I’ve been told a neighbor two doors down now has a mole problem yet I know we still have at least one ourselves still. Let’s hope our remaining one is Allard Mole, the front yard mole and the least destructive of the pair.

We watched two neighborhood cats play in our front yard after dark the other night. I was so wishing they would invite the mole to ‘play along’ but it appears that hadn’t happened. More mounds and tunnels crisscrossed down the side of the driveway and around the creeping phlox. C’mon cats, do what you’re good at. Go get ‘em!

Today is/was to be the first in what is our favorite season of the year: Fall. Sure, it’s still technically summer. Sure, most of you are probably bemoaning the end of summer. Don’t get your panties in a bunch. Enjoy your last bits of summer as if there will never be another. But keep this in mind: Some of us have always hated summer. Some of us love autumn best.

The local weathermen have warned us all week rain was in the forecast for Friday. WS even said the other day he looked forward to waking up to rain on Friday. You know what? Oh go on, guess.

Yep, no rain.

Blue and clear as a bell out there. But it’s coming, they say. Just delayed. Ah huh. Believe it when I see it.

I think too many people are wishing away the clouds and rain and cool weather. Too many of you are hard at work dreaming of endless summer days. Yes, even you who are working indoors, and without windows to look out. Shame on you. Haven’t you had enough dry, hot weather?

August 30, 2009

On The Go. I’ve been on the go since last Wednesday wrapping up the majority of obligations and events I idiotically told people I’d do. Still have a few left but the list is definitely a bit smaller. Today is the first real down day I’ve had since mid summer. WS was supposed to have today off but then his department’s head scheduled a last possible minute training course, mandatory naturally, running from noon to eight tonight. So much for his down time.

Saturday, I was in Pendleton, not only to remind myself how I hate high desert every bit as much as the low desert, but to see fifty to sixty people off on their once-every-five-year trek to Bowling Green, Kentucky. Five years ago, I swore I’d make that journey but my job wouldn’t give me even a single day off (I worked online, 14-16 hour days, 7 days a week). This time around, I can’t afford food for the fridge. A six thousand mile round trip gallivanting across the country and back at this time would be downright stupid. But I did promise to see the group off and drive a hundred miles or so with them to eastern Oregon, so I did and now that’s over with. Gawd, but my ass hurts.

Yesterday, with tickets we won months ago, we went to see Fiddler on the Roof” down in Portland. I’ve never seen a live performance of anything before, ever since that dreadful, failure experience I had during the one and only high school play, “Lil’ Abner” I thought I wanted to be a part of. To work the play, I got to dress up in painted freckles, pigtails, cut offs, and a knotted shirt and had to work the auditorium doors. Basically, I was a doorman. I guess that was where everyone in the business had to start. At a certain point in the play, I was to leave my aisle seat in the third row to open the doors for intermission. Easy enough, right? Well, no.

The appointed time came. I raced up the aisle and stood smiling as play patrons filed past on their way into the lobby. Within minutes, the play director tapped me on the shoulder and bellowed about how I singlehandedly ruined his play because by running up the aisle, I made it look as if something had gone terribly wrong. He was a one person shouting match, correcting even himself on how incredibly stupid, no, incredibly, INCREDIBLY moronic and stupid I was and how I’d ruined his life, all in front of about a thousand people.

Mortified doesn’t even begin to describe how badly I felt.

I left the play immediately and walked the mile and a half home in tears. I couldn’t tell my mother (my father had already been in the hospital for several years so he wasn’t there) because she would have never allowed me to participate in the play in the first place. They didn’t allow such things. I had basically snuck out of the house on the pretense of going to the library to study. So I had to sneak back in because I had left my ‘library clothes’ back at the high school auditorium basement.

Never been to a play, symphony, musical, or such a performance ever since. The really awful thing is, at more than one time in my life, I really wanted to get into acting despite my non-photogenic looks. There’s bit-part acting roles for us non-lookers too, don’t you know.

Anyway, Fiddler was very good. It was part of Topol’s Farewell tour with the Broadway Across America performance and hey, free tickets. Can’t beat that too much with a stick. I’ll probably have more to say about this at a later date, particularly when it comes to the people watching aspect. Who wears Birkenstocks, ripped up shorts, t-shirts, and baseball hats to an off Broadway play containing a big star while sitting next to people wearing tuxedos and sequined black evening wear anyway? Not to mention some of those Birkenstock wearing people were wet from having played in the Keller Fountain across the street from the auditorium right before the doors opened. Apparently, LOTS of Portlanders do. Who knew?

September 1, 2009

Thank goodness for September at last. Past years have shown me how long the month of September can feel – twice as long as any other month if hot weather continues. But today is different. Today is special. Today I can hardly concentrate because today I awoke to un-forecasted rain and the return of the Canada geese.

The roads are wet and drizzle continues amid partly clearing skies. It’s chilly enough for me to consider wearing socks and lighting pumpkin-scented candles (too soon). We’ve had tiny flocks of the geese passing overhead for about three weeks now but every day their numbers have grown. The flights number half a dozen or more flocks of up to fifty or more birds and they get louder every day as they circle the greenspaces behind our development where many of them will winter over. We both love the geese. It tells us cool weather is on the way. We wonder if their early arrival this year hints at an earlier fall? Oh, be still my wildly beating heart!

I’ve no doubt the afternoon will dry out and warm up to something in the 80’s (Fahrenheit) but that’s okay because the weekend is shaping up to be traditional fall weather around here with nothing but rain for some three-to-four days straight. Temps down in the 60’s, night temps in the upper 40’s. YES! This is why I love living here – because when it’s turns to fall weather, it’s really fall weather, unlike living in the desert Southwest where one season blends into the next without hardly a change of leaf or much difference in temps (other than the obvious lack of daytime 122 degree heat).

Out back, our dwarf Crepe Myrtle’s are blooming a couple of weeks early as are the row of Chrysanthemums. The garden spiders don’t seem as big as they usually are at this time of year when summer ends up lumbering onward toward mid-to-late October.

To be honest, I want to curl up with a book downstairs in front of the gas fireplace with candles lit and a glass of warm Amaretto at hand. But I’ve got other stuff to do, like vacuuming and meal planning. We can’t afford the natural gas for the fireplace (third year in a row), even though we’re slated to receive a good sized rate cut on November 1st. I don’t want to burn the candles too soon because our final few won’t be replaced for years to come. And as for the Amaretto, maybe this evening, but only if I’m good and get some walking in first.

WS and I are jumping back on the exercise wagon beginning today. I’ve not strayed far from the weights and treadmill throughout the summer but I could do much better, more consistently. And I do have twelve pounds to lose before November. Piece of cake…but only if I start today. WS’ is in the same boat, weight-wise and clothing fit-wise. The stress of job cuts since January has really taken its toll on him. Funny how they say exercise can help in dealing with stress but when you’re under stress, the last thing you’d want to do is exercise. Head games, I tell you. Our brains want nothing more than to play head games with us and convince us we’d be better off becoming couch potatoes.

September 2, 2009

Us versus Them. I’ve always hated the Us versus Them mentality. Ford versus Chevy, Mac versus PC, Black versus White. There’s another one that I don’t hear much of anymore, not since becoming older but that doesn’t mean it isn’t still there. The Childless versus The We’ve Got Children war. Boy, oh boy, is this a hot button for me…but only because I’m still tired of being slammed as selfish because I chose not to have any. Last night was just one of those but it has its redeeming moment in that, regarding this topic at least, I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut. I didn’t want to, still don’t want to, but I feel good about not lowering myself to their level.

Just after dark last night, I happened to look out front and noticed half a dozen or more of my neighbors standing, literally out in the middle of the street, talking to one another. Curious, I meandered out there to see what was going on. Nothing like this has happened around here for close to ten years. Back then, this was commonplace. Neighbors talking to new neighbors as the homes around us were in the process of being built. It was a warm friendly time and fun getting to know the families who would soon live across the street, down the street, next door, etc.

Last night was anything but friendly.

Talk stopped the moment I was noticed approaching and everyone turned to look at me. I had my typical shit-eating grin on my face as I said hi to The Howler Monkeys and The Dry Cleaners, nodded recognition to The Dimmers, and barely hid a grimace toward The Renters. Bouncing around the perimeters of the group were the youngest Renter kid (the kid who wants to kill cats) and The Howler Monkey boys (who strive to be everything The Renter kid is, and more) and The Dimmer and Dry Cleaner daughters who had become fast friends over the summer.

With my hands in my shorts pockets, I joined the group. All stared at me and continued their silence. Finally, one of the adults said, “We’re talking about school starting up tomorrow and our kids.”

“Ah, school. Already?” I said, knowing full well when school started and secretly taking glee in the event.

“You don’t have kids.”

Looking back, the statement sounded a little pointy in my opinion. I ignored it. “So is everyone ready? A shame the summer is nearly at an end,” I said.

“You don’t have kids,” someone said again.

So I replied, “No, I don’t. But I live on a street that does.”

“This conversation is for parents only. Parents with kids.”

Hmm, I didn’t notice a security guard manning a door to this exclusive club. I didn’t know that not having kids automatically made me excluded from anything having to do with the neighborhood in which I live…and as one of the few remaining founding members of the development. I didn’t know that I shouldn’t care about anyone’s kids, what they might be doing, or to look out for anyone’s kids just because I didn’t have any myself.

These are all things I wanted to say. But I didn’t. All I said was, “Um, okay.” And I kept standing there for another minute until I felt uncomfortable enough from all the death stare daggers to leave. I hadn’t made it to the sidewalk before I heard unsavory comments behind my back.

Since when did my neighbors become such assholes? Did having kids make them that way? Sure, I’ve posted some, a small some at that, of my neighbors most ‘interesting’ behaviors. But since when did it become a crime to not have kids or to care about what’s happening on my own street?

September 8, 2009

I’ve been horribly remiss in posting news. I have reasons; some would call them excuses but they aren’t. Reasons and excuses are two different animals and I definitely had reasons. I’ve been creating and updating almost hourly a travel website for the car club that as a group drive together back to Bowling Green, Kentucky. I’ve been in communication with fifteen writers, all seemingly with questions coming out the ying-yang. I’ve been painting our living room with old paint stored in our garage in an attempt to 1) make more room in the garage cabinets, 2) give ourselves a fresh, ‘Restoration Hardware catalog’ look to the place, and 3) to help cheer up WS who has not had the finest summer at work.

None of that matters right now because I want to publicly thank Kami of Jestablog and her family for dropping off the most wonderful care package for us last week. A care package containing the freshest of fruits and vegetables, many from her own garden. Peppers, OMG-looking tomatoes, plums, oh so sweet, like ambrosia plums, lemon cucumbers, grapes, yummy zucchini, the list just goes on and on. AND if that wasn’t enough, noodles, personal watermelons, and shampoo too! Oh how vain I’ve become regarding clean hair. My eyes welled up just looking at the haul.

On top of all that (yes, there’s more), she and her husband spent a good few hours visiting me. So nice, so incredibly nice. Of course I bored them to tears. That’s my job, don’t you know.

I can’t begin to thank them enough. August was a lean month but we survived. September was looking a bit better. This food guarantees we’ll make it. Thank you, thank YOU!
Then Saturday morning, Competition Boy who owns the garage the car club uses to work in, stopped by and dropped off a bag full of yellow squash which I plan on slicing, dicing, blanching, and freezing for dinners over the next few months. He loves to grow squash but won’t eat them himself – he’s a certified fast food junkie. WS absolutely loves yellow squash and I have to say, sautéd with a handful of chopped walnuts in little olive oil and sprinkled with a smidge of salt and pepper, you couldn’t ask for anything much better. Thanks to him too.

I’ve got lots to be thankful for so far this September. All I ask is if you’ve been growing food at your place and you have too much, please consider sharing with someone who might not have much. That simple act could very well bring a whole lot of sunshine into someone else’s life.

September 10, 2009

Here’s some photos of our living room…our old living room. Everything in it is the same; same furniture, same rug, same big ass wall unit. Yet something’s now changed. Question: What do you suppose the room looks like now? Answer: You’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see.

September 11, 2009

Here’s what our new living room looks like, basically, what I’ve been working on since last weekend.

It’s very beige, very monochromatic, very tone-on-tone, and very much what today’s style is – a Classic Look. For some, this will be very boring too. But as a control freak, I now can control where and how much color I want to put here and there in the room instead of trying to match everything to the color on the walls. The color isn’t dictated by the red walls.

As an added bonus, our beloved rug and fireplace now stand out and no longer compete with the red for attention. And our wall unit no longer looks pink. It’s not really pink, you know. The red background just brought out a pink hue in the pickled fake wood veneer.

The new color is also a very Restoration Hardware Catalog look, a look we’ve both been very attracted to over the last couple of years. And since we already had the paint, left over from when I painted the rest of the house last year, and since the red living room walls were old, faded in spots, and turning chalky, it seemed like the right time to tackle this project. Plus I had the energy, and anger to work out. I do my best work when I’m pissed at something, if I do say so myself.

While the red was pretty and we liked it, it was time for a change. I love the coffee colors of our house now – Latte, Cappuccino, Mocha. Next year, if finances allow, I’ll tackle our bedroom which has sorely needed attention ever since I foolishly and poorly stenciled a border around part of the vaulted ceiling. Too phoo-phoo! That’ll mean fresh store-bought paint and dare I say, perhaps a wall of rich chocolate brown? Too trendy? We’ll see.

September 13, 2009

We can’t seem to catch a break. After years of questionable duty, our ten-year old washing machine has broken once again. Same part broken, same designed obsolescence in replaced parts. Luckily, WS watched the last two times the thing was fixed and is confident he can fix it himself. Hmm, okay I guess. Talk to me in a week when the laundry pile is mountainous. And don’t expect me to do laundry alone like I’ve been doing without much complaint since I was eight years old.

Tomorrow, he’s going out to find a replacement part.

Good thing he’s on forced vacation this week. I say ‘forced’ because if he doesn’t use up his accumulated vacation time, he’ll lose it due to a rapidly approaching company policy change. Of course, his boss seems to go out of his way to make WS feel like crap for taking the time off, and WS bought into it by freaking out and tried to get every single last thing done before he left the office late Friday (as if numerous other piles of crap won’t be there when he returns next Monday). And then Saturday, the first day of his ‘vacation,’ he caught himself starting every conversation with some antidote about something that happened at work. This man truly believes his job is what he is. So sad that as a work-aholic, he’s missing out on so much of life.

But then again, I’m an all-too-willing ‘victim’ of the golden handcuffs too. I just didn’t think I’d be living so much of my married life alone.

Don’t listen to me. I’m just in a whiny mood.

September 14, 2009

Apparently, my husband is a washing machine repairman whiz kid. After completely ripping our broken washing machine apart (the number of parts strewn about the laundry room quite literally frightened me), he’s got it back together and allegedly fixed. I haven’t run a load of anything yet, choosing instead to let him savor his moment of greatness and conquest over machinery.

Besides, I normally wait until Tuesday to wash towels.

In other news, the car club is six days from returning home meaning in six days I can stop maintaining their United States trip website. I did the same thing for this club five years ago and was paid for my work with snippiness and distain over not posting the exact photos each of them wanted, when and how big they wanted them. To do so would have required the club own half of the Internet because at the time, it would have taken that much space to post all one hundred and seventeen thousand, eight hundred and ninety two photos, full-size.

There are much fewer photos this time around. I think to date they have taken just over a thousand. Many are badly blurred, just like the first time around, proving once again that half-drunk wives of aging sports car drivers should not be allowed to point and click cellphone cameras out passenger seat windows at speed.

A week from Thursday, I’m supposed to show up to a car club meeting to accept praise and flack for my work on the site. But I’ve already made the decision not to go. Can’t be helped really, but then again, why would I want to subject myself to that all over again? I should have remembered that before I agreed to take on the project. Too late now but I don’t really need to stick my hand farther into the fire, do I?

This coming weekend is also revealing why I need to stop signing myself up for stuff year after year. My Saturday has no less than five events I either needed to or wanted to attend. Oddly enough, I thought all were going to land over Labor Day weekend but not a one did so I painted instead and secretly hoped it would all shake out in the end. I guess it is, all on Saturday.

Needs come before wants so those other three things, the things I wanted to do, will have to fall off the list completely because each was a once a year event. Sigh. There’s always next year (I said that last year too as I recall…grumble, grumble.).

But I’m happy the washer is fixed and at the grand total cost of eighteen dollars and some change plus a twelve mile drive across town and back. Let’s all think good thoughts tomorrow morning when I load the thing up with bath towels and flick it on, ‘kay?

September 15, 2009

I’m glad I let WS bask in victorious glory over fixing the washing machine yesterday because today was full of fail. Machines: One, humans: Zip. I have to say I love spunk in my appliances…up to a point. The washing machine firmly and without question, went over the line.

While in the process of baking a couple of pork tenderloins for later slicing and freezing because we’re big on freezing food lately, and after asking WS if he was over savoring yesterday’s win, I turned the washer on, loaded it with five towels; two bath size, three hand sized, set it on medium, no second rinse, added liquid detergent and a half cup of bleach in the bleach dispenser. Almost instantaneously, water poured out around my feet. This is a top-loading washer and this should definitely not be happening. I shut the washer off and yelled, “WE’RE LEAKING WATER!” I yelled because our washing machine is up on the second floor of our house and I fear floor and ceiling water damage almost as much as I fear a house fire.

I grabbed a nearby extra pet room towel and started mopping up. That’s when I noticed the ‘water’ smelled like bleach. At almost the same time, the old green towel I was using started turning an interesting shade of chartreuse. Yep, bleach was what came out from under the washer and all over the laundry room floor but I wasn’t so sure it was straight bleach. The washer tub was a quarter full of water and there was no way of knowing if the growing puddle was a bleach-water combo. I assumed it was.

WS tore the machine apart and discovered the bleach dispenser had somehow come undone during his coupler fix yesterday. He had noticed yesterday that there was nothing to disconnect from the dispenser, or so he thought. It was bleach leaking, not water. Sighing relief, we mopped up the mess, WS put the washer back together, and I started it up again.

Without any new leaks, I thought it sounded more clunky than usual as soon as the agitation cycle started. I opened the top and noticed the agitator was wobbly and seemed to be slipping every second or third go-around. If there’s one thing I know, its how my washer operates and this wasn’t normal. I mentioned it to WS who didn’t quite know what I was talking about probably because he rarely does laundry, but he dutifully went straight to the Internet to look up what the problem might be.

I decided to forgo washing the towels after all and turned the washing cycle over to drain and when that was almost finished, a squeal started up; a small one with a short one-two burst. Then the squealing stopped, the cycle ended, and the washer was empty. Because I didn’t let the machine go through the entire cycle, the towels were still full of bleach and soap but they weren’t overly wet.

We watched an online video on washing machine repair (most top loading machines are the same inside with the same problems and parts). The problem with the sloppy agitator didn’t look to affect any actual washing too badly. It was a repair that could wait. And so, because I didn’t want to leave bleach and soap residue in the towels, I made the executive decision to start the washer up again.

The machine had just filled with water and was sloppily agitating away for several minutes, long enough for us feel comfortable enough to go back downstairs. I was now in the process of cooling those pork tenderloins in order to package them up and I didn’t want the pets to make off with them. That’s when the washing machine squealing started back up only this time, louder, much louder, accompanied with the smell of something very hot.

WS shut the washer off, opened the window, and turned on the overhead fan. We checked behind the washer to see if any smoke or, forbid, flames were visible. Nothing, just that awful hot metal/baked oil smell like gear grease dropped on the manifolds of a 502 big block engine. The tub was half full of water and it was obvious we weren’t going to be starting the washer back up anytime soon, so I wrung out the towels as best I could while WS put a call in to Repairman Cliff. Cliff will be out tomorrow morning at the earliest. At the earliest, I suspect I won’t have a washing machine until the end of the week.

And that’s when I realized while wringing out bleach-soaked towels, I had drenched the clothes I was wearing. I don’t care about the shorts; they were my ‘painting’ shorts, but my dark navy blue top is a complete goner, unless I decide I like the new white and light blue circles now highlighting the belly and nipple areas. I guess you now know what sticks out the most.

I got the washer drained and WS took the whole thing apart again just to quell my fears of something potentially smoldering in there for hours, and that’s how it currently sits until Cliff can wave his magic bag of repairman tools at it. WS really tried to save us money; less than twenty bucks for a part that was broken sure seemed like the way to go. But the washer had other plans that we couldn’t have foreseen. Now we’re looking at a service call of eighty bucks plus parts and labor. I only hope it was some bearing that failed and that it didn’t affect the motor.

For the record, WS has suggested buying a new washer but I won’t have it. We can fix this for much cheaper than replacing it. I’ve dreamed of having a real washer, a nice one that does what I want it to do for the first time ever in my life instead of a charity case machine that doesn’t do half of what everyone else enjoys (delicate wash through heavy duty wash settings). I’ll be willing to pay for such a machine…at some time in the future. Not now when we’ve just embarked on a hard line budget to get maxed out credit cards paid off (maxed out thanks to both our greedy buying habits and the banks that reduced all our limits and raised monthly payment requirements).

September 17, 2009

I’m a fan of the movie ”Fight Club.” I make no apologies for liking it. It’s an ugly, violent movie and yet, there’s something in there, the plot if you will, and most of the commentary, that makes sense to me. Like it or not, to me anyway, most of the commentary – pointedly about how screwed up society has gotten, seems true.

But that’s not where I want to go today with this entry. Today is about the rules of Fight Club and in particular, Rule number seven, my personal favorite: Fights will go on as long as they have to.

Most of my life I’ve been fighting against something. Up until age 19, I fought to survive my parent’s twisted desire to break my spirit. Most of my siblings didn’t survive, choosing to give in and continue the cycle of abuse toward their own offspring.

At age 15, I fought to keep my dignity after entering the workforce and being groped regularly from my first, second, and third bosses. Apparently, society felt that was okay back in the early-to-mid-seventies.

From age 19 to 23, I entered a marriage that should have never happened, and fought to gain the love of a man who openly lusted after my sister. All along, I continued to fight to make sense of my upbringing. It made for quite an emotional four years.

At age 23, I fought to make sense of losing a job simply because I initiated a divorce. Oh horrors! Women just didn’t do such a thing, especially if they worked for a Catholic boss.

I was 24 and had worked for a Honeywell manufacturing plant for a month when I walked into a women’s territorial bathroom gang fight. At the time, it was hard to comprehend that that much blood on the walls and floor were from one individual alone. A knife was flashed at me and it was promised I’d be next if I didn’t quit my job. I fought to convince my supervisor as to what I had actually seen and why I felt uncomfortable working in her department. She knew what I was referring to, I’m certain of it, but she refused to listen, refused to do anything about any of it. We ‘agreed’ that I needed to quit on the spot due to emotional stress brought on my recent divorce. My records were sent to every manufacturing plant in the Phoenix metropolitan area, essentially blackballing me from working in that industry for years.

I didn’t go to the police. I don’t know why other than such things weren’t really of interest to the police back then and besides, they never did anything to help all the years growing up when I was beat and raped within an inch of my life. Why would they have listened to me, a nobody, then? Sounded too much like sour grapes.

Over the years, I’ve worked really, really, really bad jobs for unscrupulous people who’ve made it their life mission to screw the system and everyone around them. Employees ranked high on the list. I fought to keep my sanity and again, dignity. I’ve known crooked law enforcement officers and lawyers alike and fought for years to clear stuff up that never occurred. I fought and struggled for a solid decade to repay loans my ex-husband forged my name to, surviving on twelve dollars a month left over, only to later discover those loans had been paid off a year before the collection agency caught up to me. How did I discover this? In the late eighties, I was actually hired by the same collection agency (renamed something different as is still standard procedure every couple of years in most large cities), and the guys who hounded me still worked there, still remembered my name. They had a big laugh over that.

But back then, there were no laws to protect such things from happening. Lawyers only wanted huge cases that brought in big bucks. Trying to recoup thirty-eight thousand dollars was considered chump change.

I’ve fought against people who considered me selfish for not having children, for not liking girly things, for being female, for speaking out against perceived injustices; sometimes literally fought against them. I’ve fought to claim a piece of self worth in an ever-changing world that seems to insist that everyone own a cell phone, work two jobs, be stylish yet in deep debt, and be young or die because who wants anyone over 26 around anyway?

So is it any wonder that I saw our washing machine acting up as a fight? It’s been banging away, acting up here and there for years on the verge of nickel and diming us to death. In our house, unless it’s something truly bad, the squeaky wheel, or banging agitator at it was, does not get greased. And I was fine with that.

The washer eventually fought back and stopped its rinse spin cycle earlier last Sunday. WS fixed it with a new part on Monday. The washer stopped agitating correctly on Tuesday. WS knew how to fix that and would have in a heartbeat if it hadn’t started squealing. We hired wonder repairman Cliff to work his magic on it. Wednesday, he fixed the agitator and try as he did, could not get the washer to squeal. I got that load of towels done after all and throughout it all, it acted like a perfect child, an angel who’ll stick out its tongue and flip you off behind someone’s back.

I commented on how this was going to be the typical case in that the moment I was alone with the thing, it would squeal like a pig stuck under a fence. Cliff gave us good advice; advice I considered worth almost every penny of his one hundred and fourteen dollar bill: Since there are no bearings in our washer’s motor, if it squeals and smells bad again, it’s the transmission and that, my friends, is a three hundred dollar and up repair bill, not to mention the additional costs of replacing the other worn parts when they start failing. Apparently, ten years is skirting upon ancient life in washer years. Everything is now designed for fail and replacement after about five.

Not more than ten minutes after Cliff’s repair van left the driveway, the washer started smoking. The fight continued. There would be no laundry done that day, or today, or any day…until Saturday when our solution toward ending this particular fight is realized in the form of the delivery of a new washer.

The old washer can cry fabric softener tears in the nearest deep, black hole for all I care. I’d like to think we won this fight but our further encumbered credit card says differently. Couldn’t be helped.

And now it’s time to move onto the next battle, maybe the dryer, or the water heater, because, folks, around here, fights will go on as long as they have to.

September 21, 2009

Time for fall colors. Yes, I know fall doesn’t officially arrive until Tuesday. When have you ever known me not to jump the gun on anything autumn related? I can tell all you hot summer lovers out there that the Pacific NW is the place to be the first half of this week. Tomorrow we’ve been forecast to reach near 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Yep, summer weather can just mosey on down the road any time now…

Last Saturday couldn’t have arrived too soon for us. A week without laundry around here is like, well, a coffee-lover’s week without caffeine. Even though WS had clean clothes and I was okay with hand washing a favorite pair of shorts here and there, the longer the week dragged on, the snappier we each got. We finally realized that as control freaks, we hate it when our hand is forced at anything, and the washer dying had definitely forced our hand to do something we didn’t plan on doing.

Next time you hear the Lowe’s commercial announcers say something about next day delivery for items in stock, don’t believe them. We bought a new washer on Wednesday. It was in stock at the same store we bought it from. But for some reason, they couldn’t deliver it, just five miles away, until Saturday.

After the sale, we received four phone calls from Lowe’s between Wednesday afternoon and Friday. 1) The delivery would be delayed a day. No reason given. 2) The manager was confused as to what our purchase was. 3) The assistant manager discovered we didn’t get charged for the braided steel water lines we insisted numerous times upon before, during, and after the sale. 4) Then there was confusion over the in-store ten percent discount coupled with the Energy Star discount. The whole deal was starting to sound a lot like an intimate group action that rhymes with ‘fuster cluck.’ We were both certain the delivery was not going to go well. Neither of us slept much that night.

It was nice of Lowe’s to call Saturday morning to tell us when they’d be out and that we were their first delivery of the day but the time frame was pretty generalized – between eight and twelve in the morning. Wouldn’t you know they didn’t drive up until ten minutes ‘til noon?

I had to be somewhere at noon, two different somewheres to be honest, so WS had to deal with the entire ordeal. Like those forgotten braided steel hoses. The delivery guys never got the message about those. But in one of those rare instances that never happens to us, one of the delivery guys was on the phone to the manager at Lowe’s before WS could grab a phone to put the call in himself to complain. Ten minutes later, the salesman who sold us the washer showed up at our house with the right hoses. I know I can drive between our house and Lowe’s in ten minutes but it’s not by sticking to the posted speed limit (not that I would ever admit publicly of breaking the law in that manner). That man had to have beat cheeks in getting here.

The delivery guys hauled the old washer down the stairs without whacking walls or dinging up floors, and returned with the new washer, being just as careful. The hoses were connected correctly the first time; no waiting for someone to come back at some unknown ‘later time’ to fix the mix up. WS was so relieved and impressed by the speedy process, he tipped the delivery guys and plans to write a letter to Lowe’s to tell of his appreciation of the salesman who went the extra mile to make sure we had what we requested.

After a very long day of being elsewhere doing stuff I had to do to help prepare for a late fall Science Fiction convention, I came home to clean clothes and no laundry. One of many bonuses that come with this new 21st century washing machine is the clear glass top. When the machine is running, quite honestly, it is memorizing to watch and is more entertaining by far than most anything nowadays on non-cable TV. Other features include hardly using any water and only the dinkiest amount of soap and it doesn’t tear up our clothes anywhere near as much as the old washer did.

I’m going to say we’re happy with it so far, and expect to be for some time. We didn’t need the expense but short of using a plunger and a bucket or slapping clothes on a rock in our fountain out back in place of any washing machine, we were between such a rock and a hard place and had to jump. Case closed.

September 22, 2009

Fall officially arrives this afternoon and much that comes with it. Gusty east winds that always make an appearance on garbage pick up days, fallen leaves that threaten to clog the fountain, and clear blue skies that are bluer than most of those seen in high summer. The Earth is shifting, the sun lower in the southern sky. Fall color will dot our northern horizon view soon.

Rolling, bouncing trash cans and their lids and recycle bins littered the street yesterday, forcing drivers to play dodge ‘em with getting in and out of the development. Just before 3 p.m. when one of many school buses drop off kids at the corner, I was out collecting mail and watering plants and I witnessed a sad reality: Parents no longer require their offspring to haul in their own homes’ empty trash cans, even if they brush right past them.

Okay, maybe this isn’t sad but what is distressing is that not a single kid whose family trash cans and bins were literally lying in the middle of the street, I’m talking no less than ten different teens and countless younger children and nineteen empty cans, bothered to drag them back to their own property. In fact, three different teens kicked their household trash cans and others directly into the paths of at least one passing vehicle, while another kid flung can lids like Frisbees at his school mates, all of whom, after being dropped off, routinely walk down the middle of the street like gangs of rowdy street thugs.

You’d probably laugh if I told you most were girls.

This will become the norm for the next six months as will cans left lying in gutters or other people’s ignored yards for days after trash pick up. Is it any wonder that at the first sound of the garbage truck rumbling down our street at 9 a.m., that I’m up and waiting to bring our own trash can in? No wonder they call us the ‘Weird People.’ We still care about where we live. Someday, we probably ought to fix that.

I awoke this morning with one thought in mind; something I haven’t given much thought to in a few years.

Five years ago tomorrow, I went in for major surgery to have a forced hysterectomy and two extra large fibroid tumors removed. No biggie. Just so you can be your own judge, how ‘extra large’ were these tumors, you might ask? One, the only one they expected to find, was twenty-one pounds. That’s not a typo. 21 pounds. Thirteen inches long by nine inches wide and thick. Having learned about it a couple of months pre-surgery, I named the tumor Emil, because that’s how I roll. A couple of weeks before surgery, they discovered Emil’s much smaller, five pound brother lying beneath. I named him Hubert (pronounced Ooo-bear).

A couple of days before surgery, the company we worked for sold themselves to a huge Internet company. After surgery and a short, miserable stay in the hospital, we were told our jobs would be ‘lost to attrition’ and that we were no longer wanted as employees.

Oh the rage. Oh the drama. Oh the senseless and blatant spending habits! If you thought I rant now about pointless stuff now, you ought to have read Blogeois.com back then. Many readers here remember that time and I think they’d agree with me that it wasn’t pretty. But just in case you don’t believe me, I’ve added a link to that year’s journal here and in the sidebar. Fun begins on July 23rd. Hilarity ensues around September 13th and continues through year’s end.

Just for the record, I am still bitter (but not the kind of bitter that eats a person alive…no, really), I still refuse to use that company’s widely known and loved online photo storage system, and I still get weepy when thinking about what continues to hurt me the most regarding that whole layoff thing: They made me feel as if I did something wrong and no one has yet to tell me otherwise.

Five years. I’ve done a lot in that period of time. And yet, I’ve done nothing. Come so far and gone so little. I may need to think deeper on that in the coming weeks.

September 24, 2009

Some personal observations:

Artificial banana flavoring, as opposed to using real bananas, makes me gassy and my poop smell like onions. Not pleasant.

People who sneak into walks or marathons for incurable diseases and conditions not to support the cause but to get the free give away stuff so they can re-gift it later ought to be publicly humiliated. I’m looking directly at you, MsNoManagementSkills.

It often smells like bacon at the bottom of our stairs. For the record, we haven’t had bacon in the house for years.

Ten years ago, I bought a life-sized fake peacock and at the time I told myself a day would come that I would regret spending money on such a thing. That day came today with all the force of a mallet to the forehead; the kind of mallet with an attached label that read, “This is for you because You’re an Idiot.”

Some days, all the coffee in the world won’t wake my brain up.

Emotionally, I feel more worn and broken now than I did living under my abusive parent’s reign. People keep telling me I need to be the unmovable boulder in the stream. But I’ve seen those boulders and even they have rounded edges.

September 26, 2009

I’ve felt worn out, tired, and sad the past couple of days. Part of it is the weather. It’s been hot again and I worry about it affecting WS. The other part is just all the fricken’ worry about every last thing in our little universe. I’m tired of worrying. I’m not yet worried about being tired.

I’ve realized something recently, something everyone else already knew: Chaotic Life Stuff will always get in the way.

Here’s this past summer’s short list of Chaotic Life Stuff: WS has MS exacerbation. Pet health worries. Job worries. Refrigerator breaks down. Weight gain. MS exacerbation aggravated thus increasing/prolonging exacerbation. Gross misinterpretation of task. A personality clash. Missed RSVPs. Neighbor goes on mental rampage. Job woes. Friends disappear. Checking account runs dry. More job woes. Odd confessions. Washing machine dies amid puff of smoke. A mental MS exacerbation. A cryptic job warning.

The problem isn’t the Chaotic Life Stuff; it’s how I’ve reacted to each one. What I suck at is how to separate dealing with Life Stuff, good and bad (because there has been a couple good things mixed in there) from letting Life Stuff bring my writing to a complete halt.

My fiction writing has been at a complete halt since June. Almost every week since late June, I’ve told myself, “This week, X (X equals some story or novel) gets written/revised/edited/rewritten.” And every week, some Chaotic Life Stuff thing has come up.

I’m way past feeling some of it was intentional. Now I see how I’ve reacted — with depression, frustration, and anger. “Not my fault. Not my fault!” I tell myself over and over as I fall into a deeper, bottomless pit of despair.

I think WS has been going through a mental exacerbation for over a month now. Mental ones are more debilitating than physical ones, in my opinion, because they affect his memory, his personality and worse, have damaged our relationship.

WS’ personality has definitely changed over the past year. He doesn’t see it that way, but as his at-home caregiver, my job is to watch, watch, watch, and evaluate, evaluate, evaluate. He’s not the man he was a year ago; he’s nothing like the man he was five years ago. He doesn’t see the change and can’t remember bits and pieces that shaped and continues to shape our everyday lives. Most of that isn’t for the good of our marriage but due to the disease, nothing lost can be regained. Ever.

But the good, no, the great thing is he’s finally connected with the pets. They love him whereas they used to fear his big, hulking size and heavy step. Years ago, he rarely talked to them. Now he spends dedicated time with them at least twice a day and they climb all over him. This warms my heart.

WS recently told me he’s a workaholic. This bit of news absolutely floored me. I mean, I’ve been with this guy for over twenty-two years. You’d think I’d be tied for first place in knowing if he was a workaholic or not, yet somehow I didn’t.

While we were still learning about one another all those twenty-two years ago, one of the topics that came up frequently was my unbending stipulation that if I were to ever marry again, it’d be a partnership and that neither party would feel as though they were alone in the marriage. “I’m not going to get into a relationship just to live my life alone,” I said and have repeated many times since.

And here I am. I probably don’t have to tell you how I’ve felt for the past couple of years; yep, alone. But due to the MS, it can’t be helped anymore than anything lost from our relationship can be regained. And it’s this that is the hardest to explain.

(And while I’m trying to wrap my own head around our lives moving forward, just think how hard this is to explain to friends who mentally check out the minute I mention WS and MS. NO ONE wants to hear it, let alone try to understand it.)

As WS’ MS has progressed over the past fifteen years, combining with his normal, overly heightened sense of responsibility, he can no longer manage two things at once. This means his job, the biggest thing in either of our lives, takes top billing over anything else. Writing, dieting, exercise, relationships all play second, third, fourth fiddle. Often, minor things like cooking and talking at the same time, driving and talking at the same time, and even walking and talking at the same time, have been affected. That’s just the way it is. It’ll never improve. It’ll never go back to the way it once was. That is, not if we want to continue having a roof over our heads.

WS is very good at his job, every bit as good as he is at attracting and reacting to stress in his life which is done mostly via complaints, depression, and introversion. All other things, stuff I feel is important to round out his life – writing, dieting, exercise, our relationship – bring more stress into his world and here’s the thing: He can’t deal with that extra stress because he’s already dealing with job stress. His MS which is a neurological disease, has changed his brain so much, he’ll never again be able to deal with other things going on at the same time. Some of those things will fall off his plate. Other things will have to be intentionally moved off his plate. Still others will have to decide if they are content with getting no attention, with waiting and for how long, for feeling as if they are alone.

Enter me. I’m waiting. For what, I don’t know, for things will never improve; slowly, it’ll only get worse. This is what it’s like living with someone with MS. This is why in years past, I’ve thrown myself into solitary hobbies like gardening, my car, and recently, into writing. As rewarding as those things have been for me, nothing in my mind could ever take the place of a good, strong equal relationship. Something I no longer have.

He says he never knew I was waiting. Then again, how would he? I’m not a job-related thing.

His MS is part of why WS now has problems remembering things; no-brainer things that he used to never have problems with like turning off lights and starting the dishwasher even after countless reminders. These are not job-related things. If they were, they would get done. This is also part of why WS doesn’t have problems remembering job-related things like how to get to the office every day and what job tasks need to be accomplished. It’s why he’ll work on job stuff in bed until two in the morning.

An unfortunate reality is that all the things I insist are important and need every bit as much of his attention as he gives his job – writing and writing group, diet, exercise, car club, yard cleanup, and our relationship aren’t job-related so they get dropped until I have a loud and long enough screaming fit. What I’ve only just realized is that we’re on two completely different wavelengths. We might as well be on two different planets. He can’t hear or understand me. The frequency on the dial no longer exists.

How does a person mentally leave a spouse who, through a neurological disease, has already checked out of the relationship all the while claiming they haven’t or at the very least, didn’t intentionally mean to? How can I get over all this and get my own life on track when I depend on WS for food in my stomach and the roof over my head? How did I ever let myself become so deeply co-dependant? Because I fell in love with WS and I, like almost everyone else, hardly expected their spouse to come down with a horrible disease that turns their brain into a hole-riddled mush.

I’ve always taken my marriage vows very seriously and will always. Having been married once before (way back in the ‘70’s) and being a big observer of people, I know people change and most of the time they should. My vows will never change but I find myself in a marriage that has changed through sickness and health.

So now that I’ve shared my thoughts on the whole mess, I’m wondering what my options are and looking for views on what I should do going forward. In the past, these might have included:

Get psychological help because boy, oh boy, do you need it.
Go on medication so you won’t think so much, because you do.
Get a job and get a divorce, silly!
Do nothing but keep complaining. Like that’s going to fix anything.
Separate your lives and live them as much as you are both comfortable with.

–

Yesterday’s body movement: 5 minute run at 15 minute mile pace
25 minute walk at 19 minute mile pace
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 157.0
Currently reading: Justice by Dominick Dunne

September 25, 2009

My treadmill reads I’m closing in on having 300 miles logged in and while this might sound like a lot, or perhaps not, it isn’t very far if you take into consideration I’ve owned the thing for two and half years. If I had been using it two, three or four times a week for a minimum walk of a mile, that’d be…let’s see, hmm.

I seem to have painted myself into a math corner there, didn’t I?

Let’s see, two and a half years. One year is fifty-two weeks times two years equals a hundred and four plus half a year at 26 weeks equals 130 times and, oh let’s split the difference and call it walking three times a week, one hundred and thirty plus one hundred and thirty…zero, six, two plus one three zero makes it three hundred and ninety miles.

Hmm, that can’t be right. I had to have forgotten something but darn if I know what. See why I don’t do math?

Let’s just call it a thousand miles, hell, a billion miles. If I had been walking at least one mile a day at three times a week for about two and a half years, I would have logged in a billion miles. Heh, the treadmill probably doesn’t even have digit spaces up that high so I would have been jipped when it comes to knowing exactly how much I had walked anyway.

Just forget I tried to figure this out and let’s move on.

So I’ve finally gotten my endurance up to the point of being able to run longer on the treadmill than thirty seconds. Just the other day I’m happy to say I finally ran a quarter mile. A quarter mile, without stopping. The next day, I ran between a quarter and a half mile (don’t even ask me to figure out exactly how far that was – I’m a blogger, not an odometer).

It’s at a fairly slow clip; a fifteen minute mile pace but it’s one I want to continue at throughout the winter. The day I reach running a solid mile without slowing down or stopping will be a good one. If I can do it twice in a week, even better. My next endurance goal is five miles solid running and to be able to do it three times a week. I’m not going to think of goals beyond that because my body has the tendency to become accustomed to various levels of activity and flab up regardless and I have to watch out for that.

Anyway, the whole point is to tone up some of my flab and ideally, lose ten pounds before mid-November. Let’s just say I have to lose ten pounds by then or else anywhere I go this winter will have to accept me wearing elastic waistband shorts. I hate wearing elastic waistband shorts (but I do every day.)

I’ve got a closet full of size twelve pants that I can’t button up and one pair of size ten that I’ve never been able to wear (I was hopeful once). I’ve also got several blouses that I can’t button up without worrying about putting someone’s eye out should the button let loose.

You know, I didn’t feel like I ate a lot over the spring and summer but apparently I did and it all went straight to my chest and belly. I’m apple-shaped, with relatively skinny arms, legs, and hips – an apple with toothpick limbs. A woman’s heart-attack body.

I’m not complaining. It could be worse. I could have three butts and be a math whiz. I still wouldn’t be able to fit into any of my pants though.

–

Yesterday’s body movement: 6 minute run at 15 minute mile pace
14 minute walk at 19 minute mile pace
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 158.9
Currently reading: Justice by Dominick Dunne

September 26, 2009

Fall cleanup has begun, unofficially, at the Blogeois compound. Earlier this week, we had strong, hot winds blow through for a couple of days that knocked quite the number of leaves off the various trees and bushes around here – Birch, four kinds of Maple, White Bud, Rhododendron and Azalea alike. The very back walkway was nearly covered with long pine needles from the Vanderwolf Pine along with a smattering of Quince and Star Magnolia leaves. And I’m sure a number of those leaves and needles went back into Cap’t Dan’s yard. I know this irritates them.

I saw his family working along the back boulder wall yesterday, raking and interestingly enough, trying to dig. There’s a whole ‘nother layer of huge boulders, Rebar, and heavy landscape cloth under the one and a half layer of boulders that can be seen so digging along the base isn’t going to go well. I keep thinking they were just trying to dig out weeds from between the crevasses, something I used to go back there and do myself until they told me not to about six years ago. There are natural sword ferns back there now; not enough to make the rock property divider look pretty in my opinion, and thick moss and grape hyacinth bulbs that I tossed back there before Cap’t Dan’s house was built amid tons of weeds and sprouts of grass.

And even more interesting enough, we have a new plant in our yard. While Cap’t Dan’s family was out there sometime over the past few weeks, they planted a pretty, low-growing, creeping sedum up over the rock wall in our yard. I remember seeing it sitting forlorn and forgotten in a plastic pot set alongside a squatty ceramic for some three years through drought and snow. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, I guess, because it’s alive and well and now part of our plant family.

Maybe they forgot it was theirs and believed the wind blew it down from our yard into theirs. Maybe they figured everything grows here in our yard so they’d give it the best chance to thrive. This is what I’m choosing to believe. I don’t mind a bit. I always liked sedums.

Anyway, I raked and swept back there knowing full well it’s probably silly to do so this early in the season. Similar to last year, I suspect we’ll have at least three big leaf clean up days between mid October and December and no one will be happier when it’s done than I.

Rain and much cooler weather is forecast for most of next week. Finally!

–

Yesterday’s body movement: 6 minute run at 15 minute mile pace
14 minute walk at 18 minute mile pace
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 160.8
Currently reading: Justice by Dominick Dunne

September 29, 2009

It’s official. We outright own two cars. In almost twenty years of marriage, we’ve never done anything of the sort before. While I personally have owned multiple vehicles at once, none of them were worth more than a couple hundred dollars. Probably could have gotten more for the scrap metal, all told. Needless to say, we’re a little amazed at the accomplishment. Paying off WS’ car was the first step in getting our financial snowball rolling. Perhaps more exciting to us was that it stopped our monthly budget hemorrhaging. Who couldn’t like that?

The next step is to add the extra dollars (in this case, a hundred bucks) each month above the minimum payment due to the highest interest credit card. And while all the cards we have (five total) have raised their interest rates (they tell us of no fault of our own), one stands head and half a shoulder above the others. That’s the one going down, albeit in a couple of years, but if we were able to pay off both our cars in seven years, we ought to be able to pay off all our credit card debt in a shorter period of time. That’s what we’re shooting for. That’s actually do-able, and to us, that exciting.

Another step in fall cleanup around here is the stacking and covering of lawn furniture. Earlier this year, WS picked up a couple of cover replacements when two old ones rotted at the seams. Yesterday, ahead of the first fall rains, I brought in the outdoor pillows and packed them away. Then I took down the table umbrella and put it away it until next April. In a way, it’s sad to pack this stuff away but then again, we love fall weather. We don’t get too sad.

The other day I was reorganizing a garage cabinet, meaning I fixed a problem with sagging containers popping the cabinet door open. While I was out there, I repacked some of my original car parts, the parts I’m saving for the day I have to sell the car (that’s another story in itself). I packed them in a big heavy-duty black trash bag and duct taped it so spiders wouldn’t get into the bag

While I was duct taping it, Mr. Dimmer came out of his garage and called over to me in a weird voice. At first, I didn’t recognize the voice and couldn’t see him standing behind one of the shrubs.

“Whatcha doing there, B?” He asked. His eyes were big and he seemed nervous.

“Oh hi,” I said. “Just packaging up some of my car parts.” I kept duct taping the bag opening.

“Car parts, huh? Sure it’s not body parts? Kind of looks like a body part. Did WS finally make you mad enough?”

I must of blinked at him a full minute before I thought I understood what he was talking about. And then, I wanted to tell him to go back to whatever horror movie he must have been watching because obviously he’s been watching too many of those. The bag I was taping up was no more than three feet in length by a foot wide. Quite honestly, I don’t know what brought that on, nor did I think my duct taped trash bag looked like ‘body parts.’ But Mr. Dimmer is overdue to go off on one of his mental tangents and so I was reminded that if I wanted to work in the garage, no matter how nice the weather might be, I probably ought to keep the overhead garage door shut.

Body parts indeed. Anyway, I’m just posting this here just in case, you know, Mr. Whack-O Dimmer goes off or something.

–

Yesterday’s body movement: 9 minute run at 15 minute mile pace (2 separate sessions)
14 minute walk at 19 minute mile pace
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 158.8
Currently reading: Justice by Dominick Dunne

September 30, 2009

Dang, last day of September already. Fastest month I’ve ever been aware of, I swear.

So, for the last couple of days, The Renters youngest kid, the boy who goes around telling everyone he can kill cats with a baseball, has been walking up and down the sidewalks of our street, alone (without a baseball thankfully). The problem with this, and yes, I see it as a problem, is that he’s doing it during school hours. Apparently, he ‘walked home from school’ the other morning during recess and just hasn’t gone back. That’s the story he’s telling the other kids in the neighborhood after they were dropped off the bus, the story I overheard yesterday while I was sitting out front enjoying our first fall rain. He said he doesn’t want to go to school and so he doesn’t get on the bus in the morning when the kids get picked across the street.

Have I mentioned there is absolutely no parental supervision at The Renters’? Yeah, I thought I said something about that once or twice back when I went ballistic at them for their kids throwing rocks over the fence and when their Big Fat Liar kid was hollering obscenities day in and day out. Just so we’re all on the same page, there is none, as in no parental supervision over there at all that anyone can see from the outside. Kids come and go all hours of the day and seem to do whatever they want. Parents leave early in the morning for work and get home late in the evenings. Grandma is supposed to drive over to see kids off to school five days a week but lately, she’s been MIA.

So this kid, all of about eight years old, is walking up and down the sidewalks at about eleven in the morning with what looks like a big-ass hunting knife sheath tucked in his belt. I am not going to go out there to ask if there’s a knife in there but it sure does look like a knife handle sticking out of the top. He keeps one hand on the handle at all times. I’m sure it’s fake. Wouldn’t you think the same?

Yes, I’m going to keep an eye on him and his activities. Luckily, we don’t have any friendly cats around right at the moment but there is one who lives at the end of the street. I think that one’s not too keen about being around kids though. I’m not going to watch this kid like a hawk – in this neighborhood, that’s a sure ticket to someone being accused of being a pedophile or something, but I will make sure I’m aware of what he might be doing and what he looks like every time he passes out front.

Then again, since his older brother is so good with telling tall tales, it’s possible the kid’s lying too and is just home sick, maybe even with the flu (take your pick of either one – seasonal or swine). Maybe he’s supposed to be in bed. Ha! As if an eight year old would do such a thing without supervision.

–

Yesterday’s body movement: None. Tuesday is my day off.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 158.6
Currently reading: Justice by Dominick Dunne

October 1, 2009

I awoke in a sweat with my heart pounding the other morning. It was around 4 a.m. and apparently, my brain had been thinking about a writer’s thing I’m helping to run for a convention coming up later this year. This is my first time doing such an undertaking. I don’t know why I felt overly worried about it; I’m usually on the ball when it comes to ironing out details on such things. But when all the steps I still needed to do started jack hammering in my mind, trying to get back to sleep proved difficult. I did finally get back to sleep but woke up a few hours later with even more to-do stuff bouncing around in there.

After getting up and downing a bit of yesterday’s coffee, I wrote out the to-do list and started in. I’ll admit I like day-old coffee…but only French Press made day-old coffee. I’m also a coffee snob. And humble.

Countless email exchanges later and extra Word docs created and printed here and there for my records, I think I’ve got things even more under control. Some pro authors need manuscripts snail-mailed to them while others are fine with email attachments. Then I had to do it all over again with the writers themselves. Goodie bag materials have been assembled and volunteering pro author gifts tied with ribbon.

Need to send more requests for inspirational writer’s words since sadly, no one answered the last sent batch. I’m not even going to let the thought of having incorrect email addresses enter the fray because if what I have is wrong, what the convention people have is wrong too and there’s nothing that can be done about that. Thankfully, I know a great many of the people I’m conversing with. If any information I have is incorrect, I’ll get it right one way or another.

Sure enough, I had to put out some email fires.

I’ve often said that people in general don’t read much after the first eight words in nearly anything. Books, instructions, menus, bills; doesn’t matter what the reading material is. Anything after word number eight is skimmed if even noticed at all. In what’s proving to be a depressing state of writer affairs, a quarter of the convention’s participating writers completely missed word number nine in my email – the word, ‘soon.” I spent an hour quelling up and coming writers’ alarms, trying to convince them that no, I did not ‘forget’ to include important convention information. Soon, I said, I would send out this information. As soon as programming has finished up with their work. Soon, soon, soon. This week soon.

Of course, one of the rules of writing, to an aspiring writer, is if multiple people trip over the same thing, the fault isn’t in the people tripping, it’s in the part of the writing they are tripping over. Grumble, grumble, rewrite, rewrite. Even though it’s too late now (this one-time only email has already gone out), there’s no reason why next year, this has to cause the next person-in-charge the same problem.

The thought of doing all this while outside, the weather is changing from sunny to raining and back to sunny again, is wonderfully motivating for me. All I need is a couple of near catastrophic messes that force me to rearrange schedules, rooms, writers, and everything in between, twice, and then to regain even more control of the situation, and I ought to sleep like a baby from now through late November with hardly a care in the world.

Ha! I know what you’re thinking. No way. You all know me too well.

–

Yesterday’s body movement: One third mile run at 15 minute pace followed by 20 minute walk at 18 minute pace on uphill grade setting 4.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 158.8
Currently reading: Justice by Dominick Dunne

October 3, 2009

I felt like a hero to a small bird yesterday. I needed that because lately, I’ve felt like, well, wait a minute. The bird actually needed more help than I so let’s make the story about him, not me.

From upstairs, I heard a loud thump and knew I’d better go out back and check to see if a bird had hit a window. Sure enough, a Pine Siskin had. Honestly, I didn’t think it’d survive long enough for me to go back into the garage to get my gloves and a paper bag but it surprised me.

I put on my gloves and lowered the twitching bird to the bottom of the paper bag, slipped off the glove he was lying on and left that in the bag too. I folded over the top of the bag and clothes-pinned it shut, and then I put the bag with the injured bird in it in our garage where it’s warmer and out of harm’s way.

An hour later, I took the bag back outside and opened it under the bird feeders. The bird was standing upright, blinking at me, and seemed only a little woozy. I talked to it a little, telling it to take it’s time as if it understood anything other than ‘OMG, I’M ABOUT TO DIE!’ which it didn’t seem to mind terribly much. It really perked up when it heard the other birds in the trees.

I slowly folded down the top of the bag and held it away so the bird could see nothing but trees and sky. Within minutes, it took off out of the bag and landed high up in one of the birch trees that had a dozen or more other Pine Siskins in it. Later in the afternoon, I checked the entire backyard to make sure it hadn’t dropped dead somewhere anyway and I checked again this morning. No dead birds found.

Boy, I really needed that.

–
Yesterday’s body movement: 1/2 mile run at 15 minute mile pace at level 4 incline. 1/2 mile walk at 18.5 minute mile pace at level 4 incline.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 159.4
Currently reading: Justice by Dominick Dunne

October 4, 2009

We are loving the weather outside right now. It’s downright chilly out there at about 49 degrees Fahrenheit even now at eleven thirty in the morning. At midnight, rain came down hard in our area and for the first time this season, we could hear it loudly tapping on the bedroom skylight, over the sound of the TV. For the first time since March, I had to close the bedroom window all the way because of the low temperature. I hardly ever do that.

Last night, after eating an entire plate of homemade pesto fettuccini (whole wheat noodles – none of that tasty, yet rib-stickin’ white flour pasta for us), I felt overly tired and extra fat. I told myself I would sleep late this morning. I wanted to be as mobile as a glob of Jell-O on a cold countertop and I didn’t care to be anything but.

…but WS got up relatively early (for him) and I realized the reason I felt the way I did was because I ate too much and wasn’t moving enough, so up I got. After about an hour of sleepwalking through my usual morning motions – dressing, opening blinds and curtains, coffee-making, outside backyard check for birds and animals, vandalism or theft, I started to feel much better.

The numbers on the scale this morning didn’t hurt none either in the feel-good department. So after breakfast, I ran on the treadmill just to keep the metabolism burn going.

A fifteen minute mile seems like such a long time, an old lady shuffling pace in my opinion considering my normal, everyday walking pace is a twenty minute mile (and has been since I was a teenager). I’ve read local marathon results and while I don’t care about winning results or fastest time crap, I know that anything over a twelve minute mile is considered slow.

I shouldn’t let this get to me; in fact, I’m getting way too ahead of myself here. I just started running in the last month or so. I’m still working on building endurance beyond a nonstop two minute duration. I need to give myself a break here, and a little credit.

Slow and steady, slow and steady. Thump, thump, thump, thump goes the sound of my feet, going nowhere but making my heart, my lungs, my weight, and my well-being happier.

–

Today’s body movement: 2/3 mile run at 15 minute mile pace at level 4 incline. 1/2 mile walk at 18.5 minute mile pace at level 4 incline.
This morning’s weigh-in: 158.0, even after eating an entire plate of pesto fettuccini yesterday. Go me.
Currently reading: Justice by Dominick Dunne

October 6, 2009

First the good: I’m in love with our new washing machine. The amount of water we are saving is nothing short of phenomenal. The washer has sensors that only fill the tub a small amount while ‘pushing’ water via spinning actions into the clothes. The result is less washing wear and tear on the clothes while using a whole lot less water and soap. It really works.

The down side could be that the sensors are just one more thing to break. We knew this going in and bought a longish service warranty. People always complain how service warranties are a waste of money. Those people probably have never needed or used one. Quite literally, we’ve used every single one we’ve ever bought. Every. Last. One.

The bad: Another thing in the house has broken. The back garage door lock has broken in the locked position. One less exit from the house in case of fire or emergency. One less entrance to the house from the garage. Yeah, this is why I never wanted to buy a house. Now I understand why people only live so long in new houses. Who wants to be around to pay for all the stuff that breaks? I’m not really complaining; I’ve finally come to love what we’ve done with the place. It’s just that I didn’t realize (though I should have) that we’d need a separate, sizeable bank account set aside just to pay for home repairs. Between roofing, painting inside and out, fireplace, heater, air conditioning, sprinkler and fountain repairs and maintenance, and broken appliances, I’m starting to feel nickel and dimed here. I know it could be much worse. I’ll stop whining now.

The guilt: Into the yard debris bin I threw out that big spider plant I had grown from a cutting smuggled to me from a coworker at The Company I used to work for five years ago. It had reproduced babies and was symmetrical in shape, beautiful, and perfectly healthy. But its entire existence was fraught with five year old work baggage. Worse yet, so none of the pets would eat it, it lived in our bedroom…on my nightstand. I looked at it every day whether I wanted to or not.

I absolutely hate throwing out live plants and I’d never intentionally kill one by refusing to water it. I’ll admit I sometimes feel an irrational affection for living plants, and to just throw something out to face certain death in a landfill or ocean or side of road, well, let’s just say this one plant was the King of All Emotional Attachments.

I tried giving the plant away to several people and places and toyed with throwing it out altogether for the past two years. I know. It sounds stupid. Finally I told myself it was a matter of shit or get off the pot. Yard debris pick up was today and out it went before I could change my mind. With it went all the overworked, mentally draining, de-motivating, career squashing, empathy smashing, MsNoManagementSkills verbal abuse crap, accomplishment and territory grabbing, CEOs and MrSmartButFakingIt lies, and eventual layoff baggage. Five years is a long time to dwell on that stuff. It’s time to move on.

The good: My treadmill running is going well. Today, for the first time in nearly a year, I woke up feeling lighter in weight, definitely not slug-like. I feel like I’m on a good schedule of working out four days a week. My arm routine is going well too and my back fat is slowly shrinking. Saturday I was able to fit into, though snug, a pair of jeans. Four weeks left before I need to fit into all my jeans comfortably. I am on track for that accomplishment. After that comes winter maintenance and perhaps, dare I say, another couple of pounds to lose.

–

Today’s body movement: 1/2 mile run at 15 minute mile pace at level 4 incline. 1 and a 1/2 mile walk at 18 minute mile pace at level 4 incline
This morning’s weigh-in: 156.4
Currently reading: (tentatively) The Best American Short Stories, 2007 – edited by Stephen King.

October 7, 2009

Looks like I might have to eat the ten dollar cost of a writer submission for the convention workshop I’m helping run next month. I just can’t seem to get it through this guy’s head, regardless of multiple requests and reminders I’ve sent, that my department has no provision for him to ‘volunteer his time’ in lieu of payment.

What makes the matter worse is that he’s a friend and I feel he’s using that to his advantage. I suppose I could just deny him workshop entrance but I’ve tried extra hard to get writers to submit their work to this convention that’s being held over the Thanksgiving weekend when so many writers are out of town or out shopping, and with that came trying hard to make the convention some much needed money. And his workshop experience is paired with another writer. He not participating denies this other writer of an expected critique they paid for.

This guy is becoming known to convention goers and he’s well liked. I’m nobody doing this job for the first time ever and although I have authority to do what I feel I must, I know how much writers share gossip with one another. I’m not going to gossip but I’ll remember this. I’m not sure he wouldn’t bad mouth the convention should I cut him out of it, and that will come back to haunt me, I’m certain.

Given how much he updates his Facebook and Twitter daily if not hourly, I know he’s got enough cash to buy all kinds of things on a whim, like comic books and movie tickets. He’s not hurting for ten bucks from what I can see. On top of this, I’ve extended his submission deadline twice per his request and I still don’t have his work to send to his pro author or workshop peer who needed it a week ago, yet he posts about sitting around doing crossword puzzles and playing rugby.

Again, he’s a nice guy, just starting to get his stories published in pro markets, but exhibiting highly unprofessional behavior. I’m not the one to point this out to him. Someday, he’s going to be in for a huge disappointment from a major publisher. I can only hope that he’ll appreciate all the leeway he’s been granted in the past, but I doubt he’ll even remember. Sometimes, people aren’t what they seem.

–

Yesterday’s body movement: Day off
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 156.8
Currently reading: (tentatively) The Best American Short Stories, 2007 – edited by Stephen King

October 8, 2009

A month ago, WS had an odd day at work and came home with an interesting story to share. Usually, he’s pretty quiet about work policies and rightly so, he should be. He’s very much a corporate man.

His boss pulled him aside and told him that change was coming on the horizon and ‘not to get too emotional about it.’

Okay, what’s that mean, I asked? WS didn’t know. Needless to say, we’re both beyond tired of layoff rumors. But he doesn’t think it’s about layoffs. Reportedly, there is one more, perhaps two more (isn’t that always the case?) layoffs coming; one maybe in November, one maybe in the January/February timeframe. Being the jaded sort I am, I’m guessing that ‘perhaps’ another one or more will be in the 2010 through 2025 timeframe.

And let’s not forget the company has sold their big office complex here in town and are temporarily leasing it back until 2012. Yeah, the fallout from that ought to be a hoot.

It’s been a month now since that statement and WS’s still not exactly sure what he’s not supposed to get emotional over. He’s just not the emotional type, other than depression – then again, I’ve never known him not to be depressed. At work, there hasn’t been much talk of layoffs. The company has changed, yet again, the scale in which people are rated which certainly affects everyone, making all certain that was done to ensure people would get mad and quit thus eliminating, in theory, the need for another forced layoff. Okay, whatever. Been here, done and survived this before.

The new head boss has brought with him all sorts of new ways of doing things. Some new methods are proving not to be the holy grail of all business practices, while others could show promise if only some divisions hadn’t put stubborn, resistant-to-change, unreasonably unmovable managers in place decades years ago when business was booming and money fell freely from the heavens. For whatever reasons, these inflexible few would be more costly to get rid of and replace than to listen to them rant against the ‘new’ system, even with the added expense of de-motivating the worker bees and creating department-wide disharmony. The new boss says things need to start happening his way. The old guard says it’s all business as usual. The employees in the middle are left torn, confused, and banging their heads upon their blood-stained keyboards.

Basically, a war is brewing. New financial lean machine model against old ‘we’re spending like its 1999’ bloated machine model. You’d think such things wouldn’t affect WS and his coworkers in his department but it does because they have to take direction from both sides. Both sides are supposed to be working toward a common goal. Surprise! They’re not anywhere close.

It’s sad to think what could be accomplished in the world if plain, ordinary employees could just do their work and not have to walk political minefields eight hours out of every ten hour workday.

–

Today’s body movement: 1/3 mile running at 14.2 mile pace at level 4 incline. 1/3 mile walked at 19 mile pace at level 4 incline.
This morning’s weigh-in: 156.0
Currently reading: (tentatively) The Best American Short Stories, 2007 – edited by Stephen King

October 12, 2009

The other day I was told my journal here had become dark and gloomy over the past year. WTF? I thought to myself. Um, it’s always been dark and gloomy here. I mean, I’m whining constantly about stuff that shouldn’t matter, as my tagline reads. That’s not just a clever line – it’s me, and this is my blog. Over the years, since 1996 officially, 1994 unofficially, this journal has been dark, and light depending on what injustices or joys I perceive to rock my little world. Obviously, one side strikes me harder but I share it all.

For the record, I never wake up thinking, ‘Today I’m going to write about more depressing stuff and that’ll be a productive day.’ I react to what the days throw at me by being vocal and often, by writing it down, often a vain search to make sense of it. It’s been a tough year here for WS and me with his MS and other health issues, his job worries, our financial mess and his salary cuts, and the slow, wheezing death of dreams and passions. We’re not alone in much of this. People all around the world have lost their passion and drive to keep on keeping on. I don’t know what comforting words I can give any of them because I don’t know what words to tell myself. So I guess, yes. It has become darker and gloomier here lately. And I’m just another person whining about it. Welcome to Blogeois.com. Please turn off the light if you’re the last to leave.

So in yet another gloomy entry because now I see it as a challenge, let me announce that WS’s and my relationship together have entered a new phase. Between all the things mentioned above, but mostly his job and his health issues, our relationship has all but fallen apart over the last two years. We’re both recognizing that now. The fight to regain what was lost is over.

That said, we are not getting divorced. We are not moving out from one another. We are staying together and we still take our marriage vows very seriously.

But we will be living somewhat separate lives for a while if not forever more because our lives have always gone in different directions from the comfort level of the other. Of recent, those comfort levels have changed considerably.

As each of us has aged, our individual directions have increased the stress levels in the other, making it impossible to continue putting up a front, a smiling face, and a ‘You go, you!’ attitude. In all fairness, I’ve pushed WS into involvement with car clubs, writing groups, and the like. Never in a million years would he have ever become involved in any of it on his own. He did it to make me happy.

Today’s job requirements have changed and in order for WS to keep his job, more of his time must be spent away from home and family. Mandatory 70 hour weeks are now in affect without compensation or reinstatement of previous salary levels. As I try to deal with this latest bit of chaos, get my head on straight and try to make a go at fiction writing, we’re lucky to see each other awake and coherent for two hours a day. Usually that’s done with his office-loaned laptop and my list of stuff the house and I need help with between us. It doesn’t make for good conversation. More often than not, most of my pointy, demanding conversations are forgotten and dropped off the back burner. There are reasons for that and I’m trying to get used to those too.

I opened this entry with something I was told about this journal. I also learned something else. WS told me he’s a workaholic. This bit of news absolutely floored me. I mean, I’ve been with this guy for over twenty-two years. Our twentieth wedding anniversary is coming up next month. You’d think I’d be tied for first place in knowing if he was a workaholic or not. Yet somehow I didn’t.

This news explains why over the years and specifically the last couple, WS has had trouble doing anything other than job work. Part of it is due to being a workaholic (and a perfectionist – I’m one of those too) and part of it is how his MS is progressing. Again I’ll say I should have known. Not figuring it out on my own kind of makes me feel like a moron but I’ll get over it.

Someday I’ll post my extensive thoughts on how these two things have contributed to the winding down of our relationship but for now, I’ll try to sum it up by saying this: On one side is his job. I’m on the other side. He’s in the middle. After this many years being pulled in different directions (because I didn’t have a clue I was pulling), something’s gotta give.

To a workaholic, the choice is obvious. To an outspoken, half-independent person like myself, I can learn to live with it. I don’t know how long this phase will last, or if it will last, but if it does, we’ll both be stronger for it.

–

Today’s body movement: 1/3 mile running at 14.2 mile pace at level 4 incline. 1/3 mile walked at 19 mile pace at level 4 incline.
This morning’s weigh-in: 156.4
Currently reading: (tentatively) The Best American Short Stories, 2007 – edited by Stephen King

October 13, 2009

I thought I married a man without ego, one who didn’t get upset of his partner’s accomplishments no matter how big or small. I think I was half right. I don’t think he had grown enough in life to have an ego of his own. He certainly does now.

He once told me I intimidated people, him especially. I can do anything I set my mind to, even things I don’t really want to do seem to fall at my feet. He says I never give him praise or kudos for his accomplishments. But the fact is, I do. He doesn’t hear them. He only hears his mother’s voice who berates him in a way he’s never shared with me. I didn’t marry him, I married his mother.

In retaliation for the friendships I make, the networking I work on building, the littlest things I do, he, whether subconsciously or not, retaliates in his own way. He’ll drink too much or hurt himself by tripping or exercising too hard (after not exercising for months) or he’ll throw himself further into work and not come home for eleven or twelve hours. He’ll say his legs are wobbly after ten minutes of yard work and when I say mine are too, he’ll snap back a retort saying my excuse is that I’m running a mile and should be used to it.

He’s been emotionally absent from our relationship since late 1993, the year I claim he went ‘corporate’ for his job. Sixteen years is a long time to be checked out of a relationship. He seems to have set his mind that I’ll always be here and will always take care of him and wherever we live and all that’s under our roof to free up his mental capacities to do his office job. He’s unaware and continues to be unaware of how bad our relationship has deteriorated. Nor does he know how to fix it when he thinks he’s caught a glimpse of how broken and disconnected we are from one another. He’s confused on the rare occasions he comes up behind me and gives me a hug, why I don’t stop cooking or cleaning or whatever I am doing at that exact moment (because both of our timings toward each other suck) when I don’t drop everything and reciprocate back.

The fact is, I am now emotionally absent, nor do I care that I am. I put everything I had and then some into keeping up a loving relationship with him and he ignored every one of my needs for sixteen years. He took what he needed for his needs and rarely gave back. On the occasions he did try to give back, it was followed by long stretches of detachment as if a light switch had been flipped off. I thought once, like me, he was an all-or-none kind of guy. My fault was that I choose a none kind of guy.

He broke my number one rule in marriage – I didn’t get married to live my life alone, yet here I am feeling as lonely as if I lived under a bridge in a cardboard box, except for as long as it didn’t blow away, my cardboard box would be my friend. He’s like the cardboard box, more gone than not and when he’s here, everything feels soggy and collapsed.

I told him the other day how depressed I was, how I felt hopeless and broken like nothing will ever be the same or worth fixing or even fixable ever again in our lives. He asked if I saw the danger in thinking that way. I was instantly furious because I had told him of these exact feelings six months ago and he poo-pooed them and said he knew he was depressed too. It’s always about him. His feelings get center stage. For all the cheerleading I’ve spent on him, he gives nothing back in return. He rarely thinks to ask how anyone else is feeling and he’s definitely not at all concerned, outwardly at least, about how anyone else might go about fixing those depressed feelings. To make matter worse, if I start believing my own cheerleading, I tend to accomplish things and then there I go, intimidating him again by doing something he hasn’t.

How is this going to work if I actually write something worth getting published? I’ll tell you how, by not writing anything in the first place. NOTHING is worth this much grief. He has broken my spirit. He has broken my will to accomplish anything. If I were to tell him this, he’d continue to say he needs to leave me because he’s broken too much, as if leaving after the fact would help. He can’t see how that would be the final nail in the coffin. I guess there’s still one percent of me who feels hope for us. One percent surrounded by a big ninety-nine percent of why the fuck do I care.

October 14, 2009

I woke yesterday to the smell of smoke. There’s a wildfire burning way northeast of us but the wind brought the smell our way. Wildfires, brushfires, all are bad. But it kind of smelled good like a neighbor burning good wood in his fireplace for once, instead of the garbage he burns to cut down on his trash pickup bill.

It was windy all weekend long, day and night since Saturday morning. Monday, while I was waiting, in the time it took for the garbage men to empty our lone trashcan and set it back down on the sidewalk, the can and lid blew past the big truck and I chased it nearly to the intersection. It’s still windy outside today even though the local weather people claim it’s going to stop anytime now. Sunday night, Monday morning, Tuesday afternoon. It’s still blowing.

Leaves are beginning to turn yellow and brown and they’re dropping. Wind is good though more wind would be better (just not on trash day, in B’s perfect little world). Leaf raking is a giant task here if the wind isn’t around. Even so, if rain is involved, nothing blows away. It just mats and rots. The wind reminds me that we need to take down two trees sometime before spring. Apparently we have a dead birch and that misshapen, way too top heavy white bud has had to have seen its last autumn.

If it’s not one thing, it’s another. I’ll take the rain, which was supposed to be here Monday morning. Today, we finally got a little. It’ll be best for all involved if I never meet a local weather person in person.

I finally ran one mile on the treadmill the other day. Straight running, no pauses or stops with a 15:38 time, a slow time but I survived it. Haven’t been able to run another one all the way through since but I’m putting in a mile total running in with two or three sessions over an hour or two. Whatever it takes to get my endurance up, and my weight down by mid November. I’m still on track and this accomplishment is probably just another intimidation thing for all around me who know about it. I heard I do that sometimes.

My workouts on weekends suck though as does eating anything containing flour. Crackers, bread, pasta – doesn’t matter if it’s true whole grain or not (around home its mostly whole grain). It all sticks to my fat-encased ribs and my weight shoots up a good five or more pounds for close to a week.

The bad part is that WS really likes his whole-grain pasta and bread. The really bad part is that I don’t push myself away from the table when serving the stuff. Bad me. It’s like back when the doctors said I was allergic to cheese. Of course, WS wasn’t allergic to the stuff so we kept having it in the house. Not fair to ‘punish’ both of us by not buying and consuming it. No support whatsoever. I kept eating it just like I keep buying and eating the whole wheat pasta.

Rice, semolina, and corn pasta does the same thing to me. The stuff sticks to my insides like glue, no, like cement. Obviously, I should just stick to what I truly like – berries, lettuce, and plain, unbuttered, un-battered seafood. Obviously, I’d need to live in a house by myself to do that, and make a wad of money. For those of us who don’t have free berries around to pick, ever price berries? Perhaps now you see why I buy pasta.

Excuses, excuses.

–

Yesterday’s body movement: Day off.
This morning’s weigh-in: 158.8
Currently reading: The Best American Short Stories, 2007 – edited by Stephen King

October 15, 2009

After a restless night tossing and turning until eight this morning, I woke to the awful nearby screech of a squirrel being picked off by something, most likely the new-ish young, gray, male cat that’s been hanging around lately. Yesterday, I chased off the cat after weeks of failed attempts to draw it near so I could pet him and assess his health. Shortly after I scared off the cat, the friendlier of the two young squirrels came running close to me, no doubt pleading for even more nuts in its half-filled nut box. I didn’t cave; can’t afford to if I want nuts to dole out, sparsely, over the winter.

Perhaps I won’t need as much now.

Again, I say I don’t wake up thinking of dark and gloomy things to write here, and I suppose I didn’t need to write about this morning’s tragedy. Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t bother me. This is nature. This is life. I’m dealing with it.

I stuck to a good meal plan yesterday after running a mile (my second time ever!) and then read several stories in the Best American Short Stories book I picked up a couple of years ago. My thinking during that purchase was since I was trying to learn how to write short stories, I might be served well to read and perhaps learn how the published authors do it.

I find I’m just as confused as ever. The stories I’ve read so far don’t really seem to be short stories, as I’ve been taught what elements one needs to be considered a real, publishable story. No, ninety-eight percent of half I’ve read so far are great, wonderfully great and admirably written character studies, but not true short stories in my opinion and as I’ve been taught. Yet they were published and thought highly enough after being published that they were republished in a highly respected short story anthology, edited for that year – 2007, but Stephen King.

I am constantly amazed by how many of the writers I hang around with don’t see the flaws in their own writing when it’s as obvious as the noses on their faces to other writers around them. I am so guilty of this; more than I ever thought I’d be. I’m also guilty of thinking one or two of my stories are better than just good but as of yet are not publishable by seemingly anyone. And when I read from this Best Short Stories book, I can’t help but compare those to mine and want to bash my head on my keyboard asking why was that drivel published and not mine? Mine is a real story. Those are not.

I’m still missing something, something I’m not getting and apparently, something no one has yet to be able to explain to me. Don’t let anyone tell you writing is easy. If all you aspire to do is to jot down fragments, thoughts, and memories, it’s not so bad. Writing is as hard as finding yourself as a old, fat, out of shape, asthmatic woman trying to run a marathon. If you want to be published (not self published which is a fate worse than death in real writers’ worlds), you’ve got an uphill battle on your hands. But it’s a battle worth fighting through because of that little thing called fickle. You never know what an editor is going to consider publishable and what’s not because it seems to change yearly, daily, hourly even, and if you can handle that, you’re halfway home.

I’m trying to remember that. Again.

–

Yesterday’s body movement: 1 mile ran at 14.3 mile pace, followed by 1/3 mile walked at 3.0 mile pace – both at level 4 incline.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 157.0
Reading: The Best American Short Stories, 2007 – edited by Stephen King

October 16, 2009

I am craving pizza right now, a big, thick, sloppy with sauce kind of pizza. After having a very good, healthy dinner last night, hours later the craving came on. I don’t know if it’s a comfort food craving or caused by something I ate – chemicals in food often create craving for other kinds of food, but it’s driving me a little bonkers at the moment. I’ve noticed over the past year, I seem to crave a sloppy pizza (with white flour crust – horrors!) about one every three or four months. And this tells me I’m doing or eating or going through something similar around the same time.

Or it could just be a craving and nothing more.

For the first time in longer than I can remember, the rain is starting to fall right around the time the local weather forecast predicted it to. Now, if only it’d rain as much as is promised.

–

Yesterday’s body movement: 1.1 miles ran at 14.3 mile pace, followed by .7 mile walked at 3.3 mile pace – both at level 4 incline.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 155.4
Reading: The Best American Short Stories, 2007 – edited by Stephen King

October 17, 2009

I think I may have made a breakthrough in thinking of pizza. Decades ago, yes, decades, I convinced myself that I never needed to eat another Snickers candy bar as long as I lived simply because I could clearly see myself becoming addicted to them. Gave them up then and there and haven’t had one since. I have talked myself into thinking of a few other food items the same way and I think I may be on the threshold of adding pizza to the list. Yes, pizza. Once a staple in our household, homemade or ordered and eaten at least twice a week during our food heydays of the 90’s. Now it leaves me feeling bloated, parched, and perpetually drowsy. It’s become a carb-low food, a nap-needing food, a pointless food, not even considered fuel food because my body doesn’t like it in the least. It’s all in my head, you see. I remember liking it, not remembering how awful I feel afterward.

Years ago, I marveled at how, on the rare occasions I could afford it, I could eat a full course dinner of steak and seafood, salad and baked potato with the works and the next day, had only gained maybe a pound. Compared to the usual evening fare of two or three slices of pizza and a beer or ice tea and would gain a solid five to eight pounds overnight. My body was telling me I didn’t need the bread-like pizza or the yeasty beer. My insomnia was trying to tell me I didn’t need to be drinking ice tea at midnight but that’s another story. I get that part now.

So I’m jotting this all down now so that the next time I think I crave pizza, I remember how I honestly wanted to throw up afterward. I didn’t because I’m not that kind of person. But I really didn’t feel well. I laid down for about a half an hour after but felt too uncomfortable to sleep or concentrate on reading or even lie there without tossing and turning.

C’mon, B, how many times do you have to go through this before you get a clue here? Just give it up, pizza that is. It wouldn’t be hard. Who needs to feel this crappy anyway? It’d be easy, just like Snickers and PayDays, Fruit Loops and Twinkies.

–

Yesterday’s body movement: 1.25 miles ran at 14.3 mile pace, followed by .5 mile walked at 3.0 mile pace – both at level 4 incline.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 157.7
Reading: The Best American Short Stories, 2007 – edited by Stephen King

October 20, 2009

A couple of things have been on my mind lately that I haven’t mentioned here much as of yet. One is the new school bus pick up time. That used to occur at 8:30 a.m. sharp. Then, slowly as with trash pickup and mail delivery, devolved into a later time; more around the quarter to 9 a.m. timeframe. This school year, and at the last possible moment it seemed, the school board in our area changed the school start time to a half an hour later than ever before because they felt school children weren’t getting enough sleep. WTF?

I’m not going to go into the whole ‘when I went to school, I had to do this and that’ argument but c’mon now. Since when does middle school need to start at 9:30/quarter to ten in the morning and only go until 2:30 in the afternoon? No wonder so many young adults can’t handle working a full eight-to-ten hour workday. I always felt the worst thing about going to school, other than being bullied constantly, was that none of my schools ever prepared anyone for working in the real world. Seems for all the money they are endlessly clamoring over, that fact hasn’t changed.

The other issue in my mind is boys in our neighborhood marking their territory by peeing on stuff. Yes, urinating on things in public; during daylight hours even. It’s huge around here for some reason. Actually, I know why and where it started – with the Renter’s youngest, completely unsupervised kid who pretty much does whatever he wants, whenever he wants. Now The Howler Monkey boys are doing it as are several young boys from the cul-de-sac around the corner, and really, this is just gross.

Over the weekend, after a week of promised rain that turned into barely a sprinkle here and there, we went for a short walk around the block. WS couldn’t handle much farther than that and it was just as well. We turned the first corner and there’s Howler Monkey kid number 1, age nine, peeing on a lamp post in broad daylight while three other kids around the same age ran and played and laughed nearby. Howler Monkey kid saw us, finished, and tucked himself back in, leaving his fly wide open. I averted my eyes and acted as if I hadn’t seen anything. This isn’t the first time I actually had.

The Renter kid pees outside on both sides of the property he lives on. On one side, he urinates on the corner of a wooden fence that belongs to a neighbor near the sidewalk. On our side, it’s a blue juniper we have on the side of our yard. Walking past the fence is like taking a stroll through a dirty cat box, the aroma quite eye watering at times. I can hardly wait for our side to start reeking. Thank goodness the rainy season is slated to begin soon to hopefully wash the day’s offerings away. I can only hope the kids grow out of this phase before next summer.

–

Yesterday’s body movement: 1.1 miles ran at 14.1 mile pace, followed by .3 mile walk at 3.0 mile pace – both at level 4 incline.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 158.9 (no more pizza).
Reading: The Best American Short Stories, 2007 – edited by Stephen King

October 21, 2009

Five years ago today, according to B’s 2004 archive, WS and I were laid off from the company that helped introduce big money and huge stress into our lives. The days leading up to the layoff event weren’t pretty. I was recovering from major surgery. WS was doing my job, his job, and his daytime job all at once. We were making wads of money. We were on MsNoManagementSkills, her ex-husband FatHead, and BikerDude’s enemies list because we took our jobs seriously and did our jobs well. And then the rug was pulled out from under us.

I’m convinced I’ll always feel that I did something wrong because the new corporation that bought the company made us feel that way. But that’s okay. That Big Ass corporation continues to do that with all the old employees from little companies they buy out and then drive into the ground. Is it any wonder that some of us still don’t like them? Are company-bought lap dances supposed to make anyone feel better (other than the obvious, um, obviously)?

Today’s a day for quiet reflection, of wondering how far we’ve come since then, for musing about how much farther might have been better, and for laughing at those who chose to remain stagnant over the past five years. So it seems appropriate today somehow that WS and I witnessed a Dodge Viper being repossessed just up the road, complete with county sheriff accompaniment. It was not being towed properly but that was of no matter I suppose. The owner didn’t put up any more of a fight than I did when I was laid off. Tears, lots of internal anger, and a feeling of loss that’ll take way too long to get over.

–

Yesterday’s body movement: Day off.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: Doh! Forgotten.
Reading: The Best American Short Stories, 2007 – edited by Stephen King

October 22, 2009

Nice fall rain yesterday for most of the day. We keep getting told that it’ll be foggy this day and that but here in our neighborhood the fog stays up high and doesn’t muffle sound or soften sight of things. Those days are coming though. You can just feel it.

October is winding down and soon November will soon be upon us. That’s National Novel Writing Month time around here beginning at the stroke of midnight on the first. This will be our sixth year, every one productive and filled with learning. Every year we ask readers here to join us. Either they want to but don’t for their own reasons, or just plain don’t for no reason at all. I’m not going to say much about it this year other than to post periodic word count updates here and there. I’m sure this whole thing bores most to tears but let me confess that in the first year of participating, getting all my feelings about my job and being laid off down on paper was one of the most exhilarating things I’ve ever done in my entire life. And I’ve been fortunate enough to have done a good number of exhilarating things. I’m just saying…

Briefly yesterday I overheard the oldest Renter kid next door tell one of his skateboarder friends that his stepdad finally put his foot down on all the skateboard noise going on over there. Skateboarding is now a limited activity. Football throwing is the new energy burner.

For up to four hours an afternoon, the kid throws a football around this narrow-streeted neighborhood, bouncing the ball off cars, patio furniture, home siding, trees and shrubs. Yesterday afternoon, he intentionally threw it at the back of one of the oversized school buses that drop kids off across the street. You’d think the driver would have heard it and said something. You’d think so but you’d be wrong.

From my window, I saw the bus rumble to a stop, saw the kid throw the ball, and heard the thud loud and clear behind my closed doors and latched tight windows. All the kids laughed. And because no one said anything, next month it’ll be the ‘cool’ thing to do similar to this month’s marking territory with one’s own urine.

Oh, and this just in: WS’ car’s CD player no longer works. Had the financial spending continued along it’s merry way, he would have replaced that car earlier this year. No consolation knowing that the CD player never worked right to begin with despite the dealership ‘trying’ to fix it. Time to listen to the sounds of the road, my friend, and save the music for home.

–

Yesterday’s body movement: 1.0 mile ran at 14.1 mile pace, followed by .3 mile walk at 3.2 mile pace – both at level 4 incline.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 157.6
Reading: The Best American Short Stories, 2007 – edited by Stephen King

October 23, 2009

Even in these tough times, the price of things keep getting jacked up. Comcast is raising its rates, credit cards are starting to charge ‘inactivity’ fees, the car club is upping their membership cost by ten bucks in January. Google and the Wall Street Journal both say the worst is behind us and the recession is over and if they say it, it must be true, right?

Bullshit. Our area is still hurting from the dot com meltdown back in 2001! You can believe I’m going to have something to say to the car club. That’s the last extravagance we haven’t cut but it looks like that’ll have to go now. Bunch of greedy asshats.

This just in: The oldest Renter kid (also known as Big Fat Liar or Little Drummer Boy) claims he’s got swine flu (overheard via a cell phone conversation he had out front of our house – crappy reception in our area requires cell conversations to occur outside of houses), and that’s the reason he’s been home all week. Yet he keeps playing his drums every day for hours out in his unheated garage that, might I remind you, is located twelve feet from our living room wall.

I don’t think he’s got swine flu because how I understand it, when you have H1N1 all you feel like doing is dying, not drumming, or throwing a football around with friends like he’s been doing every afternoon before his step parents get home.

Also received a late night email request from MsNo begging her mailing list to tell her where she can get a swine flu shot ASAP since her doctor’s office told her H1N1 is everywhere, to be prepared to get it via DorkMaster’s school-aged kids, and that they didn’t have shots available yet.

Now, maybe it’s just me but if her doctor’s office can’t give her an H1N1 shot or tell her where to get one, maybe that’s because no one local has them yet? She goes on to write (all in caps, no less) that she needs one by today at the latest because beyond that will be too late. Too late for what? Her own personal time line? She have another mani/pedi appointment she doesn’t want to miss again?

–

Yesterday’s body movement: 1.0 mile ran at 14.1 mile pace, followed by .3 mile walk at 3.2 mile pace – both at level 4 incline.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 158.6
Reading: The Best American Short Stories, 2007 – edited by Stephen King

October 24, 2009

We stopped at Wal-Mart today to pick up toilet paper and a few more small baking pumpkins. The number of people shopping there coughing and sneezing without covering themselves in any way, shape, or form was through the ceiling.

We did our best to maneuver around this hacking couple and that sneezing spray family but only time will tell how well we came out of the place. It would seem that no one has ever listened to common sense and hygiene practices. No one is paying attention to the news and how germs, specifically H1N1 germs, spread (assume all surfaces are hot zones and be aware that sneeze/cough droplets carry up to 10 feet away). Yes, this is only a nasty flu, but should an actual plague come about, you can pretty much count most of the area I live in to be wiped out because obviously, we’re surrounded by morons who don’t give a shit.

Last week, armed with a free employee voucher, WS went to get a regular flu shot. The nurse at Walgreens couldn’t be bothered because she was on her lunch indefinitely (during what was a single five hour work shift). The other Walgreens in our area isn’t doing flu shots at all. They told us to go back to the other Walgreens, the one with lunch lady waving people away, or drive into Portland and ‘hope for the best.’ WS gave up. Sure, his voucher wasn’t for the swine flu but still, it might have been good for something had the planets aligned. The voucher expired the next day and was only for employees.

Down in areas of Portland, people trying to get shots are being turned away after the small number of vaccines received by the seemingly hit-or-miss clinics run out. These are people who have stood in the rain and cold for hours. I gave serious thought to going to one of these places but figured being out in the weather wouldn’t do me any favors either, even if I am supposedly on ‘the list’ due to asthma and caring for someone with MS.

Then a couple of the clinics in Portland started turning away older people, cutting them off if they were 55 and older, regardless of health issues. Smooth move there, guys. I’m a year and a half away from being in those shoes. I know the media is having a field day with this story and over-hyping everything having to do with the flu, but I have an inkling I might really be so screwed by this come next month.

Until then, I’m not going much of anywhere else out in the real world and will keep up a good attitude. I can only do so much, but I can do that. You do that too and we’ll all get through this together.

–

Yesterday’s body movement: 1.0 mile ran at 13.8 mile pace, followed by 1 mile walk at 3.2 mile pace – both at level 4 incline. That running pace was a bitch.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 157.2
Reading: The Best American Short Stories, 2007 – edited by Stephen King

October 27, 2009

I hate to quell myself but I felt I had to do it yet again. I just can’t take the risk. I just can’t help but feel I’d be irresponsible. For someone who feels an over sense of responsibility in everything, that’s unthinkable.

I had planned on attending a writers’ write-in today as was long ago, once the usual for me on Tuesday afternoons. Did you know Tuesday’s are great writing days? Well, they are. Not sure who figured that one out and if you’re like me, you’d not believe it, at first. But it’s true.

But I had to cancel that plan. Too many people, too many nasty germs out there right now, too many touched surfaces and too small a space that frankly, the last time I attended was seemingly filled with nothing but coughers and sneezers.

Just a few short weeks ago, that was before the media overhyped the flu and before I drank that Kool-Aid.

Later this evening, I had planned to drive down into Portland and across town to attend a favorite author’s book signing. But the same issues came up. How irresponsible would I be if I caught something doing something I can’t afford to do anyway and brought WS home the flu?

Because really, this whole flu thing isn’t so much about me, my asthma, or my assured trip to the hospital if/when it burrows deep into my bronchitis/pneumonia-prone lungs. It’s mostly about not getting WS sick because living with a compromised immune system that attacks itself when triggered by a cold or flu makes it so, oh I don’t know what you’d call it,…adventurous to say the least waking up with double vision, slurred speech, or the inability to stand or walk while coughing, sneezing, wheezing, and feeling like death warmed over.

Or maybe I should lighten up on myself because I suspect I’ll not be the one bringing the flu home. I think WS will and it’ll come from his job because even though no one there is getting a raise or their old salaries reinstated and people are still being laid off, his managers and several coworkers had been sent to various parts of the world on expensive business trips recently and they all came back into town last weekend.

This worried WS so much, he worked from home yesterday. But today, he has to be at the office because apparently, face-to-face meetings were called for (as opposed to call-in kinds of meetings WS and many others prefer). If he’s not sniffling by next weekend, I’ll be surprised.

Even so and I hate to say it but I think it’d be better to get the flu now rather than later, meaning next month or in December. Or worse even still, in January when we’ve got the biggest shot of having icy conditions and treacherous driving conditions. I need to remember that’s what calling 911 is for. If need be. If need be.

But for now, for today, I’m sitting here typing, writing, and reading, breathing deep and clear and not sniffling a bit.

–

Yesterday’s body movement: 1.25 mile ran at 14.3 mile pace, followed by .25 mile walk at 3.0 mile pace – both at level 4 incline.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 157.4
Reading: My own stuff in prep for National Novel Writing Month.

October 28, 2009

Today’s another work at home day for WS. He had to. The office is chaotic because today’s the day everyone was asked to bring their kids into work to go around trick-or-treating at everyone’s desk. All employees are expected to have bowls of candy available. All employees are expected to drop whatever they’re doing throughout the entire day and pony up the sugar. No one seems concerned about giving kids candy, about contributing to children’s obesity worries, or about the fact that most parents at the office said their kids were sick…but they’d bring them in anyway.

Little harbingers of disease, misery loves company, and all that. WS made a good decision to work from home. No, the office won’t be wiped down or disinfected or cleaned by tomorrow. They haven’t had office cleaning crews for some time now. That went the way of the deemed-unnecessary security gate guards, analog television, and the dinosaur.

The latest thing around home here to go on the fritz is our living room TV. Within seconds of turning it on, a high pitched squeal starts in. The thing is about eight years old, a Sony, not a flat screen. We don’t watch it as much as your average person watches TV. If this goes, we can’t replace it, plain and simple, not for a year, probably more anyway. We have two other TVs in the house, albeit much, much smaller versions (we’ve never been into big TVs).

We’ll live but Jeesh, I guess the days of buying much of anything and expecting it to last longer than ten or twenty years is long past. Makes me almost wish I still had my old portable, 1976, black-and-white, ten-inch screen TV, the one with the broken antennae that still picked up everything but lasted for decades despite dropping it off a balcony, living in my car, and half a dozen moves. No wait. Now that everything’s gone digital, even that wouldn’t have worked now. Crap. All this is being done on purpose. It’s a big conspiracy, I tell you! LOL!

–

Yesterday’s body movement: Day off.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 157.4
Reading: Nothing at the moment.

November 5, 2009

Of people who believe in and practice alternative medicine, sixty-six percent use eating Brussels sprouts to get rid of a headache. Approximately eighteen percent of the general population who eat Brussels sprouts are rewarded with a migraine.

Guess which group I’m now a part of.

I don’t have migraine headaches, at least rarely ever have had one. I get one maybe, maybe once ever two or three years, and then, they are usually caused by big drops in barometric pressure and are actually bad sinus headaches.

A week ago, WS made a delightful Brussels sprouts dish. We both love the green little cabbage looking things, so much that we generally reserve them for Thanksgiving dinner. But he was pining for them and so we had them a week ago last night.

By eight that evening, I felt the dull throb begin. By eleven, and with five aspirin in me, I was trying to stay as still and quiet as I could to keep my head from exploding. At 3 in the morning, I had a hard time keeping from moaning and rocking from side to side. Pain level 8 with a sharp and pointy bullet. The skin on my scalp actually hurt to the touch, making it impossible to rub my temples or left side of my face and base of my skull, both places the pain was the worst.

At 4 in the morning, I barfed (in the bathroom thankfully) and really thought my head would explode then. I kept thinking of my awful mother who died twenty three years ago, almost to the day, of a massive stroke. She told a couple of people days before that she had a bad headache. You can imagine what was going through my head, along with the pain. It didn’t make me feel any better.

I then spent the next two days in bed consuming no less than 43 aspirin total. I hardly ever take any kind of anything for pain. It did little to dull the pain.

Saturday morning, my eyes felt as if they were bulging from my face and the left side particularly, felt as though it had indeed fallen out, rolled about on the floor picking up pet fur and cat litter before someone stuffed it back into my head. With a jack hammer. But the pain was down, level 4 at most.

More aspirin taken. The throb dulled slightly and I was able to function somewhat like a human being. By Monday morning, my headache could barely be felt and by Monday afternoon, I felt good. I hadn’t run since Wednesday though I had made sure I walked a mile Thursday; running was completely out of the question and even then, I collapsed back into bed with renewed spikes of pain.

I could only run a half a mile Monday but it was better than nothing.

Tuesday’s are my day off from working out. I spent the day writing because it is that time of year when I’m doing that fifty thousand words in November thing.

Yesterday morning, I woke up with a stiff neck, stiffer than the one I had most of last week when I tried to find a comfortable position for my jagged-feeling head to sleep in. Last night, the headache grew back into a throb. Pain level 3 with a bullet. All last night, I just couldn’t get my neck comfortable at all and I woke this morning with the dullest of headaches, barely a level 1 on the pain chart, but still. I am way tired of headaches.

There’s a big storm brewing out in the Pacific right now. They say it’s started to hit the coast and will be here by late afternoon. You know how much I trust our local weather people, uh huh. But I’m wondering if this might not be today’s headache cause.

–

Yesterday’s body movement: .65 mile ran at 14.3 mile pace at level 4 incline.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 158.8
Reading: Dominick Dunne’s “People Like Us.”

November 6, 2009

Well, it’s official. Me and every other old person in our area are expendable. No H1N1 flu shots for us regardless of need. In my town, we’re officially off the high priority list (WS will angrily point out that only breeders and the stupid get to be protected so they can continue to fill the planet with even more stupid people.). I am incredibly angry over this but I guess, what right do I have to keep breathing? I’m not even able to produce children so I bring to humanity no value (actual statement directed at me right after I had my forced hysterectomy).

WS could probably get the shot if he could prove he has MS or went through his doctor’s office. The problem however with that is that flu shots, much like getting the flu or a bad cold, affects the body’s immune system and a flu shot would be just as likely than not to trigger an MS exacerbation in him.

So he doesn’t think he’ll get one. Right now, I’d get any flu shot I could get my hand on but I don’t have a car or gas to drive around all day looking for locations that might have one of either kind, and I don’t need to stand around in the cold waiting with a whole line of people coughing and sneezing waiting to get one either.

And then it turns out, the regular seasonal flu shots are in shortage around here right now anyway. Can’t win for trying I guess. It ought to be a hoot around our house later this month after my attendance at a three-day convention down in Portland. I’ll be quarantining myself for a minimum of four days afterward in hopes I didn’t pick something nasty up to share.

November 8, 2009

Wait for it, wait for it…Okay. I just ‘might’ be able to get a free H1N1 flu shot tomorrow. Yes, I’m willing to stand in line, alone, in a low income area of town, in the expected pouring rain, and wearing a mask if need be. Lines will form well before dawn I expect. I’m not going until after 7 a.m. The center opens at 8 and closes at 5 if the vaccines hold out or when they are gone.
WS isn’t going and is in fact, going to try to work from home because our underground sprinklers are scheduled to be manually shut down sometime tomorrow…between the hours of 8 to 5.
Typical.
For all the trouble, you have no idea how worried I’ve been about being able to get this shot before Thanksgiving. Near panic level the more I find myself in places with people who don’t seem to have ever known how to cover their mouths when coughing.
Expect an update as soon as possible.
UPDATE: (Yes already!)
The posted web site for the clinic I was going to head out to in order to get an H1N1 flu shot tomorrow has already changed their hours of operation from 8 to 5 p.m. to 5 to 8 p.m. And their shipment of vaccines has been slashed in half. Looks like no dice for me there.
HOWEVER, WS was able to get through to the Kaiser clinic here in town, on a Sunday evening no less, and supposedly they will have free, walk-in shots available Tuesday from 8 to 5 p.m. I am so there and in fact, I’m going to request an H1N1 shot in one arm and a regular flu shot in the other just to be on the extra safe side. Yeah, I know I’ll probably feel like crap for the rest of the day if not the entire week. I won’t be able to sleep on either side (wouldn’t you know that I’m a side sleeper too), and no arm weight curls for me for a while. But I ought to be feeling great by Thanksgiving and that’s the whole point.
Thanks, WS! And thanks to JimBob who sent me this link to some very interesting medical reading!
–
Yesterday’s body movement: Weekend off.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 156.6
Reading: Dominick Dunne’s “”People Like Us.”

November 18, 2009

After a week of phoning, re-phoning, false starts, Super Secret Squirrel information withheld intentionally (I felt), and even more phoning, I finally got my H1N1 shot and the big bruise on my arm to prove it. The nurse told me, for some reason, that since the vaccine is administered in the upper arm where most healthy women carry fat, I shouldn’t feel or see a thing afterward. Guess that quarter-sized deep purple bruise shows how much fat I have on my upper arms; little to none. It kind of makes me smile even though it looks awful.

Seasonal flu shots in our area are no longer available this season. Didn’t get yours? Tough titty was the general consensus from Kaiser Permanente and the local no-insurance clinics. It’s all about H1N1 now and nothing else. On the seasonal flu shot front, I’ve fallen through the cracks.

I’m not worried though.

Expect continued light blogging through the rest of the month while I work on this National Novel Writing Month project (already crossed the 50K finish line but I’m going for an additional 25-30K). OryCon convention on Thanksgiving weekend will keep me away from home for a few days while WS enjoys the long weekend off staying here holding down the fort and enjoying some much needed quiet time.

December 1, 2009

I finished out the nose-to-the-writing-grindstone month of November with 70,000+ words; the most I’d ever written in one month (some long-time readers of Blogeois.com might beg to differ). My sixth National Novel Writing Month was another success and I discovered, yet again, some very interesting things bouncing around in the far back dark corners of my brain that I had no idea were there. Undoubtedly, these things will come out in some future story character.

The convention in Portland was pretty much a success too and I’ve signed up to rinse and repeat next year.

WS and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary recently. We went to dinner at a fancy place across town that we should have just avoided. Within six miles of leaving the house every last thing turned to failure of epic proportions. EPIC failure.

And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

Just before I left for the weekend convention, we went to a almost painfully dinky local restaurant and everything was wonderful. Should have carried out that plan from the start. Would have saved us ninety bucks and a truckload of disappointment and regret.

Today will be full of editing, writing, and holiday decorating with perhaps an additional smidge of writing away from home this afternoon if the planets align. And trying to avoid WS’ work drama which apparently, I suck at…no matter how hard I try to.

–

Yesterday’s body movement: Day off.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 155.4
Reading: ‘The Golden Spruce’ and ‘Tattoo Machine’

December 3, 2009

By the scant blush of the low-wattage porch light, out in the yard filled with mushrooms the size of turkey platters, I saw movement, quick and steady. Out the tiny front window, I strained to identify what I was seeing. A coiling, writhing cord of gray and pink like something half dead struggling in the grass.

I whispered to myself, “What is that?”

Whipping around the base of a gill-glowing mushroom was the tail of a young opossum not much bigger than an adult rat. The marsupial waddled between the funguses and darted up our walkway, scooted across the doormat, and slinked around the garage corner.

I could barely keep myself from squealing with excitement. And it was a good thing I hadn’t because a moment later, it returned doing all the same in reverse and ending up back out amongst the mushrooms twisting and rubbing it’s belly on the cold, frosted grass.

Nearly everyone I know sees an ugly animal when they see opossums but I never have. I grew up where they don’t exist and being a fan of anything small and furry, I just knew I would love them if I ever saw one. I’m sure they would have populated this once-barren housing development eventually on their own but I can’t help but proudly take a little responsibility for helping reintroduce wildlife to the area. And I can only hope that this time, unlike a decade ago back in the old neighborhood we once lived in, I’m not around when the neighbors start intentionally killing them

–

Yesterday’s body movement: 1.0 mile ran at 13.38 mile pace, followed by .15 mile walk at 3.3 mile pace – both at level 4 incline.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 157.8
Reading: Dominick Dunne’s ‘A Season in Purgatory.’

December 4, 2009

Our trash day is on Mondays. I’ve complained both here and to neighbors about people who don’t take in their trash cans. Neither does any good, I suppose. It’s no surprise either, I suppose, that parents no longer make their able-bodied kids bring in the empty cans. I don’t know when exactly or why this ever changed from when I grew up. Perhaps my parents were just mean (on top of being daily abusers) by making us spend thirty seconds of our lives to drag in a couple of metal, 48 gallon containers. Nowadays, most trash cans are plastic, smaller than 48 gallon-sized, and weigh next to nothing. This certainly describes all on our street.

Yesterday, I noticed Mr. Howler Monkey arriving home from work and standing in his driveway, with hands on chubby hips, scowling at his trash cans still sitting at the curb. Actually, they were laying in the gutter where they have been for the past four days. His kids were across the street, riding skateboards in the driveway of the rental house with the youngest Renter Kid.

So when Mr. Howler Monkey told his oldest son (age 10) to bring in the can, he had to speak up so he’d be heard. His son heard him all right. We all did, including the youngest Renter kid (age eight) who said to The Howler Monkey boy just as loudly, “Tell him NO!”

The Howler Monkey boy did as his father told him to do. He didn’t say no like his neighborhood friend instructed, but I saw him hesitate. Mr. Howler Monkey didn’t say anything and acted as though he hadn’t heard. This would place him firmly in the one hundred percent deaf category if true. This little, played out scene speaks volumes about what goes on at The Renter’s house, and I believe, the future of The Howler Monkey household. Their have learned skateboarding, swearing, spitting, vandalism, and stealing from other people’s yard from both Renter’s boys aged fifteen and eight.

Additionally, the oldest Renter boy, a.k.a. Little Drummer Boy (also known as Big Fat Liar) has a bona fide girlfriend now. And she’s got quite the manners about her. On their walk home from the school bus yesterday, she was hanging all over him, flipping the bird to all passersby in cars or on foot, and kept telling the younger kids playing in the neighborhood that they should move or be forced to (excuse the crudeness here, her words)’eat her out.’

Now really; from everything I’ve posted here about the Renter’s oldest kid, his swearing, his lying, his staring down drivers and refusing to move when skateboarding (or throwing a football) in the street, did any of us really think he’d bring home some refined, meek and mild, studious, super model? I suspected it’d be something ‘interesting’ but why I didn’t think it’d be anything other than some cheap, foul-mouthed piece of trash, I just don’t know.

Maybe I was hopeful. Silly, silly me.

–

Yesterday’s body movement: .90 mile ran at 13.8 mile pace, followed by .15 mile walk at 3.2 mile pace – both at level 4 incline.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 155.8
Reading: A Season in Purgatory by Dominick Dunne.

December 6, 2009

WS has received some interesting job news of which we won’t know the extent of until next week. Does the fact that I can’t say anything about that yet frustrate you? Yeah? Just think how we feel. Is it good news or bad news? His boss can’t say. Will salaries be reinstated? Can’t say. Will WS have a job to come back to? Mum’s the word.

Grr.

This past week, as I was going through hundreds of email that I didn’t have access to over the past weekend (intentionally) when I was at that convention, two I found interesting. One was a professional invite to another convention next year which would have been really great because official invites usually mean the invitee doesn’t have to buy a ticket. Unfortunately, I already bought mine. There’s sixty bucks I could have saved had I known.

The interesting thing about this invite is that even though I personally talked to the guy who is in charge of sending out invites, and let him know in no uncertain terms that I was not considered anywhere near being a professional writer, having not made what’s called a ‘pro sale’ in any writing market, he still asked me to come and said he’d email me anyway.

Okay. Whatever floats his boat.

The other email is, well, more interesting…but again, I can’t speak of what that consists of yet. The world moves painfully slow in some industries. Sometimes, I think it does so not because of all the paperwork involved but to test people to see who’ll crack first and spill the beans.

I’m not a bean spiller.

Our weather here is expected to drop like a boulder from a roof in the next 12 hours. Highs are expected not to reach much above 37 degrees Fahrenheit. Lows tonight through the rest of the week are expected to dip well into the ‘teens. Brr. Our fountain, kept running year around to prevent underground pipes from bursting, should ice up nicely and lend itself to great photos.

It’s during this time that I miss Limpy, the Howler Monkeys ignored and now deceased cat, the most though I don’t miss worrying about him being out in bone-chilling, severe wind chill weather like this. Poor guy. He’s been gone a year now and still, sometimes I look out front from our little front facing window and expect to see him crouched on their porch kitty-corner across the street hoping to be let in.

In the memory of Limpy, on this cold pre-winter night, give a good hug to your pets and keep them close.

–

Yesterday’s body movement: .90 mile ran at 13.8 mile pace, followed by .15 mile walk at 3.2 mile pace – both at level 4 incline.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 155.8
Reading: A Season in Purgatory by Dominick Dunne.

December 7, 2009

Bird food? Check.

Squirrel food? Check.

Grapes for the raccoons and one lone opossum? Check.

Fridge and cupboards filled? Well, filled enough to last two weeks.

Pet food and litter? Check and will pick some up tomorrow.

Indoor thermostat set appropriately? Check.

Flannel and warmest down comforter on bed? Check and check.

We’ve got our cold-weather ducks in a row. It was 18 degrees F. here last night, 20 the night before. It won’t reach above freezing here over the next few days (currently sitting at 27). Add in the wind chill factor from the 35 mph cold east wind gusts and we’re looking at temps outside around 17 degrees.

I love this weather. If only we’d get snow on top of this, I’d be squealing with joy.

–

Yesterday’s body movement: Day off.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: Forgot to weigh in. Doh!
Reading: A Season in Purgatory by Dominick Dunne.

December 8, 2009

Waiting, waiting. What’s the saying? A watched pot doesn’t boil. Why does it take twice as long for the mailman to get here on the days I’m purposefully waiting for him? Because I’m waiting for him!

I’m not waiting for something to be delivered; I’m waiting so I can hand-deliver an envelope that’s too big for our community mailbox. The post office is a good 15 miles from our house (in the opposite direction from WS’s work route naturally) and my car is in storage for the winter. So I wait. Usually, he’s here right around noon. Its past one o’clock now. Still waiting for the boil and checking the calendar to make sure it isn’t some weird government holiday.

I’ve yet to do my noon-time workout because I don’t want to miss seeing the mailman. My treadmill is at the back of the house and pointing the opposite way from any windows. Don’t tell me to move it around. It weighs over 400 pounds.

I’m not really fond of our usual mailman. He looks a little younger than middle aged and always grumpy (and believe me, I know grumpy when I see it). Whenever I take something out to hand-deliver to him which is only once or twice a year, I choose to believe I’m doing something that makes his job easier, but you’d think I was forcing him to toss mail into each of the community mailbox cubby holes after whacking off both his arms. He gets a soured look on his face. I feel fortunate if he grunts in my general direction. Obviously, I’ve broken his rhythm for the day. I say ‘Thanks!’ and accept his glare.

Back when we used to live in what we not-so-affectionately called ‘The Pit,’ I used to put a small package of cookies and a Christmas card in our mailbox every holiday season in appreciation of our mailman’s repetitive work. Within a few years, I discovered I had the knack of putting this care package out on the days our regular mailman was off, thus giving it to someone I didn’t know and while certain this fill-in mail person deserved something, it wasn’t my point.

A few years later and my cookies and card package was ignored, left in the mailbox with a note that read something to the effect of ‘Stop it. We’re not allowed to accept stuff.’ I was crushed, briefly, and felt like an idiot for much longer. Never again did I put anything in our mailbox for a mailman, nor greeted a mailman at a mailbox. To this day, I prefer to wait until after he leaves. If we were lucky enough to live where mailmen deliver mail directly to each house such as through a door mail slot like areas down in Portland still use, every mail day would include a moment of pause, turning down the TV if it were on, of absolute silence when the mailman arrived so it wouldn’t be known that I was home. That’s how much an idiot I felt like when I thought I was doing something good. The silence only hurts me. It wouldn’t disrupt his routine.

Ah, postal workers. Can’t make ‘em happy. Can’t live without ‘em. And now, here he is, just up the street, stuffing mail into slots. Time to deliver my envelope and greet the postal scrooge.

–

Yesterday’s body movement: Day off.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: Forgot to weigh in. Doh!
Reading: A Season in Purgatory by Dominick Dunne.

December 10, 2009

The year is winding down and so I fear, am I. I ran myself ragged this year and deserve a break, I think. But I still have things to do and promises to fulfill. Promises are made to be broken, they say. But not ones made to myself.

Once again, I’m reacting to things going on around me in a negative light instead of remembering that things will always happen and I can control how I react to them.
No one at WS’ place of employment got a raise this year. The main CEO is trying to recoup his lost billions from the failed Madoff ponzi scheme. So the employees suffer for the fifth year in a row. Cut salaries will not be reinstated. Ever. Learn to live with it, we’re told. Everyone’s cutting back.

Everyone except that gree….no, I don’t need to say it. I’m trying to hold my lip.
La, la, la, here’s the positive. WS did get a bonus, the first in a few years. It’ll thinly pad our meager checking account balance. The 2009 budget figures transfer to the 2010 budget. As was the case this year, there will be few bright spots next year.

I’m trying to think of it as business as usual. Insert more la, la, la, everything peachy here.

At the beginning of the month, I promised myself I would write everyday for 100 days straight. I was emulating an author friend of mine who told everyone he would be doing the same to write the fourth in his 5-book series. Then he fudged the first week. I wrote like the wind. Then I stopped for a day which became two and now it’s going on five. Ugh.

I’m trying not to beat myself up over it. I can come up with no less than half a dozen excuses (not reasons) to give myself a break. I don’t buy excuses. The only reason I would accept would be if I had broken both arms. I just can’t seem to pull my shit together this week. I’m hoping by saying that publicly, I will be able to do just that. All it takes is to just jump in, both feet, both arms, and to shut off the fear in my own head.

La, la, la, I can’t hear you.

I heard on TV the other day that girls who suffer multiple concussions while growing up tend to run away from their problems by sleeping more than usual. That nails me perfectly, both in the multiple concussions as a child through my teens and in the ‘thinking that sleeping makes problems go away’ departments. I’m trying to fight it right now knowing that it’s all how I’m reacting to things. Only I can convince myself that everything’s okay, that writing will free me from my negative thoughts, particularly at this time of year, and that sleeping is best done at night when one is tired, not when trying to escape.

La, la, la. Damn but that pillow sure looks inviting…
–

Yesterday’s body movement: Nothing. Bad me.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: Forgot to weigh in. Again. Doh!
Reading: A Season in Purgatory by Dominick Dunne.

December 14, 2009

Okay, okay, I get it. I’ve not exercised in a week (other than a half mile leisure walk yesterday that barely counts). I know this but could it really be this true? That daily exercise makes everything else run more smoothly? You mean, all those years when I was telling people that and they all, every last one of them, laughed in my face and called me a ‘whack job’ that I was actually on to something?

Huh.

Leading up to the convention I attended over the long Thanksgiving weekend last month, I watched what I ate reasonably well for seven straight weeks. Horribly hard to do. I got really serious two weeks beforehand. No cheese, no icky fats, no alcohol of any kind, no sugars at all (that last one is very key to me concerning face breakouts, I’ve discovered). I exercised four days a week, meaning a one mile run Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, plus a little extra walking and a lot of arm weight workouts each day.

I slept pretty well every night. I was writing a lot almost every day. I had serious, in-depth email to answer every day. My brain was sharp. I felt on top of everything. In short, it was on and so was I.

The convention came and went. I felt good, hungry but good. I didn’t eat a single, sit down meal in almost four days of convention time (because who wants to eat alone in a crowded, slower-than-molasses restaurant?) and instead, snacked twice a day on plain baby lettuce greens and a couple of low-fat cheese sticks in my hotel room that I had brought along to save money on meals. I had a half cup of plain, black coffee every morning. Friday and Saturday evenings, I had a drink or two at the networking parties and Sunday, had three slices of cantaloupe in the morning. Other than the alcohol consumption that made me feel ‘puffy,’ I still felt great until midway through the following week when extra tasks here at home began to take their toll.

I still wanted to keep exercising and writing but there was only so much time in each day. I had a 15 foot tree to decorate (which WS had set up by himself while I was at the convention) and the outside front yard to decorate (alone because WS had his own stuff to deal with by that time) and the inside house to decorate: the mantle and grand buffet table in the kitchen and little spots here and there (we no longer go over the top with decorating anything so here and there decorating goes fast). And by the time all that was done, everything had caught up to me and I found myself feeling constantly tired, wanting to eat crap food, not exercising, not writing, and definitely not sleeping well.

Did I mention no motivation to get back into the swing of anything either? Well, that’s all part of the grand de-motivational plan when a person decides to give in to doing nothing and sit on their butt for days, weeks, and months straight. Ask WS about his years-long bout with that monkey.

I used to say, ‘Don’t move and you won’t feel like moving. Don’t eat well and you won’t feel well. Don’t motivate yourself and you won’t have any motivation.’ It’s that simple. Do, and things get done. Don’t do and nothing changes. I know all this with every fiber of my being. How dare me to ‘choose’ to forget that.

I walked a mile today, ran a quarter of a mile. I sat down and wrote for an hour and now, I’m reviewing notes I wrote up last summer so I might finish a story I began back then. Yes, I ate crap this morning but now, that’s out of the house and I’ll follow it up with good, plain greens and maybe an apple. I liked myself over the long, final weekend of last month; enough to want to live it again every weekend. And so I will despite the holidays when everyone seems to be lining up, elbowing each other hard, to consume crap and to move only from their vehicles in the mall parking lots to the stores to buy stuff with money they don’t have. And all to feel like crap when January 2nd rolls around.

No, thank you.

I can make this my best-feeling holiday season ever given what I learned leading up to Thanksgiving weekend. But it can only begin when I jump in.

Ready, set…

–

Yesterday’s body movement: Day off.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 158.6
Reading: A Season in Purgatory by Dominick Dunne, Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs, and Dogs in the Moonlight by Jay Lake.

December 15, 2009

This has got to be the most bizarre email I have ever received from MsNoManagementSkills:

An Question to my older flist: What’s the deal with the fainting? How do you handle it? Last Sat, I was at JBeach mall to sell jewelry and I fainted!! I dont remember ever fainting before! My mom says she started fainting when she reached 40. I am only 34!!! WTF?!?! How do people deal with it? I dont see fainted old people laying around when I’m out. What’s the secret? Call me at [number deleted]

My first thought was, ‘Get to a doctor, pronto!’ But she and husband, DorkMaster, are convinced doctors are only for loading up on prescription drugs (he takes something like eight different kinds for depression, she five last time she mentioned it to me). Later thoughts had me thinking low blood sugar, high blood sugar, early diabetes, medication reaction, a whole host of things. But the comment about her mother starting to faint when she reached 40? Hereditary thing perhaps?

I’ve given up trying to get away from this woman or get her to remove me from her mailing list. Did I mention I saw her (and she saw me) at the convention I was at last month? Shudders!

–

Yesterday’s body movement: 1 mile ran at 13.8 mile pace, followed by .25 mile walk at 3.0 mile pace – both at level 4 incline. Felt like a slug.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 157.2
Reading: A Season in Purgatory by Dominick Dunne, Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs, and Dogs in the Moonlight by Jay Lake.

December 25, 2009

It’s almost midnight, just another minute or two and it’ll be Christmas Day. We helped play gift storage this week keeping a good girl’s bicycle hidden until this evening and in just another few minutes, I’ll make my once yearly round through our pitch black backyard, jingling bells at the stroke of midnight for all those neighborhood kids that just might still be awake waiting to hear Santa’s sleigh. It’s something I’ve done every year since living here and yes, while it probably has annoyed every neighbor within earshot, and I’m sure it’s not fooled anyone, it’s my goofy little tradition and I’m not going to stop now.

We did something different this year in that we had a late night dinner in the southwest desert tradition, consisting of tamales, garlic butter shrimp, and flan. I don’t even want to think about more food tomorrow; I always eat way, way too much whenever WS is home, but we’re making our traditional ham with all the South Beach Diet side fixin’s.

WS has been off work all week due to the mandatory plant shut down through New Year’s Day and already we’d had just about enough of each other as we can stand. I think he’s having a mental MS exacerbation, he never knows one way or the other but he has admitted he no longer hears me when I speak. And don’t you know I certainly have things to say. I think it’s just further sign that marriages shouldn’t last more than twenty years at most.

I, on the other hand, am having my traditional ‘not going to spend a cent on Christmas, oh crap, I didn’t spend a cent on Christmas’ depression thing. Don’t have the money to spend anyway. WS’ car nearly had a flat earlier this week because there was no tread left on his car’s back tires. I guess you could say we got a new set of tires for Christmas. Ho, ho, ho, Cha-ching goes the sound of that tiny Christmas bonus going into and immediately out of our measly thin checking account.

But I still have my jingle bell tradition and would you look at the time? Just a little while longer and I’ll make my rounds and then snuggle into bed with dreams of sleeping, undisturbed, until February dancing in my head.

Have a safe and very Merry Christmas. Thanks for reading!

–

Yesterday’s body movement: 1 mile walk at 3.0 mile pace – at level 4 incline.
Yesterday morning’s weigh-in: 160.4. Always eat too much when WS is home.
Reading: Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs.

December 27, 2009

Long time readers here know WS and I don’t do Christmas gift giving…at Christmas. We buy stuff all year ‘round, or at least, we used to. This year, before the salary cuts and the economy went to shit, we did more than our fair share of buying frivolous stuff and so, to keep from playing the ‘Woe is me, I didn’t get anything for Christmas’ card, we listed everything we bought last year that wasn’t a necessary. I think you’ll agree we didn’t do poorly at all.

New tires for WS’s car, new washer and dryer, paid off WS’s car, books, books and more books, extra bird and squirrel food, one (1) single Christmas ornament and foil garland paper (we have more than enough ornaments to decorate three trees now so buying just one is more than enough), non stick Calphalon pans, one(1) oil change for my car plus an extra case of oil filters and oil for future changes, gas for my car to drive to Pendleton and back, roof repairs, air conditioning repair, several DVDs, half a dozen fancy cheeses, pants, a Ped-Egg, a Slap Chop, a hot-air popcorn popper, two (2) tomato plants and half a flat of red geraniums, one (1) bag of potting soil, four (4) bags of bark mulch for the front yard, a big apple spice candle, four (4) small cobalt blue plates, a sketch book and Sharpie pens, short IKEA book shelf glass doors, paint for the living room, Starbucks Christmas blend coffee and a bag of scones, a gallon of olive oil, squeaky pet toys, two (2) pillow slipcovers, energy efficient light bulbs, cheap hoop earrings, extra veterinary visits for the aging Queen, a box of Crest White Strips, OryCon, RadCon and Norwescon convention memberships and stay-overs, five (5) days at Rainforest Writers Retreat, some restaurant meals, socks, refrigerator repairs by Cliff the Repairman, half a dozen homemade Christmas tamales, two (2) silver trays found at nearby garage sale, two dental cleanings, relatively regular haircuts and coloring, good smelling lotion for WS’s itchy skin, a squeeze bottle of honey, a huge binder for a novel manuscript, WS’s first ever robe that fits, two (2) small containers of smoked sea salt, a bottle of Absinthe, and a case of San Pellegrino.

See? What’d I tell you? That’s quite the haul. I have nothing to complain about.

Of course, I can’t list all this and not forget the huge care basket Kami from Jestablog brought us this past summer when things slid to a terribly bleak state. Fruit and veggies, pasta, and shampoo. Saved our ass, it did, and I’ll never forget it.

It was a tough year but as is apparent from the list above, it was a good year too. There looks to be a couple of good things coming our way in early 2010, still no raise for WS though, but if things hold steady, I think we’ll make it through another year just fine. Hope the holidays have been good to you too.

December 30, 2009

Yesterday was dedicated writing day, as all Tuesdays are with many of my writer friends, and I thought I’d do something different in that I’d take WS with me to the little tea café down in Portland that many of those writer friends frequent.

We had just gotten sight of Highway 14, the one that runs along the Columbia River and takes us to one of two bridges that cross over from the Washington State side to the Oregon side, when I noticed the infrequent little fuzzballs flying into our windshield weren’t fuzzballs at all but teensy snowflakes.

I asked WS if he was comfortable still going with me into Portland and he said yes as long as I was, because I was driving like I’m more apt to do than not nowadays. I said I saw it as an adventure. I love snow! And besides, all the local weathermen said the valleys would see a ‘wintery mix’ of snow but mostly rain between the hours of 4 and 5 pm but it’d be all warm rain after that. I should have questioned that like I usually do because when we first spotted the snowflakes is was quarter to 3 in the afternoon.

I really need to stop putting any faith whatsoever in the local weathermen, especially since most of the longtime locals have had their contracts run out and have switched to other stations. The changes haven’t done any good. They all are just as incompetent. No surprise there.

So we’re crossing I-205 bridge (also known as the Glen Jackson bridge), which towers high up over the Columbia River, heading south and the snow is really coming down now. Nothing sticking to cars or the road and the temperature reading outside still said 37 degrees (F.). No worries. The same through Portland and it’s only when we get to the tea café that the snow starts sticking to the small side roads off the main streets. We pull around the corner, off onto the closest side road and find a parking space and walk the short distance to the café. We order teas, get the free Wi-Fi connection code, and get down to writing. It’s now a little before 3:30. No worries.

Just before 5 pm, two hours before the writing group usually breaks up but of which no one has yet to show up, I went to use the restroom and glanced up out the huge café windows to see if it was raining. What I saw was a pure whiteout condition, and I know a whiteout condition when I see it. At first I thought the glass was white with fog from the warm temps inside versus the cold outside. I approached the front door and looked out.

Big worries!

Snow coming down like a motha’, so much so, I couldn’t see the street three feet away. I saw bright lights and a dark shape pass directly in front of the café and was startled to make out the backend of what I think was a Subaru siding completely sideways.

Crap, crap, crap.

I used the restroom (because if we had a long trip home, I didn’t want that need to be on top of everything else) and then told WS I thought we should bail, this being two hours earlier than I normally would have. No other writer friend had showed up, most likely due to the weather, and I really didn’t think I’d see anyone pop in given what I had just seen out front.

The snow was blowing from all directions it seemed. We were covered by the time we made it to the car and then, we had to push three inches of snow off it before we could see out any of the windows. I was thankful I’ve been insisting we wear gloves wherever we go this winter. I was also very, very, VERY thankful we had spent WS’s Christmas bonus money on new tires that were exactly one week old. WS’s car is one of those unfortunate European models that can’t use studded tires or chains. Something about the suspension and body sitting too close together; it’s complicated. But he fits in it well and safely, given his 6 foot 6 inch height and besides, how often is he to find himself out in the snow anyway?

Oh, shut up, you!

We finally get into the car, even more covered in snow now and I’m driving because, like I said, I’m the one who does most of the driving now. Yes, me, who was raised in the desert southwest and have driving in the snow exactly four times in my entire life, though all four times fairly well and uber-sensible and have never crunched or munched in it because if there’s anything I respect, it’s driving in every kind of weather condition.

There was some minor slippage getting off the deep side road snow and lots of tire spin and limited grabbing on the main street where traffic was thankfully light but had already packed the three inches into semi-hard ice. Through one light and turn right onto 39th and it’d be a quick jaunt back up to Highway 84, also known as the Banfield Highway, back onto I-205 and back to our own turf, right?

Did you take note of the time of day earlier in this entry? 5 pm. Smack dab in the middle of rush hour traffic. Oh joy.

An hour later, we had moved up 39th approximately one half mile. Bumper-to-bumper traffic doesn’t even begin to describe the mess. Two lanes in each direction with no center lane or divider. The curbside lane was already packed with abandoned cars left, doinked into the curb at all angles, vehicles of all kinds and sizes spinning tires and going basically nowhere. People were pushing vehicles and giving up left and right. The snow kept coming down. While better than the white conditions just back around the corner, probably due to the tall old homes and big-ass trees blocking some of the wind, visibility was about an eight a mile at best.

And who knew 39th had two small rises in elevation in it, each high enough to cause people to completely lose traction? WS had to get out once and push about thirty feet while I tried to get the car to find traction when a big Portland TriMet bus work truck slide hard into the curb in front of us and nearly took out a power pole. Cars, SUVs, and trucks were stuck everywhere and all along the curbside lane, even more abandoned vehicles were pilling up, many sliding into one another.

Wouldn’t you just know that’d be the time a full-sized fire truck would need to get up the street? No one could go anywhere and the few that did try to ease to the already clogged curbside to allow the emergency vehicle passage, then became permanently stuck themselves. The fire truck, with lights flashing and siren blaring the entire time (I wouldn’t expect anything less) slowly crawled up the street and though I’m not one hundred percent certain, it had to have ‘helped ease’ some vehicles out of the way in order to do so. Had to have. There was no other way it could have made it.

It was crazy and oh yes, it was scary, but I kept up my calm-voiced tirade up about keeping the car’s slow momentum going whenever possible and keep working it, letting the new tires find and bite into the rare patch of something other than compacted snow when the bumper-to-bumper traffic inched forward at all and we’d do just fine. WS kept right on drinking that Kool-Aid and as it turned out, we did just fine, despite the snow that never once let up.

There were two or three truly scary moments in which I thanked all those years of intentionally, and some might say stupidly, hauling ass in Volkswagen beetles through mud bog fields where sliding sideways and backwards instead of frontwards was considered the ‘norm.’ Sliding sideways is only bad in rush hour traffic and if someone is right there next to you doing the same thing. Oh and it happens to be a semi or bus (happened once).

If I wasn’t white knuckling it for most of the two hours it took to get home (I-84 was positively a zoo!), a trip that usually took no more than forty-five minutes, I’d have parked on the side of the road and given a standing ovation to most of the other drivers out there. I’d never seen so many people so careful and cautious, not only with their own driving but with looking out for others too. Kudos to them all (except that one guy who honked at everyone within fifty feet of his bald-tired Taurus – You, sir, were an idiot.). My faith is restored, somewhat and for the time being, in humanity. Tomorrow, when I get back out there on the road, all bets are off and once again, you’re all on your own. Stay out of my way.

We were surprised once we did finally get home to find all the local TV news channels (the only TV channels we have) were all broadcasting overtime, yakking about the ‘unexpected’ snow and showing the mess via the many ODOT traffic cameras (Oregon Department of Transportation). OMG! Calling it a mess didn’t come close to describing it accurately.

Yes, we had been in the thick of it, and apparently, the snow never turned to rain like most of the weathermen kept blathering about, sure to happen ‘at any second.’ At eleven o’clock at night, no joke, ELEVEN at night, the freeways, I-205 and I-5 were wall-to-wall parking lots. Most people weren’t going anywhere, vehicles were abandoned everywhere, semi trucks were stuck here and there, and the one snowplow Portland does have, had been involved in a crash somewhere in the mess and couldn’t do anything to help. De-icing trucks, gravel trucks, fire trucks and the like, all too, stuck in snarled traffic until well after midnight. The whole thing has now officially been labeled as the worst traffic nightmare in Oregon history.

And briefly, we were a part of it. It’s too soon to know if that was a good thing or a bad thing just yet but since we got home without any real incident, we’re counting it as all good.

December 31, 2009

Blogeois and WS wish you a safe and happy New Year and a plentiful 2010.