2004 Archive – July-Dec

2004 Archive – July-Dec – 152,389 words total. Not responsible for broken links.

July 1 2004

Ah, July. July could have been one of my favorite months if it wasn’t so hot and there wasn’t so much baggage. Growing up in the desert southwest, July meant 115+ degree F days and we didn’t have air conditioning or even a “swamp cooler.” I would be in the midst of summer swim team meets, which I loved dearly, and having to watch all my younger siblings who were hell-bent (every single one of them) on testing my patience and on finding ways to get me in trouble. Trouble in my family meant the buckle end of the belt on bare skin with lots of force behind it so it was an “adventure” to find ways to get out of experiencing that yet keep my siblings from killing each other.

July also meant birthdays. My father’s was early in the month and each year brought with it his ever-increasing foul moods, signaling once again that he had already had enough of feeling his age with a houseful of unwanted kids. My birthday is near the end of the month and it wasn’t until I was into my late teens that I wasn’t physically ill on my birthday. Mostly, I would get heat stroke earlier in the day but there was a smattering of measles and summer colds in there.

Oddly, some birthdays in our family weren’t celebrated, including my fathers and mine. I never quite understood what this was all about and no one ever explained it to me. I think it might have had something to do with my illegitimate birth and the beginning of “the end” according to my parents. But at the age of 29, after moving away, getting married and getting divorced, did I get my first birthday cake. I bought one for myself from Baskin-Robbins and shared it with complete strangers. It’s one of the birthdays I’ll never forget, along with many, many years later, sitting outside in the patio area of a Mexican food restaurant freezing my ass off AT THE END OF JULY because the weather was cool! (Probably for the first ever, I’m convinced.) I was in absolute heaven!

I’ll be 48 years old this month, an age neither one of my parents ever reached. It will be years before any of my siblings or cousins will get to this age and I seriously question whether some of them will come close anyway. No, I’m not planning anything. I’m trying to pay off my bills. Maybe I’ll do something in a couple of years.

Six months ago, I gave up eating beef. Well, beef in its truest form. I still eat chicken, which is fed feed made out of beef parts. My personal jury is still out on giving up chicken, even though I once worked as a meat cutter apprentice in a large chain grocery store and I know all too well what chicken carcasses contain. Hint: It looks worse than what’s found in some cow carcasses.

I’ve got the final coat of polish on my car, the wheels and tires are done and the interior just needs swiffer-ing to gather up the dust on the dashboard. Tonight, I’ll take off that polish coat and start packing cleaning supplies, my folding chair and extra water for the car show on Saturday. Today, mixed in with actual work for my job, I’ve got vacuuming to do, the ever-growing laundry pile to get through, birdfeeders to fill and a yard to try to mow (it’s a small yard but we have a push mower), but I’m not complaining. I’ve got things pretty good right now and a good handle on stuff. Happy July!

July 2 2004

An entire handful of blueberries today was ripe for the picking. I absolutely love blueberries and am so very happy that we planted four bushes in our backyard a couple of years ago. There is nothing like making a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast (shutUP! I like oatmeal!) and tossing in blueberries that I freshly picked just minutes earlier. Back when we lived in that old rental house, I had two small blueberry bushes there and a couple dozen alpine strawberry plants. Some mornings, there was more fresh fruit in my oatmeal than oatmeal!

I’m expecting MsNoManagementSkills to take half a day off today because DorkMaster, her live-in boyfriend took the day off. Funny how no one else can get away with doing this, yet she does it nearly every week.

I’m turning in the last update and overall summary of that crappy project the Company CEO threw my way. MrSmartButFakingIt was supposed to provide me with info on a place to investigate, but of course, I’m so far on his back burner, I seriously doubt I’m even on his stovetop. He never did get back to me and so I’m filling in the space with my own research. Sometimes, it’s best to not walk the extra mile. If you do around here, you don’t get rewarded, you get straddled with extra work that you’re not at all qualified to do and in the end, set up to fail. I’m sure not all companies operate this way. It’s just sad that this is how this Company works ALL.THE.TIME.

But who am I to complain? I still have my job. I’m still getting paid, probably more than I should be.
Random Thoughts about things I really don’t need to know:
Pretty women get constipated too according to the new Exlax commercial. I hope they paid this actress well because if I ever see her in anything else, I’m automatically gonna wonder when the last time was that she pooped.

July 5 2004

Don’t you just hate it when your ISP goes down, only later you find out that it really didn’t go down, even though the customer support guy said it did in your area, and what really happened was that you had a router/networking/system crash thingie happen that you could have fixed days ago? Yeah, me too.

Last Friday, shortly before our network took a vacation, MsNoManagementSkills had completely pissed off most of us at work by taking over half a day off from work, “because my boyfriend took the day off.” Wonderful how she can get away with this every fricken’ Friday for some lame-ass reason, yet the rest of us absolutely, positively MUST give a minimum of two weeks notice, and from what I hear, half of those are denied. Crap, I tell you, just plain crap.

But I still have my job and I’m holding onto that thought for now.

Saturday, in the pouring rain, I drove into Longview in hopes of defending my car show title winning from last year…and I managed to do so. Though, the old car club people weren’t at all happy about it, spouting off left and right and going just short of calling me names. You see, this wasn’t the kind of show where they could stuff the ballot box, insuring that one of their own would win. No, each class in this car show was judged by a Longview business (whom choice to do so) and only their votes count. I was judged by the Longview Tire and Wheel company, not that I saw anyone standing around purposely judging my car (they are pretty sneaky and low-key about it), nor either was I standing around and hovering over my car all day. I walked around looking at cars and going into all the antique shops lining the main street where we were all parked.

Sunday, we vegged all day and did mostly nothing. We did go grocery shopping but that was it. Today, Monday, I took WS for a drive in my car but aborted the trip halfway through because he wasn’t feeling right. He’s still not walking well and has no balance whatsoever. Another three weeks or so and he ought to be over this latest exacerbation. Either way, he has to go back to work Wednesday and I think I’ll be driving him for a while.

Tomorrow, I need to catch up on a few things like washing my car to get ready for whatever show is next up, doing laundry of course and thinning out some plants in our front yard. Because of “The Situation” in our neighborhood, about the only time I am out in our front yard is to wash my car, then it’s back inside. I just don’t feel comfortable out there anymore and so, things have grown up a bit too much. Hopefully, tomorrow I can get an hour or so work done out there before someone comes nosy-ing out and about.

Hope you all had a good 4th of July. I’m so glad it’s over. Now, if all the jerks around here with hundreds of fireworks left over would just think it was over too.

July 6 2004

Today has been a long, awful day. WS woke up feeling worse so we had to go to one of the local medical offices to sit around for an hour as they lost his paperwork and then, finally so he could take a half an hour long IV treatment. And the great thing is…I have to take him back two more times this week to do it all over again. And the really great thing is that this treatment makes him the meanest, crankiest MoFo on the planet for a few weeks and guess who’s here standing in his way? Me! Yep, I know I’m really looking forward to the coming weeks. NOT!

Today was my last day off work and I really didn’t want to spend four hours of it sitting around the medical office that I usually avoid like the plaque (because every time I’ve gone there, I’ve caught something nasty), but I really didn’t want to spend another two hours running errands, but that’s exactly what we had to do and so, the day just frittered away. Pfft! I hate that!

So tomorrow, I get to explain to everyone at work how WS is doing and hope that MrSmartButFakingIt doesn’t end up firing him for taking the last week off (with approval) because MrSmartButFakingIt doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to understand what WS has (even though The Company CEO understands completely and is supportive). Ought to be a barrel of monkeys and even more so with whatever other stupid, time- and resource-wasting project he might have lined up for me to do this month.

But on the bright side, the weather is great outside with wind and rain. Just like we like it. I didn’t get out to pick blueberries from the bushes today, but yesterday, I was able to pick an entire handful and I know more will be ready tomorrow morning. I don’t think I’ll be getting any huckleberries this year but WS’s cherry tomato plant has already given us a few small and sweet tomatoes. Looks like his Roma plum tomato plant is only going to grow to a height of about a foot and only produce 5 tomatoes and his two Thai pepper plants have yet to start any peppers growing, even with all the flowers they have both put out.

Ham and Cheese, the field mice living now on the other side of the fountain since I stopped feeding them have definitely reproduced, or maybe moved in a couple more members of their family. I think I’ve seen four different mice now, all different sizes and slight shading differences in color. I also think they have attracted an owl or something large, because early this morning, as I was going out to refill the bird feeders, again, I found a large white and black, oval-shaped piece of poop lying on the walkway, about the size of my thumb. It definitely was bird poop and I think I read somewhere that owl poop is oval shaped and more solid than liquid-y and splat-y than other birds’ droppings, because they eat rodents and such with more solid parts as opposed to bugs, berries and birdseed. I’ve already made up my mind to not interfere with anything natural going on out there and if we should happen to get another hawk to visit, or something else that eats mice, I’m not going to put a stop to it. I’m just not going to put out rat traps myself or poison bait. I’m all about the natural course of events and I’m certain that will happen. Even if I have to go buy a few hawks or owls myself to make that happen.

We also had a L-O-N-G discussion tonight on whether I’ll continue to do car shows or not, given WS’s health condition, but let’s talk about that later. I am so very tired now and tomorrow morning will be here too fast.

July 7 2004

WS woke up feeling pretty poorly this morning with cold sweats and vomiting. He ended up spending the entire morning in the bathroom and I’m not talking about fixing his hair. In the entire time we’ve been together, over fifteen years, I’ve never known him to puke. This morning, he more than made up for it. I was at the point of calling 911 for an ambulance ride to the emergency room, but he was able to finally get through to his doctor whom made him feel better. Needless to say, we won’t be going back for those other two IV treatments we were scheduled for. This was not at all a normal reaction. The weird part was that last night he was feeling pretty good mentally, even though his balance and vision is still screwed up. He’ll be working from home again for at least until the end of this week. After that, we’ll have to wait and see when he’ll be going back.

So, we talked for hours yesterday and late last night about me continuing to participate in car shows. I felt that I should be staying home to watch him or to run errands for him, but he feels that I would hate babysitting and might grow to resent giving car shows up and assured me that he’d be just fine. Back and forth and back and forth the discussion went and I think I’ll be continuing, but other than the biggie shows that don’t start up until later in the summer, I think I’ll just wing it and see how he feels.

So, there’s no car shows this coming weekend but there is one the weekend after next back up in Anacortes. Maybe later in the week I’ll look for a room to stay at up there. We’ll see.

July 8 2004

Things are looking up so far this morning (with the exception of MrSmartButFakingIt who WILL.NOT answer any email from me and MsNoManagementSkills who is just being her usual bitchy self). WS is feeling better and we’ll be going back for another IV steroid treatment this afternoon. After lots of thought and a slight stomach issue I had yesterday as well, we think WS was suffering from food poisoning rather than from his first IV treatment. But only tomorrow morning will tell for certain. Hopefully, he won’t go through what he did yesterday and theoretically, he shouldn’t.

In the meantime, here’s a good reason not to go all paparazzi on our new pet. Who knew he’d get all “Kid Rock” on me??

July 9 2004

Get out your bag of wOOTs!

WS didn’t have any kind of negative reaction to his steroid IV treatment yesterday, so we’re going back today for his last one. He was feeling so much better this morning, he pitted a pound of cherries for me and vacuumed upstairs. Go WS!

After WS’s IV treatment today, we think we’re going to stop in at our vision doctor and hope to find out why WS’s glasses don’t automatically tint like they are supposed to (and what we paid a lot extra for). I also need to get more contacts and I’m thinking of going with the new 30-day wear kind. I’m really hoping I don’t have to make a new appointment to get them, but it’s probable that I will need to. Still, I can hope. He’s a pretty good doctor. Go doc!

I just had a work anniversary. Well, it’s not a “year” anniversary; it’s a “half-year” kind of anniversary. You see, when you work in customer support, where the turnover rate is pretty high, you celebrate every month you hang on. Who could, no, who would, in their right mind, stick with a job that starts out every day of the week with an email box containing 250+ emails from angry customers who all wanted their problem personally fixed yesterday. How many days could you hang onto a job where you are called every name in the book, spelled both correctly and phonically, by people you will never meet and then, be expected to help them with a cheerful attitude? And don’t even get me started on the office politics that go on every single day AND I DON’T EVEN WORK IN THE OFFICE. You already know all about that part since I post here about it often enough. Yes, I just had an anniversary and I just now realized that I’ve been blowing smoke and sunshine up customers’ asses for 5 and ½ years! Go me!

This weekend ought to be fairly low-key. No car shows at all. Somehow, and I’m still not sure how, I was able to get a rare Saturday afternoon appointment to get my hair cut and colored just like the last time. Go hairstylist! (But really, you guys need to fire Leslie. That receptionist is just a B.I.T.C.H.)

July 10 2004

Last week, I also realized that I am at my fake limit. When The Company CEO asked me to do a massive amount of research on a subject I knew nothing about, not to mention how to research anything at all, I knew I was sunk. After spending an entire night bawling my head off, certain they were looking for a reason to fire me when I failed, and I was certain I would fail, I sucked in my lower lip (that had previously been sticking out so far with all my pouting, that a bird had built a next on it and had shit all over my chin), and faked my way through the project. Apparently, I faked it well as I did receive email kudos on the work I turned in last week. My biggest fear now is that I’ll be straddled with this kind of off-the-wall stuff from now on and frankly, I’m not up to it (see reasons above).

July 11 2004

Today’s weather is hot and humid. Supposed to be 80 degrees F. 80 degrees, my butt. I had some front yard work to do, but after a half an hour, my face was bright red and I was sweating like a horse. I still have about an hour’s work to do but it’s just going to have to wait until it gets cooler again. Which ought to be around mid-October, according to the local weathermen. It’s going to be hotter tomorrow and stay that way throughout the week. No rain in sight. Ugh.

But, in the spirit of summer, we shopped yesterday at a local home décor shop for some summery things and picked up a tall Asian-influenced floral arrangement in summer colors and a few other knick-knack things. Today, I hit Craft Warehouse and bought a couple of very real-looking sunflower bushes that I potted up in nice terra cotta pots for the living room. I also redesigned the permanent wreath outside our door that I change from season to season. The spring flowers are gone and replaced with silk marigolds, petunias herbs and a bunch of grapes all tied together with raffia. All the while I was out there redoing the wreath, Ms .Ca-LEE-fornia across the street stood up by her door and glaed at me. Since she’s got the “Slow down! Kids at play!” signs out in the middle of the street, maybe she thinks I’m a threat or something? Those people are so odd and frankly, I’m pretty tired of her thinking her children are the most important ones in the entire world. I’m starting to get the impression that others in the neighborhood are feeling the same as me.

So, we bought this floral arrangement yesterday, knowing exactly where we would put it. In the library, of course. It’ll tie in with the explorer/historian/traveler theme we’ve got going in there. But as soon as I hauled the arrangement in there, it was clear that some stuff would need to be moved and some redecorating would need to be done. Which led to some moving and repositioning of furniture. Which led to having to pull up the rug and repositioning that. And then there was some of those bookshelves that didn’t look quite right. And de-cluttering to do. And all that dust that needed to go. It’s funny how buying just one thing could result in having to re-do an entire room and we finally finished that around 10:30 last night.

This morning with fresh eyes, we’re pleased with our results. I like that we can see the books again. Why I tend to clutter stuff up, I don’t understand. I hate clutter! I need to become the anti-clutter-er this summer.

July 12 2004

It’s nearly 100 degrees outside right now. WS went back to work at his REAL job today (I drove him) and he’ll have to be careful of where he ends up waiting for me to pick him up later. Heat is deadly for MS sufferers and can bring on another exacerbation. And we certainly don’t need another one of those right now. (STAT COOL, WS!) He took one of his new canes with him in case he felt wobbly, though it’s not the stylish one but the more-industrial, nursing home/hospital issue-looking one. Whatever works.

The nice Competition Boy called us late last night and left a message asking in a somewhat snotty voice if we had become international car show winners again. He was referring to the car show trip we were supposed to make to Vancouver, B.C. on July 4th. He doesn’t know that we had to cancel the trip. Personally, I didn’t even think he had paid any attention when I was rambling about it to him a month ago over that last dinner we all had together. He is so totally out of car shows and doing anything with cars. He’s completely into his relationship with Drill Sergeant Dave’s ex-wife, and we really do wish them the best. It’s just that the last time we saw them together, he seemed so…deflated. Secretly, I think he is soooo into his relationship because he knows he burnt some serious bridges with car show people by partially causing Drill Sergeant Dave’s marriage breakup and he’s too uncomfortable to jump back into doing car shows because Drill Sergeant Dave and all of Drill Sergeant Dave’s friends still do them and he’s have to face all those people. That wouldn’t be fun in the least, especially since I know Drill Sergeant Dave has been poisoning peoples minds about how his breakup and divorce went down. I don’t think anyone really knows the real truth. People make up some interesting stories when they choose to live in denial.

While it isn’t windy today, meaning trashcans and recycle bins aren’t blowing down the street, I think the garbage men weren’t terribly happy doing their job today. Numerous empty trashcans on our street alone had their wheels broken-off; the parts lying all over the streets now, and emptied trashcans tossed up in driveways and yards. Ours was sitting upright (one of only two on our block) but sitting smack dab in the middle of our driveway, instead of back on the sidewalk where it usually is placed. I had to get out of WS’s car and move it before I could pull into the garage. Not that it was any big deal, but during that, I could hear Mr. Dimmer next door swearing up a storm out his upstairs bedroom window over his broken trashcan that was tossed up into our side yard (but I notice he hasn’t actually come out and picked it up yet and I’m too afraid that if I pick it up out of our yard, he’ll blame me for breaking the wheels off it – that’s the way things happen around here.)

July 13 2004

While WS did okay at his REAL job yesterday, his laptop computer died (in lieu of a service or flowers, just say a few choice words because that thing was a piece of crap in my eyes.) So, he’s using my old work desktop computer. Yeah, the dog slow one. The one I update this journal on. The computer I play games on. The one I know inside and out and know for a fact that if you let popups accumulate in vast numbers, like WS ALWAYS does, they will screw things up royally. Consider yourself warned, WS, just a friendly warning.

We’ve been blessed with a LOT of tangerine variant finches visiting this month. They are supposed to be a cross between common red finches and gold finches. Definitely orange, not red. I wish they would stick around all year. Actually, they probably do and just lose their orange color or something.

Last night, as I was down there in the back yard watering the tree roses, a hummingbird started up their favorite game around here: The Flinch game. This is how it works: You want to go outside. You wander out into the yard. The hummingbirds are in the yard. Our hummingbirds. And you’ve interrupted their game of high speed-flying grab-ass. Now, you become the target and to try to scare you off, they fly straight toward your head, your eyes, at a high rate of speed, with their long, sharp beaks like a lawn dart. Faster and faster they whiz through the air and just about a foot away from impaling your eyeball, they pull up and over slightly and buzz your hair.

Did you flinch? Because if you did, they’ll do it again. And again until you leave.

If you don’t flinch, the next time they try it, they’ll pull up at the last second and hover there, right in front of your face for up to 15 seconds looking at you to see if you are a statue. Or asleep. Then, they’ll fly off.

So, last night, when I was out there, I forgot about the game. And I flinched. You probably saw me on the web cam. I was flinching all over like Kramer on Seinfeld.

Score: Hummingbird – 1. Human – 0.

July 14 2004

The web cam is on the fritz. The software isn’t working. I’m working on it, completely lost as to why it’s now telling me I have an invalid parameter and why all settings have been wiped. I’m not mentioning that this happened after WS had to use this computer over the last couple of days. Nope, I didn’t say a word.

It’s Wednesday. Wednesday, I tell myself. I have too much stuff on my mind and it’s taking a toll on my sleep – A upcoming doctor’s appointment (first one in about six years) Friday morning, a long drive on Friday and return drive on Saturday, a couple of car shows over the weekend, WS’s return to health and self-sufficiency and the continued silence from my boss, MrSmartButFakingIt. Add in that front yard work that needs to be done, landscape lighting to install, a bathroom that really needs to be painted along with the usual laundry, vacuuming, packing a suitcase and the car and various middle of the night “Did I leave this or that on?” thoughts and you see what I mean. I WILL go to bed with a Tylenol PM tonight no later than 10 pm and will sleep with my Bucky covering my eyes until I am truly ready to get up, even if that means sleeping until noon.

This coming Friday, I’ll be making a trip back up to Anacortes for the Shipwreck Festival days celebration and car show held Saturday morning. At this point, it looks like WS will be joining me for the trip, but don’t hold your breath. His going depends on how he feels Friday. This is a 5+hour drive after all, and I’ll be making it during Seattle and Everett’s rush hour traffic. The rush hour traffic doesn’t bother me in the least. It’s the wondering if I’ll get to the hotel before dark so I can re-clean my car for the following day’s show. WS, on the other hand, hates traffic. Hey WS, we’re in a cool car, listening to cool tunes and you’re not driving! It’s all good.

This all means I need to leave early on Friday. Very early. Like just after lunch. No problem, except I have my many years-ignored physical checkup Friday morning with a doctor I’ve never met but have had signed up as my doctor for years. Okay, still no problem. Except, I’m supposed to be working Friday. All day Friday.

So, I’ve been putting in extra work hours every night this week and come Friday, I’ll have to pull a MsNoManagementSkills move by taking off early. The big difference here will be that I will have worked my full 40 hours, unlike her who averages around 33 hours in any given week. Still, it would be good to let MrSmartButFakingIt know what I’m doing, just to cover my butt, but he hasn’t been seen since last week and he hasn’t answered a single one of my emails or chat calls in close to two weeks. If I wasn’t getting paid so well….

Sunday is a car show that I wanted to attend last year, but couldn’t in Napavine. The key to making this show will be to get home safely as soon as possible Saturday evening, wash the car, start the laundry and get to bed. I don’t have a problem getting up at the crack of dawn if I know I’ve got a car show that day. It’s getting to bed at a reasonable hour the night before that kills me. Monday gonna get here much too soon next week.

July 15 2004

Hogging the main bird feeder today and sucking up all the food are groups of fledgling red-winged blackbirds. But I don’t mind. They are much quieter than starling babies and seem to learn how to eat on their own much quicker.
Snaps to WS for fixing the web cam, not to mention all the other stuff he’s been doing around here since feeling better. Now, our Internet connection is going in and out this afternoon. It’s nothing he can fix and is probably due to the new construction going on up the street. But this rate, I’ll be logging into work until 9:30 tonight in order to make sure I’ve got enough time in this week. Tomorrow, I’ll be lucky to get in four hours total, and not everyone can get away with taking off early from work. After taking WS to work early, my first doctor’s appointment for a physical in six years is around 9 am and I need to pick WS up from work at 1 pm. Then, we’ll race home to switch cars and we’re off to Anacortes. WS is definitely going with me. I just hope that little restaurant place facing the marina up there still has their beer-battered fish and chips that I went on and on about to WS, who loves good fish and chips. Someday, we’ll have to spend more than just one day up there and check out their many nice looking restaurants. Who would expect that in a beautiful little town like Anacortes? It’s got to be because the ferries to B.C. and the rest of the islands go out of there or something.

July 16 2004

Don’t you just hate it when someone calls you and tells you to call them back when you get home…and they aren’t there when you do call them back? Yeah, not my favorite thing either.

So, my doctor’s appointment when so-so. More about that another day. They want me to take this test and that test and blah, blah, blah. I will schedule myself for them, but not today.

I’m hoping we’ll be leaving here in about two hours or so. I’ve re-showered after that nasty exam (ladies, you know what exam) and finished packing our overnight bag and my car. I’m taking the camera this time so I should have pictures to show next week. Basically, I’m waiting for WS to tell me to come and get him from his REAL job so we can leave. Have a good weekend!

July 18 2004

Hello from back home! Anacortes was beautiful as usual, but I have to warn anyone about staying at the Cap Sante motel. None of the rooms have air conditioners. Nope, not even fans. And on a warm, muggy, breezeless night in a warm, muggy motel room, a person tends to not sleep well. We actually opened the small, and noisy refrigerator and left the door open all night to try to get some cool air in there. Well after midnight, WS closed the large front window with the flimsy screen overlooking the baked parking lot both for security reasons and because people were coming and going, slamming car doors and their room doors until nearly 4 am. It didn’t help much and by 6 am, I was up with a raging back ache from the equally flimsy mattress but also with a positive attitude for the car show later that morning being held one block over and just up the street.

The back ache worsened as the day progressed but the weather was gorgeous. Just as it looked like it was going to be a scorcher, a cooling breeze came in off the water just down the hill (less than a quarter of a mile away) and a few puffy clouds sauntered here and there overhead.

The car show was part of Anacortes annual Shipwreck Day celebration. While we never got an explanation on what shipwreck was involved or why anyone would celebrate one, we did actually witness several people wishing “Happy Shipwreck Day” to one another. Ah, life in a small town.

But who would expected the huge, and I do mean HUGE throngs of people both working the dozens upon dozens of booths and literally hundreds of feet of long tables of garage sale and flea market items and all the people there to buy them? And all set up in the middle of Anacortes main street for block and blocks on end? I wouldn’t be surprised to hear later that this annual event was the best one ever and that everyone walked away happy and rich! Unbelievable amount of people there and rightly so. Certainly, you could find nearly anything you could dream of there to buy from someone. It was great people-watching!

There were not as many cars there as we expected, but we did OK. There were no specific classes and we brought home a 3rd place trophy.

My back ache continued the long drive home and I was taking heavy doses of ibuprofen through the whole trip. I woke up this morning with lots of back pain and pain shooting down my right thigh and knee. It’s got to be an alignment problem. The mode for the day will be lots of lying in bed, lots of ibuprofen and listening to WS clean EVERYTHING! Needless to say, I decided not to do the other car show today. Working ought to be a hoot tomorrow.

July 22 2004

(as translated by WS…)

Ouch! I’m losing days.

It’s Thursday and I’m still flat on my back with pain – back pain, hip pain, knee pain. Things got so bad Tuesday morning, WS talked me into going to the Emergency Room. I had to borrow one of WS’s new canes to walk and I didn’t do so well with that. On a scale of 1 to 10, my pain was a 9 with a bullet.

They laid me down in a room, gave me a couple Valiums and an injection of what the nurse referred to as “happy juice” that did a good job making my head woozy and eventually killing the worst of the pain. The doctor then came in and WS says she raised each of my legs asking me if that hurt particularly badly though I don’t remember it. She declared I didn’t have a bad disc in my back and that everything was due to spasming back muscles, wrote me prescriptions and sent me home. As soon as I got up from the gurney, I started feeling nauseous but was able to make it home without whorfing in the car. As soon as I got home, it all came up. WS went back out to fill the prescriptions. By the time he got back the initial pain meds were wearing off, I was still on the whorfing bandwagon and developing a massive headache. Around 7PM, we had to go back to the ER because I couldn’t keep anything down, was shaking uncontrollably and my headache was now a pain level nearing 10. I was certain my head was going to explode.

On the way back to the ER, I couldn’t control the nausea anymore and I had dry heaves all the way there. The ER was packed and they put me on a gurney out in the waiting room where a bunch of white-trash types were having a happy impromptu reunion with ALL of their kids in the ER. They finally took me back after waiting for 2 hours and hooked me up to an IV, gave me every medication in the book including an anti-nausea/anti-pain combination that was definitely my best friend. Then they started the testing. X-Rays (of my chest for some inexplicable reason), CAT scans of my head and abdomen after four hours of preparation by drinking this vile contrast enhancing substance and finally a spinal tap for the finale.

Good news: I didn’t have a stroke and it doesn’t look like one is anywhere in my near future. Bad news: They didn’t take X-rays of my hip and it still hurts. Good news: I got medication that is doing a good job of keeping the nausea down and no headache has returned. Bad news: Pain continues in my hip and knee around a 5 or 6 on a scale of 1 to 10 that the meds aren’t working so well on. In addition, I still have another issue that I’ll go into further next week that has nothing to do with these symptoms.

So I’m still flat on my back watching TV, making WS get me this and that when I want it and listening to him battle to keep our pets out of the room. I’m staying cool because I’m not doing anything while everyone else is sweating like crazy as our outdoor temperatures approach 100 degrees. My stress level is high because I’m worried abut my job that I haven’t been back to since Monday, whether the bird feeders are being kept filled, how the rest of the house looks and how long WS can hold out. But hey, I have a hundred and fifty channels of crap to choose from and that’s got to count for something.

July 23, 2004

(as translated by WS…)

I’m concerned about this journal turning into just another whiny blog about aches and pains, so I’m going to try hard not to let it go there. But today I have a lot of aches and pains. I really tried hard to get things back to normal today. I ended up sitting too long, so long that the medication was no longer working and after being up all day, I had to lay down. I’m working long days today and tomorrow to try to make up time that I was out earlier this week and I should end up with only one missed day. And this is good because in the coming weeks, I think I’m going to need to take a lot of time off.

Last Friday at my doctor’s appointment, the first doctor’s appointment I’ve had in four years (I originally thought it was six years), I was found to have a large pelvic mass of an extimated 20 centimeters. Is 20 centimeters big? I think so.

So Tuesday evening during my second ER visit, they had me drink some stuff called contrast so they could look to find out more about this mass. Next Monday morning I go in to see a specialist who will hopefully know more about it and tell me my options.

Since I tend to look at things in black or white, I’m thinking it will either be good or bad. But I’m okay with this. Sure there are lots of variables, but to me, it all boils down to whether I’m still here in six months or six years. Or longer. Either way, I still outlived both my parents and that really meant a lot to me. And again, I’m okay with this.

WS has done a great job of taking care of everything here. It was 103 outside today, a ridiculous temperature. The poor birds hated it and we didn’t see many of them today, not even in the fountain. I haven’t seen Ham or Cheese, the field mice living in the fountain for a while either, but the tree frogs are still living in the hose reels. For how hot it was today, I figured there’d be more noise from screaming kids outside playing in sprinklers or hoses. There didn’t seem to be any of that going on either. That was nice.

The heat’s going to continue through the weekend. Even if I felt good, I don’t think I’d show up at any car shows. Not in this weather. You’d have to be crazy to stand around wiping down a car in 100+ degree temperatures and even I’m not that crazy.

One of the bad things about lying around feeling under the weather is watching TV and having to sit through all these god-awful political ads. I’m Blogeois, and I’ve authorized this message.

July 25 2004

I’m trying hard to get back into some kind of normal routine around here without tiring myself out, re-hurting myself or letting my still-painful back/hip spasm pain get out of control. I’ve finally listened to WS and am taking the “don’t let your pain get out of control” advice to heart and I think that’s the key. Friday, I didn’t do well taking pain medication when I should have and I was in tears most of the evening and didn’t sleep but two hours that night. Today, I’m actually sitting upright for short periods of time; a first since driving home from Anacortes a week ago yesterday.

Which also reminds me that I still haven’t washed my car since driving home from Anacortes and it is covered in road grime and mud from the sprinkles we got on that drive home. But don’t worry. You won’t see me out there washing it anytime soon. In fact, I might just be giving up doing the car show thing for this summer, depending on what the doc says at my serious appointment tomorrow morning. It’ll be tough to give it up, but if I have to, I’ll still be proud to have done as well as I have already this summer with nine awards under my belt. At this time last year, I had only four. I’m also trying very hard not to start talking in the past tense, as in “I used to do this” and “I used to that” and “I was really proud of that car.” Just stop it, I tell myself. I’m not dead yet.

For the third year in a row, the cedar waxwings are back. Each July, they seem to visit here for a couple of weeks and take over the fountain. I like their high-pitched peeping voices.

The nice Competition Boy called here twice yesterday but neither time did I pick up the phone. He’s just going to ask about what car show I won lately and if I’m going to the first really big show this year which is next weekend. I’m not going to that show regardless if I feel better or not because I just don’t want that level of additional stress right now. I’m not ready to tell him that I might be giving up shows just yet or why. Frankly, I’m surprised that he called at all. The last time we saw him and his now live-in girlfriend, Drill Sergeant Dave’s ex-wife, they seemed uninterested in anything or anyone else and that we were intruding into their lives. I’m all for giving people space when they want or need it, but we felt just plain awful afterward for “bothering” them the last time around. I really think that friendship is dead now and I’m okay with that. People move on.

The temperatures here today are a good fifteen degrees cooler today than over the past few days and this morning, I nearly wept in joy over the thick, cool cloud cover. Unfortunately, the clouds have burned off by now and it is heating up a bit; nothing like yesterday’s 100+ degrees. I am so looking forward to fall already but trying not to think about it too much. Fall isn’t for another three months. Blech.

July 26 2004

Back from the doctor appointment. Stop worrying. I’m not going to die anytime soon. He, Dr. PokeandPeck, truly thinks my pelvic mass is just a large fibroid tumor (that craves pistashio-almond ice cream and abhors sushi, I’m convinced) and that it’s nothing bad and can wait a bit before coming out. I get an ultrasound in a couple of weeks, after Aunt Flo shows herself and I have a fairly solid surgery date of September 23rd. Since the tumor, which I’ve officially named “Emil” doesn’t appear to be hurting or bothering anything else in there, immediate surgery isn’t necessary, unless they find something different in the ultrasound, which can’t be done immediately because you have to be solidly in between periods, and I’m not.

My back, hip and knee are feeling much better today and I’m not on as much medication. Which is good, because I’m working. Or should be technically. I just finished up a bunch of work that was well timed and will do a bit more before the end of my work day today, making it look like I’m competent at least. I’m not telling anyone at work yet about “Emil”. It’s already going to be touchy telling them that I need six to eight weeks off when I only have two weeks of vacation time available. The Company is so young, just seven years old, that I don’t think anyone has gone through something like this yet and they don’t really have a policy set up for it (yet they gave MsNoManagementSkills lots of time off when she first left FatHead and ran back to her “Mommy”). While I really don’t want to “milk” The Company for special treatment or paid time off during this medical thing, I have given above and beyond the call to duty for them, especially in their first years getting started when I worked 24/7 for two years solid, and nearly as much during the dot.com meltdown during the spring and summer of 2001. Personally, I don’t think they will allow anyone else to “milk” their system after MsNoManagementSkills took so much advantage, but I do expect they will continue to allow her to do it. After all, she was the first hire and employee #1 and they never let any of us forget it.

So, all my other test results were fine, or fine enough to not worry about anything so I won’t. I’m still not going to participate in the biggie car show this coming weekend, but I might wash my car later this week. The nice Competition Boy is still calling here, but I haven’t returned any of his calls just yet. I really needed to get through this morning’s doctor appointment first as you could probably imagine.

Again, THANK YOU all for the kind words. They all helped tremendously and made me feel like this morning’s appointment would be a piece of cake. And it was. Thanks!

July 27 2004

I’m making progress on feeling better. My hip and back hardly hurt at all today and I’ve significantly reduced the amount of pain medication I’m taking. I’m down to just under half of what I should be taking. Tomorrow, I have a follow up appointment over this whole back spasm injury and I’m going to see what medication I can refill and what I can’t. Hopefully, they’ll allow me just enough to recover the rest of the way. As you probably know, I’m not a big medication person for anything and to be honest, this is the first time ever that I’ve seen a use for any. Aspirin has always been enough for me. It some kind of high pain tolerance thing, I think.

So, this coming weekend is the first of the summer’s Biggie car shows. The first in the season point series. And I am not going, mostly because of my back pain and mostly because of my other medical issue with “Emil”, and a small part because I’m tired of the snappish comments I’ve recently gotten from a few pissed off and jealous competitors. I’d like to say that, honestly, I’m a nobody at these shows and that I won’t be missed in the least. But that’s not true and if I don’t show up, rumors will be flying and I’ll have to field all kinds of phone calls and emails from people who want to know if I have finally been scared off by the druggie couple and a few others who loudly complain every time I turn up at a car show and do well.

I was thinking, since the old car club I used to belong to is soooo big on making up all kinds of nasty rumors about anyone they haven’t seen in a long time, AND because most of them will be participating in the Biggie car show this coming weekend in which I AM NOT going to,, I thought it would make sense to call Drill Sergeant Dave and let him know that I won’t be there and why. Since I know he is responsible for making up a lot of rumors surrounding his divorce and his vocal hatred toward his ex-wife and the nice Competition Boy, who better to tell? This way, if I hear later that he told everyone some other made-up reason, my suspicions will be pretty much confirmed on his rumor creation abilities. But if he tells everyone the real reason why I won’t be there, hopefully, I won’t have people bugging me over the next month or two and by then, the car show season will be over for the year.

Have I convinced you yet that I’m done with car shows this year?

I didn’t think so.

I dreamed about car shows and being in one last night. That’s all I have to say about that.

Where was I? Oh oh, yeah! So I called Drill Sergeant Dave and his voice is all somber; not upbeat like usual. So I ask him if he is at work and should I call him later and he tells me he’s at the funeral home. That his father died last night and he was in the middle of making arrangements.

Does my timing just suck this week or what? Okay, so I told him to call me whenever he felt like it, that I’d be here and I apologized profusely and was sending good thoughts his way. That my call was no big deal, don’t worry about it, blah, blah, blah.

I’m beginning to understand why some people think they NEED medication.

July 29 2004

It’s my birthday and I’ll cry if I want to.

The truth is that I fear living a life in which I don’t accomplish anything that is outside of what society expects of me. As a woman, I was expected to get married and start popping out offspring. I was expected to work a mundane job if any outside job at all. I was expected to wear makeup and keep myself in shape for as long as possible, and if that wasn’t possible, my looks and size would be whispered about at the local gardening club or PTA or church group of which I was expected to belong to. I would live in the ‘burbs and desire a vehicle in which I could cart around my offspring whom were expected to belong to some sports group.

My mother probably would have wanted all this. But she got pregnant with me very early in life and married the responsible boy who was looking for any reason to get away from under his strict parent’s iron fists. He, finding himself unable to cope with the world, had a violent temper and couldn’t hold a job for longer than two years and then developed a rare disease that kept him hospitalized for nearly thirteen years before his death. My mother thus, was the family breadwinner, the head of the household in a world that refused to recognize a female head of any household. She was always working, barely able to keep us kids fed, never home and I became the mother for all my siblings that just wouldn’t seem to stop coming. My mother was tough and wouldn’t spend any more than, or couldn’t afford to, stay home after giving birth for more than a week. I’d like to think that if I were to inherit anything good from her, it was tough skin.

It’s my birthday and I’m really trying to be happy. Yes, I would have liked a party and a big fuss thrown over me, but that’s not happening. The fact is, no one has ever asked me if I wanted one in a way that didn’t make me feel threatened in some way or made me feel that if I said “YES!” that they would think less of me. Sometimes, living my life as I do is a big burden. People think that I’m tough all the time, but the truth really is, that I’m not and yes, sometimes, I get emotional about silly things like birthdays.

The truth also is that today, on my birthday, I had hoped would be a very, very happy and celebratory one, being as it’s a day that neither of my parents ever reached. And I’m really trying hard to keep that thought in the forefront of my mind. But I find that I’m fighting back tears because today is also the day that I have to give up yet another hobby that I truly loved, a hobby that I completely and totally threw myself into, and become just another insignificant overweight middle-aged woman, stereotypically sleepwalking through life just as society expects.

Earlier this week, I washed my car with WS’s help and put the last coat of polish on it. Yesterday, I took off that polish, emptied the ashtray and the center console, unpacked my car cleaning supplies from the trunk and lovingly put the car cover on. I don’t know when, if ever, I’ll take it out again and don’t know if I’ll ever show it again. Between my continuing back spasm pain, an upcoming hysterectomy and tumor removal and how I now feel about other jealous and vocal show competitors and increasing ballot box stuffing practices, depression is trying very hard to cloak me in darkness where I’ll just exist from day to day, sleeping, waking, working, watching nothing on TV, eating, sleeping, repeat.

Does past performance really count for anything if you don’t do something as notable as being the first to walk on the moon or being the beloved leader of a country? I’ve done some stuff in my life that no one would believe (had I not had witnesses that would attest otherwise), given that those things are usually reserved for the male species, but none of it shows. I won’t live in the past, surrounded by a shrine of my past accomplishments as some acquaintances I know do. And it’s exactly that reason why I feel the need to do something outside society’s norm, something to do all the time that no one would expect me to do any of the time.

July 29 2004

(after the whining and self pity party)

Okay, so it’s my birthday and I just knew I should have taken off work. But you see, MsNoManagementSkills insists on posting what days taken off are for on The Company’s internal access web site and it just pisses me off that everyone seems to have to know my personal business whenever I want a day off. So I didn’t take today off. Besides, I’m going to need all the paid days I can get in September when I have Emil, the tumor, removed. No, unfortunately, The Company doesn’t have any long-term disability pay. We don’t have enough employees and I work in a different state than where The Company resides. Count this as just another slip through the cracks thing that no one has set up right for Internet employees (where there is no such thing as holidays, weekends or 9 to 5 hours and where no one can hear you scream).

There isn’t anything planned for today except slogging through this mountain range of work. The Company released a new version of it’s software and decided to re-change all the names of the features to justify raising the price and that pretty much sums up what I’ll be doing from now until September: Re-changing all those thousands upon thousands of Company documentation to the new feature names, which irritatingly enough, are mostly the same as the feature names were two years ago. That’s right. The Company paid some advertising company one million dollars for them to tell The Company CEOs to change their software feature names BACK to what they were two years ago in hopes that will unconfused customers and they, the customers, will all come pushing and shoving back to buy the same product they all used to have.

But I’m not bitter. How can I be? It’s my birthday today!

WS bought me a wonderful cake last weekend. A German Chocolate cake made with macadamia nuts and we’ve enjoyed it all week. Remember, we don’t have children, so who’s to say we can’t get up in the morning and have cake for breakfast? NO ONE!

This morning, WS confessed that although he didn’t have a card, he did order something for me online and it should be here in a day or two. Nope, I’m not telling yet; it’s one of the most silly and ridiculous things I’ve ever wanted in my life, but when it does get here, I’ll take a picture of it. On me. I can almost guarantee you’ll all be disappointed, but I’ll be thrilled. Guesses are encouraged. I help you by admitting it’s not anything sexually oriented and it’s not a roll of Saran Wrap. Your turn to guess.

So, yesterday, just before my regular doctor’s appointment for the back spasm check up, I was feeling lower than low. Yesterday was a tough day. Technically, this half of July has been tough with the heat outside, and sick pets, and WS’s MS flare up and my back injury and now Emil growing inside me. Let’s just say I was seriously having thoughts of talking to my doctor about depression medication. And if you’ve read here long, you know that is JUST CRAZY TALK for me. And I realized this, so I didn’t. Nor do I plan on it. Every day is different and today, I’m back to my usual cranky self.

But just to let you know really how depressed I was, I typed up all my thoughts in a journal entry that I was originally going to post today. I’m not posting it here. It’s over there  in the 2004 archives if you really want to read it and then smack me for sounding so selfish. Again, I’m fine today and who wouldn’t be? It’s my birthday!

July 30 2004

WS’s tomato and Thai pepper plants are finally doing something as you might be able to see. As for the Roma tomato, well, it got eight nice sized Romas on it and doesn’t look like it’s interested in putting out any more height, flowers or tomatoes. I’ll try another one next year (because I love Roma tomatoes so much) but I’ll try staking it as well as caging it and try picking the very earliest flowers off. As for the cherry tomato, that’s a no brainer for next year. The chives will be another go. The basil, let’s not talk about the caterpillar food that became with the first week of planting. I might try a bush zucchini too, just because I’d like to learn to sauté zucchini flowers.

The weather is WONDERFUL today, but alas! The soft gray clouds we so love are supposed to start burning off soon, making the temps expected to be up around 90 degrees (again). Why can’t we people who hate summer just hibernate during these months? Why does everyone expect everyone else to just love, love, LOVE summer? If I had a choice, I’d have my upcoming surgery sooner than September, just so I can lie medicated and unawares mostly during this horrid hot time of year.

But in the meantime and while waiting for my birthday present to be delivered (see yesterday’s entry), I’m doing all I can do to make myself even more sweaty and miserable: I’m repainting our library bathroom; a room that has no windows, thusly, no air flow whatsoever. It’s all WS’s fault really. You see, early this year, we repainted our library from the black-green, traditional English library color to a softer, brighter, basil-green color, but we left the bathroom, which is the same black-green color. Yesterday, I painted a small portion of wall the basil-green color, and I guess it’s okay. Personally, I don’t like it, and am tempted to paint the entire room my beloved butter-pecan color. Except that the counter top is dark marbled green. Technically, the basil-green goes better with it, but I just can’t look at that much of this particular basil-green in that small of a room. It’s just not the exact color of green I was originally looking for. All those greens look so GRAY here with our lighting, with no tinge of green at all. I know I’m boring you all to tears, but are you still with me? So, I decided to paint reasonably large areas in there butter-pecan and see what it looked like. I was certain it would be perfect. After all, I could see it in my mind’s eye and it was charming.

But two hours later, after it had dried, my beautiful butter-pecan color looked just awful. Our lighting, even with the fancy Lutron dimmer switches set on every setting imaginable, it still looked….well, basically like crap on a cracker. No way was I going to go with butter-pecan. It looked somewhat pink (ugh), somewhat peachy (eh, not bad a color but NOT in there) and somewhat just a shade off from cat barf (and I know what I’m talking about here).

And so, it’s back to the basil-green, which I’ve decided, really is a good color in there. I’ve painted over all the butter-pecan color, let it dry and can see that it will look fabulous. Just like WS said it would. This guy is getting so good with his color and decorating, it’s downright intimidating. So, after I get the bathroom painted, I’ll post pictures, I promise. Anyone know how late Rodda paint stays open? Perhaps a better question would be could I possibly get there in time this evening in rush hour traffic? Yeah, I COULD wait until tomorrow, but I’m on a tear and you know how those things go.

Okay, so you’re probably all waiting to see what my birthday present is. Remember yesterday, I promised to post a picture of it when it got here and I thank everyone who guessed at what it might be. And remember, it’s about the silliest thing in the world, but damn it, secretly, I’ve always wanted one! It probably started when I was very young and can slightly remember the daily “Queen For a Day” TV show that my grandmother was glued to. Or maybe it was the other grandmother who used to tell me all.the.time that it was a shame that I wasn’t as pretty as my younger sister. Whatever. At least I don’t have her mile-long criminal record so I can live with the looks. So anyway, it is a tiara. I LOVE IT! Thank you, thank you, thank you WS! And yes, if you want, we’ll try it on you too. Later. Much later.

August 2 2004

Another Monday. Another case of the Mondays. Let’s not talk about work today.

Last Saturday, I had hoped that we would do some pointless shopping for home décor stuff that we really don’t need any more of. I was really in the mood to look at and maybe buy something, anything. Cooped up fever, I guess. But not a single place we went to had anything good. Our area is getting ready for several of those big, overblown homes of dreams shows and all the good décor shops are fairly well stripped of anything worth while. I should have known this, but I was hoping we were early enough. Oh well, maybe I’ll make those rounds again before Christmas which is really the only time worth going.

Sunday, I finished painting the library bathroom and I do like it much better than the old black-green color. WS found a fabulous canvas print online that he ordered so we have something to hang in there. It should arrive here in mid-August. This morning, I replaced all the outlet plates, light fixture, vent hardware, towel rack etc and cleaned the room up. I still need to find one of my small model-car paint brushes so I can get the teeny-tiny corner areas done below the cabinet, along the narrow wall strip of mirror and behind the door. Normally, I don’t mind this small touchup work, but with my back pain lately, getting down on the hard floor and twisting into some odd position just to get a dab or two of paint into those hard-to-reach spots, just sucks. But overall, again, I really like the look and am glad to have finished one of the biggest things on my pre-surgery to-do list.

While I was painting (and recovering) yesterday, WS was too kind and did a lot of the yard work that I just haven’t been able to get around to doing. A couple of huge dogwoods that were supposed to be of the miniature 3-foot variety but aren’t were whacked down (for the fourth time this year already) and more spent day lily stalks than you could shake a stick at went bye-bye. On my pre-surgery to-do list, I need to dig out those dogwoods along with a couple of Russian sages that have started to make a serious run at taking over this side of the entire neighborhood. The day lilies, most of which have grown to gigantic proportions, need to be whacked down to the ground along with a viburnum that also was supposed to stay more on the short side. An overly large, orange decorative grass needs a haircut, a dead vine maple needs to be removed and replaced with a tall Hinoki cypress, the boxwoods and hollies need to be shaped and the creeping phlox should be cut back away from the lawn edge.

In September, my not-so-lovely Iceberg rose is going to be dug out because this one has become more of a pain in the ass than the old beautiful one I had at our previous residence. I did think I would be replacing it next spring with a couple of hardy rugosa roses that create large rose hips for both us and the wildlife over the following winter, but after reading more about rugosa roses, it looks like they send out runners in every direction and lord knows, I don’t need ANYTHING else that sends out runners. I am sick to death of things that want to take over our small plot of earth. Also in September, I’ll need to cut down all the Monarias since their flowers should be completely finished by then. I do have one small bush that I love but can’t remember the name of to save my life, I’d like to transplant before fall because it’s being crowded out by a weigela and a couple of small Hinoki cypress trees that have finally reached a viewable height.

Maybe I should consider calling a lawnscape service for the fall/winter months? We certainly could use some direction on how to shape things that look scraggly. We completely suck at shaping bushes. I would call around for a service if I didn’t think WS would scream over the cost, but I can’t see him doing my usual big fall yard clean up while I’m flat on my back, recovering for a month or more AND keeping the rest of the house in shape AND taking care of me, the pets and himself AND working. We really need to consider hiring some kind of yard service, especially for the future when he has his next MS flare up and can’t walk. If that happens while I’m recovering from Emil’s removal surgery, our grass is going to be three feet tall before anyone can get to it, and then, I don’t think either one of us will be able to cut it with our little push mower. That sight ought to be a hoot. We’d have better luck dragging our bodies out there on hands and knees and hacking at it with a pair of scissors. I guess it would be nice if a neighbor could take notice and/or pity and mow it for us should that happen, but things like that just DO NOT happen in our neighborhood. Maybe five years ago it would have, but the ‘hood has changed drastically since then and no one cares one iota about anyone else anymore. Unless you own a couple of minivans, have eleven toddlers and have the standard issue Fisher-Price furniture permanently installed in your front yard.

So much work to think about. But for the time being, things are absolutely beautiful out there. More pictures from out there coming later in the week.

August 3 2004

Another work day. One filled with pointless, time-wasting blathering meetings. Led by MsNoManagementSkills, no less, who has absolutely no management or morale-building skills whatsoever, not to mention tact. To hear her nasally voice over the phone with her uplifted ends of every sentence is akin to hearing sharp pointy nails being screeched down a chalkboard. I catch both me and WS grimacing throughout the conference calls. I still haven’t told anyone about Emil yet. That will come early this afternoon, but ONLY to The Company CEO, The Company HR department head and MrSmartButFakingIt. In fact, I have just sent out the email to them containing all of Emil’s details. It’s Emil’s coming out of the closet day! I dread, dread, dread when MsNoManagementSkills finds out because she’ll post it all over The Company’s internal web site for anyone who should stumble in to view, even though I specifically asked this information not to be posted there. How I hate this woman.

Since I’ve got time, let’s just sit here and wait to see what falls out from my email. Let’s see who contacts me first and what they say, shall we?

Just before 1 pm emails came in from The Company CEO telling me “so sorry, we’ll work things out” which scares me to no end because I’ve heard that directly from the CEO’s own mouth just before half our department was laid off three years ago. That email was immediately followed by one from The Company’s HR department head which told me they would contact me individually. Whooptie-do. I can hardly wait. No doubt they will tell me I have two weeks paid vacation and as for the rest, I’m SOL. I’ve decided NOT to use my measly two weeks paid vacation time and just take the six-to-eight weeks off unpaid. WS assures me that our finances are set up very good right now and my paycheck will barely be missed during that time. We’ll still have money going into our retirement account, our saving account, our Christmas fund (like we ever use it) and that pennies will still fall from the heavens, doors will continue to open and velvet ropes will continue to part. Blah, blah, blah. And this way, I’ll have paid vacation time left. Bing-O!

Just about the time I was finished digesting the emails, MrSmartButFakingIt called here and voiced his sympathies and concerns. This alters his plans to dump a major project of his in my lap, an important one that The Company needs an answer on by the end of this month but he has chosen to ignore since it’s nearly certainly destined to fail even though jobs are involved. So, those plans will have to go elsewhere. Gee, maybe MsNoManagementSkills can fit it in with her upcoming marriage to DorkMaster.

Oh! Didn’t I tell you that? Yep, MsNoManagementSkills is marrying DorkMaster, her live-in boyfriend who has custody of his three kids but doesn’t take care of because “that’s what she’s for!” The ink is barely dry from her divorce from FatHead and she’s jumping into another marriage that is so similar, it’s downright frightening. I smell….Boing! Boing! Rebound!

Oh, and the best part? She’s scheduled her wedding the same week as my surgery. Let’s see. Five years ago, she threatened me with losing my job if I took off with Ws, who secretly planned a two-day get away on Thanksgiving day and the day after to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary (which is on Thanksgiving day). I took the time and bawled nearly the entire time, certain when we returned, I would be unemployed. Stay tuned to see if she pitches a fit about my surgery interfering with her second wedding because when she finds out, she’s certain to have something to say about it.

I think it’s obvious that I’m bitchy today and that’s because my back hurts. I’m going to go take anti-nausea and pain medication now.

August 4 2004

The pain is all mental today. Physically, I’m feeling very, very good today. One somewhat stiff knee and a bare acknowledgement that my right lower back exists and that is it. No pain! Woot! Those last two nights of going immediately to bed after getting off work have paid off and I plan to do it again every night this week. I promise.

Today, WS heads back to his REAL job to see the fall-out of yesterday’s Black Tuesday. The company that WS has a REAL job at existed for thirty-some years never laying off a single employee. It was one of that company’s cool rules: No one will ever be laid off. But in the early ‘90’s, one of the company founders died and the other one was far removed from the business. The board of directors hired a horrible man who basically ran the huge company into the ground by turning the great company into just another corporation that makes the CEOs rich and cares less than squat for their employees, all while demanding a huge salary and tons of perks. When this horrible man’s contract was up and the company was near collapse, the board of directors hired another horrible person. You probably saw her picture on the covers of several financial magazines because she’s all about image and polyester pants suit-clad personal assistants and her many corporate jets. This is why there is no longer profit sharing, decent benefits, yearly raises or job security.

Yesterday, that company decided to lay off 5% of their workforce, mainly up here in the Pacific Northwest and Colorado. Several people who worked directly with WS were let go and causing several major projects to be dropped. A very close friend of ours was let go. As WS expressed it, “She’s a human factors expert focused on improving the customer experience in our products…definitely NOT one of our company’s strengths. So apparently, cost-cutting is more important than our customers being able to use our products.” This friend called us last night to ask us to care for her animals should she not be able to get back on her feet. She doesn’t have a very good record of being able to handle things like this and was calling from a bar. We have offered any support we can.

WS left for work this morning, telling me either he’ll see me as usual this evening or he’ll see me in about an hour. That was two hours ago and I think he may be okay. Everyone let go yesterday was told to go home for a couple of days before coming back to get their stuff and get their paperwork in order during which I’m certain computers and entire cubicles will be gone through with fine toothed combs looking for incriminating evidence of any kind. They were also told that this was just the first wave of lay offs and this knowledge, whether true or not, just makes me very, very tired. Heck, WS says it best over on his blog. It’s worth a read.

August 5 2004

WS survived the first wave of lay offs yesterday. No word when the next one will hit. We’re not dwelling on it or living in fear too much anymore. After all, I’ve been fearing the loss of my job for five years. That much fear can’t be good for anyone so we’re just going to stop doing it. In the meantime, we’re just making sure our finances are in order. We’re okay and thank you for your good wishes.

It actually RAINED here last night! If I wasn’t in bed as I promised myself and everyone else that I would be, I would have walked around in it. While, it didn’t rain a whole lot, it was a nice start and is supposed to do it again tonight and tomorrow. This makes me one happy person.

And the weather looks like it ought to be great for Saturday and you know what that means….car show fever. Argh! I thought I was going to die of depress last weekend because I couldn’t attend one. And then WS was in such a bad funk. Yes, yes, I’m thinking of attending one this coming Saturday about an hour and a half away from me with whom else but the nice Competition Boy and ex-Drill Sergeant Dave’s wife. They’ve been calling here and it turns out that’s what they wanted to know, if I would attend with them. Sounds like the nice Competition Boy just might be testing the waters again for showing his car, after burning so many bridges when he divorced his wife and moved Drill Sergeant Dave’s now ex-wife in. She was so connected with car show people as is Drill Sergeant Dave and all those split ups and divorces didn’t sit well with the majority of the car show crowd, which consist mostly of older, good ol’ boy, old school thinking seniors who would never forgive someone else getting divorced but don’t have a problem with themselves driving drunk or feeling up a younger car club member during a club party.

I’ve promised myself and WS (and anyone else who wishes it) that should I go, I WILL NOT overly tax myself, re-injure myself, push my body hard, harm, ill-treat, misuse, abuse, impair, besmirch, maim, re-cripple, lame, mangle, weaken, enfeeble, wear down or otherwise cause adverse damage to myself, my back, hip and knee AND should I begin to feel “off” and/or “not right”, I will pack up my things and come immediately home.

But I really think I’ll be okay because I do plan on taking it very easy.

This morning, I woke up feeling even better than yesterday. I did have a bit of hip pain last night as I was lounging in bed right after work and I did sleep with a pillow under my knees, but this morning, that is gone. I’m really feeling pretty good. I’m hardly taking any pain medication anymore (I’ll pack some along for the show just in case) and I plan on continuing to hit the sack right after work every day this week. In fact, I’m liking so much how that makes me feel, I just might do it every day next week too. I could get used to this.

I also just realized that I’ll be in bed recovering from Emil’s extraction during the worst part of the summer here, when you know fall is coming but it just keeps staying hot, dry and ugly. That time of year I hate the most and when all I want is misty late October/November mornings with fall colored leaves, dewy morning spider webs and the smell of wood smoke and apples in the air but it just takes forever to get here. Yep, maybe I can just sleep through the end of summer. Ah, just me, a good, well-aimed fan, a darkened bedroom with cool, crisp sheets, goose-down pillows, pain medication as needed, all the books I want to read and a TV remote, a bathroom close by and WS’s care. This just might be the best vacation I’ve ever needed.

And then after having to take care of the house, the yards, the pets, work and himself, WS will probably need one.

August 6 2004

I’m human and I think I’ve just come to realize this. And trust me, I don’t like it any better than some of the rest of you either.

I just never thought of actually being human before. You see, after surviving all the years of daily beatings growing up, a really bad marriage, eating cat food for a month in lieu of being homeless, losing literally every material thing I own twice and even now, growing the tumor known as Emil in me, I just never really sat down and thought, “Hey, I’m just human.” I mean, I can do anything really short of busting through that corporate glass ceiling simply because I can’t produce sperm, I’ve done stuff, I’ve been places, I’ve been loved. No, it wasn’t my recent back pain or even my upcoming surgery that’s made me realize it….it’s jealousy. It’s a horrible human emotion. And I’m guilty. Very guilty.

There is someone I hate with a burning passion dislike and I know this person fairly well. Well enough to know that they are spoiled rotten to their very core, has never had to lift much of a finger to do anything, has never been through rough times, whom purposely causes discomfort, pain and emotional turmoil in other people’s lives and basically, doesn’t deserve anything, ever, in my eyes, and then I hear that they are getting this big dollar item or that big dollar item or going here and there just because, and they don’t even have to pay for it, I really don’t like how I feel about it. Believe me, if I didn’t have to stay in contact with this person every single day, I definitely wouldn’t and therefore, couldn’t care less.

I know there are always going to be people like this and that life is unfair. I need to get over it, but again, it’s hard to get over something when it is thrown in your face all the time. I have to stay in daily contact with this person and so, I have to listen to endless stories on and on for months over what mommy bought and what daddy bought and “because I got a hang nail last week AND stubbed my toes, I get a new Escalade this week. Aren’t I so special? Tee-Hee!!” I only wish the stories were just that, stories, but they aren’t. I know this for fact.

Okay, I think I’m over it for today. Tell me to shut up or call me human. I’m okay with either. Let’s look at some pretty back yard pictures instead, okay? Here’s a pretty little thing that I really liked until it took over part of my yard. I ripped out about half of the bulb-lets this spring, but it came back with in a fury, overgrowing the Dutch mini iris and the tete-a-tete daffodils planted there as well as a beautiful, large mossy rock that I miss seeing terribly. Next spring, I’m digging the whole thing up and putting it into one of our big, decorative pots. Yeah, I’ll show it.

It’s raining today. Wonderful rain that we need so badly. Even the birds seem to like it. The lone cedar waxwing is still visiting once a day to bath in the upper pool of the fountain and today, in the rain, he seems to be hanging around longer than usual. We have tons of goldfinches and red-winged blackbirds, an occasionally hummingbird and I’m pretty sure I heard a flicker early this morning. We’ve got a couple of squirrels that I think are twins that are emptying their peanut box nearly twice a day and little ham-and cheese-lettes scurrying here and there occasionally. Oh, you really didn’t think those field mice wouldn’t breed, did you? Don’t worry. I think we’ve got an owl here at night who’s thinning things out. All the blueberries are gone but the huckleberries still have a ways to go. We’re going to be knee deep in quinces if we don’t get any big winds between now and October. It’s hard to imagine that in two months, the maples will have changed color and leaves will be dropping everywhere. C’mon fall!

August 9 2004

Weekend recap: I participated in a car show Saturday with the nice Competition Boy and Drill Sergeant Dave’s ex-wife and we did well in our classes. They were to their old selves, meaning they didn’t seem uncomfortable with me around. It was almost like old times. I managed my back and hip pain well all day and got a bit of a tan in the meantime. No problems at all.

Sunday, I spent too much time standing and I could feel my lower back halfway through the day. But it still wasn’t too bad. I didn’t take any pain medication all day because I’m really trying to stop having to take anything (I hate medication) but after tossing and turning until 3 this morning with LOTS of knee pain and a huge bloated feeling, I finally HAD to take something. I was miserable. It was pretty hot here yesterday and try as we may, we just couldn’t keep our bedroom cool overnight. This had WS up most of the night too so for once, we weren’t really keeping each other up or irritating the other. So we had an early morning snack, WS had ice cream while I had watermelon chunks, and we watched “Finding Nemo” for about the 100th time, then promptly fell asleep just as the sun was coming up.

This morning, I was dismayed to discover that I slept until nearly noon although I don’t know how I wouldn’t have. Ugh. That makes today a long work day but only because I’m a stickler for having the correct number of hours in every single week. Really, given that everyone else’s hours vary vastly from the required 40, (with MsNoManagementSkills leading the pack with significantly shorter hours worked – no surprise there) I shouldn’t be killing myself to make sure I have 40 hours minimum in every single week of the five and a half years of the time I’ve served at this Company. I guess I just don’t want to be just like everyone else. If you’ve been reading here long, you already know this.

So, I’ll be managing my pain again every day this week and going to bed right after getting off work to continue healing my back. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. These things take time. In about six weeks, I’ll be flat on my back recovering from Emil’s surgery and by then, I’ll be feeling like I spent half the year lying down recovering. For someone like me, I’ll be lamenting that I’m just lying there, wasting time by not doing anything. Over the next few weeks, I need to work on changing my mindset so I don’t drive myself and WS crazy and don’t try to rush healing. That would be bad. That would slow healing. That would set my body back. Am I convincing myself yet? What do you think?

August 10 2004

Hi…uh, is this thing on? (tap, tap)…Okay, sorry about the past couple of days. We upgraded our server account Monday and well, the server company didn’t tell us it would screw everything up. All the pages were down and there were broken links everywhere. But it looks like we’ve got everything re-uploaded okay. If you find a broken link before I do, let me know.

Today is as good a day as any for confession time. Since the following babble will be less-than-pleasant in nature and if you don’t want to read about someone else’s body hair and upcoming surgery procedures and speculations, it’s okay to move along elsewhere. I won’t be offended and won’t think badly of anyone. It’s just that I have a surgery coming up and lots of stuff is starting to pile up in my mind. Not to leave anyone without something to go away with should you leave, I offer the Happyman Dance. Now just tell me that tune doesn’t just stick in your head…for days.

Anyone with me still?

Okay, here goes. Over the past week, I’ve been feeling very bloated. Overly bloated. It seems that even consuming nothing but water is making me feel just huge. Yes, my bladder and bowels are still working okay. This was something Dr. PokeandPeck asked me repeatedly during his exam, making me now wonder if this is something that will start to give me problems as I get closer to Emil’s “birthday” on September 23rd. I really think the problem is that Aunt Flo never made an appearance this month. She was due around July 30th. I strongly think this is because on that day, I hurt my back and have been on pain medication, anti-nausea and valium medication ever since. My body doesn’t like medication and this is how it rebels. Aunt Flo gets in a tizzy and doesn’t show up. This hasn’t happened often, but the timing around this one couldn’t be worse. Emil was supposed to get an ultrasound in the middle of this month, and they specifically told me it HAD to be AFTER Aunt Flo’s appearance and departure. Now, who knows when and if Aunt Flo will show up, especially since I’m still taking pain meds. I’m really thinking Aunt Flo and Emil have become fast enemies and I’m just stuck in the middle, much similar to how I felt stuck between Drill Sergeant Dave and his now much-hated ex-wife and trying to stay friends with both of them.

To make the real point of feeling bloated, my stomach has been sticking out quite a bit in the last ten days or so and embarrassingly so, when naked (which doesn’t happen often) I haven’t been able to see things down there without the help of the bathroom mirror. No, I’m not talking about my knees or toes. You know, THERE. And why would I care to purposely look THERE? It’s not like I do it terribly often, and trust me when I tell you I’m blushing badly as I confess this, over the past, oh twenty five some-years or so, I came to dislike body hair. My body hair in particular and thankfully, I have very little. Except THERE but only when I let it grow. Which wasn’t often until recently. To just blurt it out, I keep things as smooth as a cue ball. But since I knew I was going in for a complete physical and the dreaded pap smear sometime this year, I figured I ought to let things grow out a bit so as not to startle any doctor or embarrass myself further (I’m sure they’ve all seen everything) and so I did just that. Let the hair THERE grow out.

But with everything else going on, WS getting sick, then well just before some of our pets got sick, then car show season starting up, then WS having a MS flare-up, my physical just got put off longer and longer and well, other things got longer and longer too. Very long. Long enough to braid if I were so inclined. Or could see it to braid it. Why I can’t have hair on my head this long and thick, I don’t know, but it’s horribly embarrassing to have so much hair THERE that even through underwear and shorts, there is so much THERE it looks like I’ve got a sock or something stuffed down there. Use your imagination. Please, ‘cause I’m not posting pictures.

Still with me? I understand completely if not. Really.

Okay, so Sunday evening, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I mean it’s 100+ degrees here this week and I probably wasn’t thinking clearly. I had to get rid of this mess. But because I can’t see anything, I had to do it in front of the bathroom mirror, instead of in the shower that makes much more sense when I’m not so bloated and things aren’t so long. And this ended up leading to a pretty bad hack job. Imagine taking a razor (triple-blade Mach III safety razor, thankyouverymuch) and an over abundance of shaving cream and trying to shave a dog who’s running rampant through the house nonstop and you’ll get an idea of how badly things progressed. Then, imagine being so depressed and horrified at the look that you just give up. And THEN, imagine having to tell your significant other later after you’ve gotten the courage to do so, what you did because if you don’t, the very sight of THAT would probably cause them permanent mental scaring. Or lead to incredulous laughter and even MORE embarrassment.

Okay, so am I more comfortable after the hack job? Heck, yes! Cooler too. Do I care right this minute what it looks like? Nope. It’s not like I’m going out in public naked. Will I care if Dr. PokeandPeck calls tomorrow and tells me to come in for another exam pronto? Oh god, I will just die (again) from embarrassment. Just in case, I’m waiting until the end of the week to call the ultrasound people to let them know that I didn’t forget to schedule the ultrasound, and that’s it’s Aunt Flo’s no-show fault and then I’ll just take it from there. Things will be growing out by then a bit and I’ll be moving toward my next pre-surgery embarrassing moment: The upcoming pre-surgery pokes, prods, potential enema(s) and bedpan escapades. Joy!

August 12 2004

No embarrassing confessions today. Lucky you. There’ll be time for that next month, I’m certain. Looks like MrSmartButFakingIt and The Company CEO hasn’t shared Emil’s information with MsNoManagementSkills yet, so she hasn’t posted it anywhere, nor has she peppered me with instant messages and/or emails asking for details. If she knew, and when she does find out, she will pry for every bit of information she can, not because she’ll care, I’m certain, but to see if she can find any evidence that I’m not telling the truth. Remember, this is the woman who had eleven different grandparent “funerals” to attend to in the first four years we worked together. Not that someone couldn’t have eleven different grandparents; it was just the excuse she used to take three or four days off work with pay and The Company CEO never questioned it. Not once. I’ve found too often in life, that someone who tells buckets of lies will assume everyone else is telling buckets of lies too. I refuse to lower myself to her level though the thought of FedEx-ing her Emil in a large ZipLock bag after surgery as proof tickles me to no end.

Both yesterday morning and this morning, I woke up feeling better than I have in a month. Pain level zero. No pain anywhere and very little stiffness. Yesterday, late in the afternoon, I got on WS’s rowing machine and actually rowed out a couple of minutes without much trouble at all. Feeling good, I then got on my much-neglected elliptical machine and ellipticalled one whole minute. Yeah, I’m living on the edge here. Still doing good now. It seems like knee stiffness comes on late in the afternoon whether I’m doing anything strenuous or just sitting here like a lump. I’m still hitting the sack right after work every day and that’s working well for me.

And since I did so well, health- and pain-wise, at last weekend’s car show and because show season here ends in just seven short weeks (one week after Emil’s surgery), and as long as I feel up to it, I’m going to attend another show this weekend. Saturday morning in the wee hours, I’ll be driving down to the Eugene area of Oregon to hit that area’s biggest sports car shows of the year. I wanted to participate in this show last year, but couldn’t because it fell on the very same weekend as one of the Biggie shows in my area that I had to do for last year’s points season. Since I’m not going for any points last year and not doing many of the Biggie shows this year, I’m going to Eugene instead.

The show is all day long and awards aren’t handed out until Sunday morning. I hate it when clubs do that because it’s mostly done to help bring dollars into their local economy. Okay, fine, but I already do the whole car show thing because I like to and because I like helping raising money for charity via showing my car. So, really, I’m already spending my dollars there, since mostly, the charity money goes to something good in that area. Anyway, I’ll be spending the night there and driving back early Sunday afternoon. WS is staying home. He doesn’t need to be out in the heat and it looks like it’ll be in the 90’s Saturday down there. He’ll be out in the heat next weekend when, provided that I am still feeling okay, we’ll be heading up north for a big show in Tacoma. I like the Tacoma car show people. I miss them.

I invited the nice Competition Boy and the ex-wife of Drill Sergeant Dave to come with me, but after first saying they would love to come along, they sent me an email today changing their mind. The nice Competition boy didn’t like taking second place to my first last weekend and the ex-wife has decided that she’s enjoying not doing any car show stuff for the first time in years. They’ll be at the beach instead and want to do dinner with us next week. Too bad they already forget that I told them we were busy every weekend for the next, oh…..fifteen weeks, with the remaining car shows and surgery recovery. No worries though. They’re in love and sometimes, that affects the ears.

August 13 2004

On the subject of bladder control, part One

Hurray! I finally got an ultrasound appointment so the docs can look at the tumor, Emil. You see, I was supposed to call the ultrasound people the very minute that Aunt Flo arrived in order to make an appointment for ten days later. Apparently, they want to make sure of what they are looking at and menstrual fluid has been known to have an Emil-like profile. Since Aunt Flo never showed up this month, I called and lamented about not really knowing what I was supposed to do now. But joy! They set me right up for Monday, August 23rd.

“Oh sure, we can set your appointment right up. Just remember, a day or before your appointment, remember to read the information we sent you about drinking 32 ounces of water beforehand. See you then!”

+click+

Uh,…okay. So I rip the office apart looking for the ultrasound information that I promptly forgot about nearly immediately after getting it because I hurt my back. People lose things when they are in pain and/or overly medicated: Days, weeks, lives, printed instructions…

But WS knew right where it was. And yep, it sounds….uh, interesting. Here are the instructions, along with my personal comments:

“You will need to have a full bladder for the exam, so it is important to follow these instructions to the letter:

1. Empty your bladder two hours before your appointment time, but not after that.” Whew. Okay, I can do that.
2. “Starting exactly one and one half hours before your appointment time, drink 32 ounces of water. Finish the water within one half an hour. Do not go past one half an hour.” Okay, so sometimes I get thirsty. I can do this.
3. “DO NOT EMPTY YOUR BLADDER DURING OR AFTER THIS TIME. REPEAT, DO NOT EMPTY YOUR BLADDER DURING OR AFTER THIS TIME.” Hmmm, okay. Maybe, maybe I can do this. I dunno. I do like to pee because I usually have to pee a lot. I mean, 32 ounces is a LOT of water.
4. “Please arrive fifteen minutes BEFORE your appointment time.” Which certainly assures that they will make me sit in the waiting room for at LEAST one hour, with a bursting full bladder, as most doctor visits tend to go.
5. “If you arrive late, we may need to reschedule your appointment and all appointments missed will be charged a fee.” Obviously, no mercy for anyone who might have peed themselves in the car on the trip over there.

At this point, I’m beginning to envision heavily-Eastern European-accented nurses dressed in shiny black vinyl outfits with riding crops in hand shouting, “You vill pee vhen und only vhen ve say! If you pee beforehand, ve haff vays of making your miserable life most uncomfortable! YOU VILL NOT PEE!”

So, we’re already beginning the “water” training. I’ve already measured exactly how much water 32 ounces is. After this weekend, I’m going to put strips of blue masking tape on all my large water bottles at the 32 ounce mark. I’ve been trying to hold 32 ounces of water in a full bladder for a while and when you’re thinking about not peeing, all you want to do is pee. Right now, I basically suck at it.

I’m sure I’m being overly sensitive, and I can tell, because I’m noticing water everywhere. I’m eye-ing those huge, trusty water bottles that I carry with me everywhere as though they are no longer my friend. I can hear the pets lapping water from their water bowls. One of our toilets is running. I need to take a shower but do I really want to? I’m thinking that green color I painted the bathroom last week is a watery lake color. Watching TV to take my mind off water, all the local news channels show footage of water tanker helicopters dumping water on wildfires. John Kerry is visiting town, down by our watery waterfront. A woman purposely walked into the full ocean surf at the watery coast. A water main has burst on a side street downtown, shooting gallons of water thirty feet into the air, much like I’ll feel like doing if they don’t let me pee soon enough. There’s that Olympic athlete who’s going to go for eight gold medals. In swimming. And that Detrol LA “Gotta go right now!” commercial. Nice timing! Even Poly-grip commercials are looking moist to me right now.

Changing channels and what’s on cable? The Poseidon Adventure, Blue Lagoon, WaterWorld, and god help me, A River Runs Through It of all things. Good lord!

Okay, let’s think dry. Withering dry. Parched dry. Bone dry. Dry as dust. Pretzels. Hugely salty peanuts. Burnt toast. Cement blocks lying baking in the deadly hot afternoon sun. Have to shingle a house in 100-degree heat. Domino’s thin crust pizza. The Sahara (which I know is the same as saying Domino’s thin crust pizza but run with me here). The Arizona/Mexico border. Some of my journal entries about car shows. Conference calls with MrSmartButFakingIt and MsNoManagementSkills. The Santa Ana winds.

I am so sure that pregnant mothers around the world, who have all had ultrasounds have gone through all this and are now reading this, saying, “Oh good grief! Stop being such a pussy! This is nothing!” They are also probably telling me that this is the easy part, to try pushing a ten pound human out of THERE.

Well, while I won’t be pushing anything out of THERE, we figure Emil was probably about ten pounds about a year or so ago. Try carrying a twenty pound tumor around for who knows how long now. Who’s the pussy now?

Good thing the appointment isn’t until the 23rd as it will give me plenty of time to practice drinking 32 ounces of water and retaining it. This ought to be a fun weekend.

August 16 2004

I’m finally home and back with enough energy to type. It was heaven to come home to a nearly spotlessly clean house that smelled fresh and looked freshly scrubbed. WS has really stepped up to the plate on learning how to maintain this place on his own. The pride of home ownership really shines here and it is a true dream to have someone along side me that cares so much about how our house looks, inside and out. Believe me, there were years and years when I truly believed that WS thought his clothes magically cleaned and re-hung themselves nightly in the closet, the floors mystically vacuumed, mopped and waxed themselves and the garden, well, we must have had the best soil on the planet and the birds must have routinely trimmed the trees and picked all the dead flowers. I finally feel like all the work I do behind the scenes is appreciated and he now does most of it himself without complaint when it needs to be done. You can’t believe how much mental stress this takes off my mind knowing that in about a month, I’ll be bedridden after Emil’s surgery for a couple of weeks. I won’t recover to a house that is a total disaster and waiting for me to do laundry! Dig down deep into your Woot bag for WS and send a woot his way. Woot!

This past weekend was exhausting, but I did keep my back and hip pain under control. It was hot in Eugene without a cloud in sight and it was mostly the heat that got to me. I got up and left here just before 5 am Saturday morning and got into Eugene around 8 am and found a great shady spot in the park. Unfortunately, shade usually means tree sap dripping on the car, but I could care less this time. I just needed the shade. I do better in shade and the car looks better in the shade. And I did good, taking two awards, and meaning that now, finally, I am tied for the number of awards I took all last year. One more award and I can finally mentally relax and feel like even with Emil, my hurting back and WS’s MS flare up this summer, I accomplished my goal. Six weeks of car show season left, five weeks for me. I’ve got three big shows left and a couple of small ones that I might skip just because or if I hurt at all. This coming Friday, both WS and I head to Tacoma for the entire weekend and a big show at Tacoma mall. We could have just driven up Saturday morning and come back late Saturday night, but the thought of getting to sleep in late before the Saturday show and then sleep in after the awards banquet late Saturday night sounded so decadent, we couldn’t help but decide to staying over.

Today, I really, really wanted to call in sick to work. I am tired and my lower back hurts a bit. I haven’t taken any pain medication since Sunday morning, and that was a quarter chip of a whole tablet and precautionary since I knew it would be hot for my long drive home. But I didn’t call in sick, but as luck would have it, I can’t log into work because too many other people are logged into the network and we only have so many spots. So basically, I’ve been sitting here for close to four hours trying periodically to get in without success. That’s okay. WS tells me salary people can get away with this and although I never, ever take advantage of this, I will today. Unless my conscious gets to me later in the day (stop IT).

So, at the show last Saturday, I saw several people from the old car club we left last fall. These were all best friends of the people who screwed up that club so badly and people I hoped I would never have to see ever again. Very two-faced, very snobby, very snippy. Just not nice people at all. But they were there, including a couple that the Not-Nice Competition Boy told me just last week would be up in Seattle, instead of down in Eugene where I was.

Apparently, the Not-Nice Competition Boy found out about Emil and told everyone at their latest car club meeting and Saturday morning, you would have thought that I was suddenly all these people’s best friend. Oh my god, everyone asked how I was doing and why was I even there and then, they pulled out every surgery story known to man and well, several hours later, I finally extracted myself from most of them and was able to finish detailing my car just before the judging started. I was given phone numbers and email addresses and had pictures taken (and I HATE pictures taken) and you would have thought I was a long-lost relative or something, and I got the obligatory “If you need anything, just ask” line that does NOT mean anything ever especially to these people so many times, I lost count. We used to get that line a lot when WS first started having MS flare ups and a couple of times, we did actually ask for help, but not one single person who told us to call if we needed anything, would help. Most never even returned our call or email and now, avoid us at all costs. We’ve gotten over it. We never need anyone anymore. We don’t have any hard feelings. But I hate it when people say things they have no intention of meaning. Words, they are all just words.

August 17 2004

Breaking news: The Ca-LEE-fornians across the street are selling their house. Already. They’ve lived there since what….late November? And they are trying to sell it at a definite “California” price which means, if they really want to sell it, they will drop the price at LEAST 50K pronto before anyone even looks at it without snickering. Yeah, we’d all love our homes to be worth this much and love even more if they actually sold it at this price, but we all know better. Hello? Reality knocking.

Both Mr. Dimmer and Mr. SportsOrNothing have quit their jobs. No big surprise for Mr. Dimmer. Rumor has it, he isn’t really looking anymore and everyone in the ‘hood thinks it’s just a matter of time before his house goes up for sale too. As for Mr. SportsOrNothing, we’re pretty sure he has a different job now but he’s talked a lot in the past about wanting to do nothing more than coach after school high school sports, not for pay, just because he’s trying to recapture his own failed youth when he was (and still is) the original couch potato upon his own admission. I’m betting both Ms. SportsOrNothing and Ms. Dimmer are completely fed up with all the job hopping. Ms. SportsOrNothing has been the rock that has kept her family together with keeping her hospital job, one that she really doesn’t like, since 1980-something. Ms. Dimmer doesn’t have an outside job at all and refuses to get one.

A couple of words on Olympic events, because I’m a big Olympics coverage whore:

I know beach volleyball is supposed to be played at the beach and in the sand and it was originally played by beautiful people who looked GOOD in swimsuits but if a player is chunky and looks four months pregnant, do they really need to be wearing a two-piece suit that looks three sizes too small, barely covers pubic hair and shows most of their ass cheeks? This looks really, really bad, especially when they fall in the sand and end up looking like a fat powdered donut.

Air rifle events. The announcers and the camera work suck. Badly. Actually saying it sucks badly is an insult to anything that really sucks badly.

Table tennis (don’t call it ping-pong, they hate that). Uh…okay, then.

I am tired of seeing the Japanese men swimming guys cheat on their breaststroke turns. Absolutely NO dolphin kicks. Someone, please, nail these cheaters! Is it really a new world record if it’s done with cheating??

If there is any more glitter eye shadow on the eyelids of the womens’ (girls mostly) gymnastics team, they won’t be able to open their own eyes to see what they are doing. This much glitter was tacky in the 1960’s when it was painted on motorcycle helmets and called metal flake and it’s just as tacky looking now. Step away from the make-up case!

Kayaking. No, I’ve never kayaked, probably never will kayak, never even touched a kayak, but doesn’t the water they are kayaking in just look deliciously cool and inviting? Direct from the Aegean Sea, they say it is, and salt water at that. Nice!

And, really, it’s too bad there isn’t a sport of just plain cuteness. We all know of past athletes that would have scored well. Gymnastics cuties, a swimmer here and there, but if there was an animal cuteness category, this has got to be it. This little blue-eyed cutie has been hanging out in our neighborhood since it was allegedly “dumped” up the street about a month ago (there were witnesses allegedly) and it has taken to spending a couple of afternoons a week in our backyard. I haven’t been able to determine a sex yet but I do know for certain that it has been declawed, probably at a very young age because it knows it’s only defense is it’s teeth (and it does bite hard). I really don’t think it’s been able to catch any birds or mice. It’s not that fast yet or understands that birds and mice can be food. I’m assuming that if someone went to the expense of declawing, it’s probably been spayed or neutered too. Usually, I see it sleeping under our bushes when I go out and water the tree roses and twice in the past ten days or so, and ONLY because it is getting skinny, I’ve been giving it a half a handful of dry food. Looks to be about eight months old and if left outside, I guarantee it won’t make it through the fall/winter. The coyotes start stalking the neighborhood then and someone always loses a dog or cat or two, every year like clockwork.

August 18 2004

Watching the Olympics today, I think I’ve finally found my sports calling. Body-shape wise, that is. If you see the women’s shot put event, take a good look at all the competitors. While I’m certainly not as tall as most of them, the body style is the same. They could be my sisters, and if for no other reason than that not a single one of us look good in spandex.

As a pointless side note: In my younger years, I was a decent swimmer and at the age of fourteen, was approached once by a then-famous coach to train for a potential shot at making the U.S. swim team for what would have been the 1976/1980 Olympic games. Unfortunately, my mother said, “Absolutely not!” because as she stated and pointed at me, “I’m not getting up at 4 a.m. every morning just to take HER to swim practice!”

Thus, ended my shot at fifteen minutes of fame. (Five years later, my mother did the exact same thing to my sister who was approached with a modeling contract.) As it was, if I had been able to train, I probably wouldn’t have made the 1976 games and would be expected to swim at the 1980 games – the games that the U.S. boycotted, so the point would have been moot anyway. For the 1984 games, I would have been too old; ancient in competitive swim circles and probably wouldn’t have made the cut. The politically-motivated U.S. boycott of the 1980 Olympic games crushed and derailed a LOT of people for life. Is it any wonder I strive for perfection in car shows now?

This morning’s conference calls, run mostly by MsNoManagementSkills, were torture. Every week, she announces who is going on vacation and, sometimes why, in a negative tone. Since hardly anyone is allowed to take much in the way of vacation time around here because we seem to always be in crunch-time, somehow she was able to get about ten days off between now and the end of September. Of course, she had to go on and on and ON about how she was getting married next month (but strangely not taking a honeymoon or any honeymoon time off as of yet), at which everyone was asking for her address so they could send her something. Good grief! Send her something for her divorce of which the ink is barely dry. Or better yet, don’t send her anything at all. She took everything. She has everything. Her “mommy” buys her everything else.

But better the going on and on was about her and not me. She’s all about herself and no one else if you can’t tell by now. She’s not a big one for making a big deal out of anyone else’s vacation time unless it’s for some reason that SHE doesn’t “approve” of and then she’ll go on and on and usually belittle that person publicly for it. I was dreading her announcing my upcoming time off for surgery but it became apparent in a later meeting that no one had yet told her. One point for me! I’m sure when I mentioned to MrSmartButFakingIt in that later call at which MsNoManagementSkills was present, that my pre-surgery ultrasound was scheduled for next Monday, she had to have been all ears and may have plied him for information by now. In between thoughts about white wedding dresses and flower arrangements, she probably thought for a nanosecond there that I was pregnant or something. As it is, I’m not volunteering any information to her. I’ll wait until she starts Instant Messaging me about details, if she ever does. Remember: She’s getting married again next month and ALL the world is ALL about her.

I almost have my car all ready for the trip to Tacoma this Friday. The interior is as done as it can be for now. The rest has to wait until show day. My engine bay is done. Tires are done. Two good coats of scratch and swirl-remover polish have been put on the paint and taken off. The ultra-shine coat of polish goes on later this afternoon and will come off tomorrow morning and depending on how I feel then, I may or may not apply a second ultra-shine coat.

For a show I know I’ll be attending, when the weather is certain to be bright, hot and sunny without a cloud in the sky, the week before, I’ll only polish my car with the scratch and swirl-remover polish because it gives my dark car paint a deep, smooth, nearly flawless shine in the bright sun. Bright sun brings out all the flaws, scratches and swirls marks in car paint, especially dark colored paint. When I know I’ll be parked in shade for a show (which is very, very rare) or if it’s certain the weather will be mostly cloudy or raining, the week before a show I’ll only use the ultra-shine polish because that makes the paint look like it’s made out of glass. So far, the weather channel online says Tacoma is expecting mostly cloudy skies and possible showers with temperatures around 75 degrees F. Good! WS is going with me this time and I don’t want him baking in the hot Tacoma mall parking lot, bored out of his head and listening to the rest of us sizzling in the sun.

But we all know how often the weather changes around here. So while I’ll be checking and rechecking Tacoma weather reports clear up until just before we leave, I’ll put on at least one coat of ultra-shine polish. I’ve also got to remember that the more coats I put on now, the longer over the winter off-show season months the car can go without any polishing or cleaning at all. This is a plus for WS who would inherit a really fine-looking car should anything not ideal happen with Emil.

(Yeah, I know that sounded bad. It’s not meant to. It’s just my morbid sense of humor kicking in. Humor is very stress-reliving and healing for me, even morbid humor. Really, I’m not expecting anything bad to happen and suspect I will breeze through Emil’s surgery and recovery.)

August 19 2004

Okay, so we brought that kitty inside Tuesday and have it isolated in our bedroom, away from the other pets. Can’t have it spreading anything bad if it has anything nasty. I’m pretty sure it is a neutered male and as cute as you think he looks here, lemme tell ya: The guy is ALL TEETH! Obviously, he was declawed too soon and has learned that his only defense is to bite HARD. While up to last night, he had come close to breaking the skin on my hands and fingers, he finally nailed me a good one on my forearm and I bled like a stuck pig. I swear, this estimated eight or nine month old is part pit bull. What a set of jaws! And angry? Oh yeah. He’s pissed at everything, probably another thing related to being de-clawed, then tossed out into the cruel world. Kind of reminds me of someone else I know.

The nameless kitty goes to our vet late this afternoon for testing, flea treatment since I can’t get anywhere near him with a flea comb, microchip reading if he has one, vaccines and lodging until late next Monday afternoon. I’ll be doing a lot of reading up on bad biting habits and hopefully, we can work on gaining his trust enough for him to stop. It’ll be a long, patience-laden journey. Sometimes, angry animals always stay angry animals. But sometimes, a light bulb flashes on for them and they realize we can be their best buddies.

In the meantime, we’re tossing around names and I think it’s between Max (or Maxx) just because he kind of looks and acts like a Max, or Bruce after the teeth-laden mechanical shark in the movie “Jaws”, also the teeth-laden shark Bruce in “Finding Nemo”, one of our favorite movies. “People are friends, NOT food!” is our latest mantra. Quint might be a good name, after the shark fisherman in the movie “Jaws” and that’s about the time we usually go off on the whole “bite” and “biting” tangent and start tossing out names like “Nip”, “Rip”, “Chomp” and “Spike”. Do you see a pattern here? If not, I can post a picture of the band-aid and puncture on my arm if you think it will help.

Listening (and reading) to how much MsNoManagementSkills was going on and on yesterday about her taking this time off and that time off because her upcoming marriage is just so important and “no one had better screw anything up” made me come to a decision: Why am I killing myself? Why am I so determined to work so hard this last month before surgery with a 20 pound tumor growing in me next to her who has made every work week a short one for over five and a half years? What screwed up sense of over-responsibility do I have anyway? Working extra hours every week has never gotten me anything special or even a pay raise. She still makes more than me and always will because The Company CEO has always said she will as the first officially hired employee of The Company. Even while I was having my bad back pain last month, I still busted my ass to make up all but four hours of the time I missed at work. Can’t I just take it easy for once? Can’t I allow myself to take the same advantage as MsNoManagementSkills does day after day and week after week?

Hell yes, I can, and I just might start next week. Or maybe even this week. Today, even. Right after I give myself permission to do so…

August 20, 2004

Everything and everyone is being so frustrating today. This can’t be a good sign. I was really looking forward to this weekend’s car show trip. In fact, we’re supposed to leave here in a few hours for Tacoma, but now I’m questioning everything and my self-esteem is back wallowing in the gutter right next to the cigarette butts, tire tread bits and the syringes and used condoms no one wants to acknowledge are there.

Sometimes, it’s nice to have someone along side that knows exactly what I’m talking about, and since yesterday, it’s all been about people choosing purposely to not listen to a single word I’m saying. I mean, who am I but a fat, middle-aged woman who couldn’t possibly know one iota of anything on any subject? But when that person by my side starts doing it too, well, it’s just too much to deal with and. I mean, what’s the point of going out of town to participate in a car show when we’re both stressed, depressed and our minds will just be on something other than getting away? I’m questioning the whole point now again.

I’ll be the first to admit that I look forward to out-of-town car shows because I view them as mini-vacations. Yes, I know, I worry about how I’ll do in the show and there’s all that cleaning but I’m getting out of the house, out of town and somewhere other than right here. And because we don’t take real vacations, mostly because our jobs won’t align up enough to allow us to and we REFUSE to go into further debt to take one (which is what it would take), an overnighter car show trip with a cheap motel works as one for me. WS doesn’t see it this way and when he’s as stressed as he is now, it’s usually best that I go alone. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think I have a prayer’s chance in hell of winning anything in the class WS signed me up for and I don’t know that I have the energy or will to detail my car enough to enter the only other class I could enter. At this point, to me at least, the whole weekend may well just turn out to be wash, especially if WS is in a bad or depressed or stressed or “insert your adjective of choice here” mood.

I had looked forward to him going with me, but I don’t think it was meant to be. He’s dealing with work at both jobs, our pet vet, my upcoming surgery not to mention upcoming doctor visits that will require him to take off work in order to take me to and I know for a fact that he is scared shitless about this whole thing even though he won’t admit it, my ultrasound on Monday, pets to pick up from lodging Monday afternoon, his car goes in for service next week and on and on. Oh, and his birthday is this coming Sunday and he has deftly avoided answering me every single time I have asked what he would like or would like to do for it. Every.Single.Time.

I’m dealing with people at my job being very, very snotty and unprofessional, mostly Ego, but MsNoManagementSkills is in there as well and is overdue for a slew of her ball-busting emails, reminding everyone that she’s taking off days here and there and everyone had better bust their nuts to get the work done or else. Oops. Typed too soon. Here come her morale-racking emails now.

Let’s move on to something else, shall we? Please?

So, next Monday, I go early in the morning for Emil’s ultrasound. I have begged WS to allow me to speak my mind during the process and ask the technicians how many fingers and toes they can see. He says the technicians probably wouldn’t see much in the way of humor around it and that I might upset them. Upset them? Who exactly is carrying around a twenty pound tumor anyway? Jeesh.

I’ve also promised not to ask to see Emil after it’s removal like I insisted upon after having a lump removed from my left breast back in 1996. That bit of me-flesh at about two inches by two inches in size looked EXACTLY like a piece of uncooked chicken fat and I speculated out loud to the nurses at the time (because I was under a localized anesthesia and wide awake when they removed it) that they had better make sure it was placed in a well marked jar and not mistakenly put into a Ziplock bag and tossed in the employee break room refrigerator for later grilling. As I recall, they didn’t find that funny in the least either. How can anyone work in a hospital without some kind of sense of humor? I know people die on them every day, but c’mon. When you run into someone like me who is willing to make fun of themselves, will a brief flicker of a smile hurt? I think not!

So I’ve decided to feel the situation out next Monday and only joke around if I think they can “handle” it. Of course, the first time anyone pats me on the belly and gleefully asks when I’m due, all promises and bets are off.

August 22 2004

Here’s a quick quiz for ya:

What do you think Blogeois has done since last Friday?

a) Stuck around work and worked a full eight-hour day Friday because she’s a good do-bee and ultra responsible.
b) Worked a few hours early in the morning and then, worked the remaining eight hours later in the day Friday because she’s a good do-bee and ultra responsible.
c) Worked a few hours, then took off for Tacoma with WS and made WS find her an Internet connection so she could remotely finish her eight hour work day Friday because she’s a good do-bee and ultra responsible.
d) Worked a few hours Friday, took off for Tacoma, participated in the car show, then beat cheeks home so she could get in her remaining hours before the end of the day Saturday because she’s a good do-bee and ultra responsible.
e) Worked a few hours Friday, then said, “Screw this!” and took off for Tacoma, participated in the car show Saturday, never thinking another thought about work for the entire weekend because she could care less.
f) Worked a few hours Friday, then said, “Screw this!” and took off for Tacoma, participated in the car show Saturday, leisurely returned home Sunday and called in sick to work on Monday.
g) Worked a few hours Friday, then said, “Screw this!” and took off for Tacoma, participated in the car show Saturday, leisurely returned home Sunday, called in sick to work on Monday and will work LONG hours for the entire rest of the week to make up for taking a sick day on Monday.
h) None of the above.
i) All of the above.
j) Uh…what was the first one again?

If you chose C, you would have been reading here long enough to know that I’m a good do-bee and ultra responsible. But that was before Emil. So if you decided to take a chance and chose F, you will have chosen wisely. Congratulations. Let’s celebrate taking a sick day off together and not worrying or trying to make up the hours by the end of the week. Woot!

The weekend update is as follows:

Friday – Well, we had to know it was going to happen. With all the other stresses of the day Friday, mere minutes before we left town for Tacoma, Aunt Flo decided to make her long-overdue presence known. And that has delayed Emil’s ultrasound for five-to-ten days further. Now, the OFFICIAL ultrasound has been rescheduled for August 31st at 10:30 am.

Friday night, we ended up calling the motel’s front desk to report we were watching a group of teenagers checking out cars, including ours which one of them hit hard with their car door, and urinating in the parking lot. The motel night manager discovered the kids were registered guests who admitted nothing except the urinating part. The manager claimed to us she could do nothing. Eventually, the teens sped away, leaving one of the vehicles, the one parked ridiculously close to our car. We went out and took pictures of their vehicle including their license plate just in case any damage was found. We couldn’t see any damage in the dark parking lot.

Saturday – The car show was held down the hill and right across the street from the motel we stayed at. We didn’t find any real damage from having it hit with a car door so that was good. We cleaned and detailed nearly every square inch of the car but about fifteen minutes before judging began, Aunt Flo became……difficult. To be honest, she gushed. And gushed and by the time I was able to get WS’s attention from someone who was positively talking his ear off, I knew I was in trouble and HAD to get back to the motel.

I buttoned my long blouse all the way down, held my purse directly in front of my shorts and speed-walked across the parking lot, across the street and up that long, long hill to the motel. By the time I was halfway up the hill, I was leaking badly and it was running down the inside of my legs and making my thongs squish loudly. Luckily, no one seemed to be around as I raced through the front doors, around the corner and into an elevator for the drippy trip up to our fourth-floor room. Once up there, only a cleaning cart was in the hall and no one was around.

A half an hour later, I was clean and in fresh clothes, our motel bathroom floor was clean, my period-stained clothes were soaking, and I had a new timeline for how often I would need to visit a restroom to keep up with Aunt Flo’s over-abundance of womanly enthusiasm.

Lucky for me, WS is a master of cleaning and detailing my car himself and was able to get our cleaning supplies put away before judging began and when I was able to get back to him and the show, the car looked sweet and he looked relaxed, sitting in his big folding chair, reading about tires in a magazine we got in our car show packet bag.

We ended up winning two trophies, first in our entered class and best engine overall. Now, we could relax. We’ve beaten our own record of wins from last year’s show season.

Sunday – I don’t know what it is about driving home after a show that’s out of town, but I always feel like I’ve got bad jet lag. Maybe I should slow down and actually do the speed limit? I couldn’t help but fall into bed after unloading the car and getting a first load of laundry going. About five hours later, we were trying to come up with something, anything, good to eat out of what we have in the house. This made me feel like crap because it was WS’s birthday. Some birthday for him, I thought. But he assures me that just having rainy weather on his birthday makes his day. He’s too nice.

Monday – Yep, I’ve called in sick, just because. After going into work for a couple of hours, WS came home sick too. Are we really sick? Now, let me ask you….are you always sick when you call in to work sick?

August 24 2004

I almost took today off too, but after taking yesterday off, my own guilt started to get to me. Oh sure, I lounged around in bed until noon before logging into work, but my original plan was to take the day off. Then, I told myself, maybe just half a day off. That meant I’d be done by 4 pm. But here it is, after 5 pm, and I’m still logged in. With dinner coming up and the local news on TV followed by the Olympics, 8 pm will come quickly. I can do this. Besides, there’s always next week when I finally, FINALLY get Emil’s ultrasound out of the way. Who knows? I might really need next Monday off after that!

Today is a sad day around here, but we’re trying not to dwell too much on it. We had to give up one of our pets to one of our vets, who felt that she could rehabilitate him in lieu of having him put to sleep. This particular pet has always been a very, very large boy (about 35 lbs when he should be no more than 13 at the most) and despite being on a rigid and the strictest of diets for close to four years, he hasn’t lost a pound and started once again urinating on everything. We’ve been going through this will him on and off over the past six or seven years but this time, it was worse than ever. Our usual routine is to take him in to the vet so they can run all the tests to see if anything medical was going on, which always turned out to never be the case, and then we bring him back home and he would stop peeing on everything within a few weeks. Short of isolating him from all other pets for up to a year which previously caused him massive depression, and monitoring every single morsel of his diet pet food, the only other option we were ever offered before was to have him put to sleep, which we didn’t want to do.

Now, the vet who offered that option is no longer with our vet care business but they have a new one who does not believe in putting down animals. Instead, she offered to take our pet and make him a part of her family permanently and hopes to get his weight down and his spirits up, but we had to sign a relinquish form. Talk about making a person feel like a bad parent! WS handled the whole thing and said after signing the form, he had a final chat with our pet and cried most of the way home.

In other pet news, we’ve decided to try to intergrate into our family the de-clawed kitten we took pity on last week. We’ve officially gone with Max as a name but Bruce, Jaws and Spike will no doubt be part of his middle name. After spending the night in our bedroom, this morning he wanted to go out into the rest of the house and decided that behind the washer wasn’t too bad a spot to hide for several hours. I was able to pet him on his back a couple of times, but then he turned his head quickly and tried to bite my hand again. When I moved my hand away and said “NO” he ran up and bit my calf instead. Okay, so this is how it’s going to be. Our oldest cat was exactly the same way when we rescued him about fourteen years ago and I still bear his scars. Now he’s the sweetest cat in the house. Time can heal most things. Especially things with teeth.

August 25 2004

I’ve found that Emil’s presence is having mixed effects on people who have learned of him. Last weekend at the car show I attended, I was pretty surprised at the reactions of people I’ve known for a while.

For example, Drill Sergeant Dave, who wanted 100% of our support when he told us back in January that he was diagnosed with Diabetes and we gladly gave it, doesn’t really want to hear about Emil at all and is clearly uncomfortable. Same thing with the Not-Nice Competition Boy. The Not-Nice Competition Boy’s wife is very skeptical that Emil exists at all as are many of the members of the car club we used to belong to. They seem to think that if I have this twenty-pound tumor, I wouldn’t be walking around and the doctors wouldn’t be taking so long to do surgery to get it out, therefore, I’m fibbing. Yeah, okay, whatever. These people live for making up gossip anyway.

Now, Drill Sergeant Dave’s ex-wife seems to have completely forgotten that I told her at all, as well as told her and the Nice Competition Boy that all my weekends from here on out ‘til surgery day were full of car shows and pre-surgery preparations. They keep calling here each weekend asking if we want to go out to dinner with them. Gee, would love to, but I honestly do not have a spare minute, as I told you weeks ago, remember? Apparently not.

On the other hand, my main competitor from last year, a truly nice guy both WS and I really like a lot and could never, ever be mad at even if we lost to him constantly, really wanted to know what my medical mystery was but kept saying he didn’t want to pry in that way that really says he wants to know but only if I want to tell him. After hearing that for the sixth time, I finally told him briefly, not dwelling on any real details, and he promptly started crying openly. Apologizing, he walked away and avoided me for the rest of the evening. I have to admit this has affected me negatively and I’m a bit depressed about it.

A couple of weeks ago as you might remember, I told MrSmartButFakingIt and The Company CEO. The CEO sent me the obligatory “I’m so terribly sorry” letter that was nice but sounded more like they were apologizing to WS for something (having a defective spouse maybe?) and MrSmartButFakingIt sounded more like he was going to faint over the phone than that he was really comprehending what I was telling him.

At this point, I’ve decided to keep it all to myself from now on, with the exception of here (Lucky you!). WS really hasn’t shared with me his take on how people he’s told have reacted.

I know this is a serious thing and all, but I really don’t think it’s all that serious. It’s not like a death sentence or anything and I’m anything but a weakling who could faint at the sight of a ragged hangnail. Yes, I know, there are risks to surgery and post-surgery. There are risks to staying in a hospital, surgery or not. There are risks in driving to the hospital and you know, I take a risk every time I walk out to get the mail (lately, the biggest risk is that I’ll find another kitten to take pity on). But I can’t and won’t let the thought of Emil and his removal paralyze me. I’ll continue to joke around and poke fun at myself as I always do, just more quietly now, and I think that will help me heal nicely. I just wish it could help others too if only they could see it my way.

Thank you, readers, for your previous comments about Emil. Right now, I feel only you really understand.

August 26 2004

We have been loving this weather! Rain, sprinkles, drizzle and then, more rain. So far, we’ve got the fifth wettest August in recorded history and boy, did we ever need it. Tomorrow, summer returns and it’s supposed to be hot and muggy but let’s not think about that right now. I’m planning on doing a bit of yard work over the weekend to clean up some of the flowering plants that are almost over for the year. The Monarias are pretty much done, the Russian sage is everywhere but where it’s supposed to be and the honey bees are just about finished with it, all the daylilies are done and thank goodness too, since I haven’t divided them in a couple of years and they all have spread way too much. A few evergreen bushes and trees need trimming for the upcoming winter and we’ve still got to dig out those huge dogwoods before they take over the quince tree again. And speaking of the quince tree, we’re going to have quinces coming out of our ears this fall. Just look at them! And I might even do something with them this time around, like slice them, cook them in a syrup for an hour or so and just eat them. They are supposed to be very high in vitamin C. That is, if it isn’t all cooked out of ‘em. There just isn’t any way to eat them raw. They are kind of like cranberries and rubbarb that way and need to be cooked to be eaten. Last year, I cooked a couple down to pulp, then strained it and was planning to use it as a glaze over our thanksgiving turkey, but then we didn’t have turkey after all probably because I hate turkey and to be honest, I can’t even remember what we had but I can remember that the quince glaze ended up forgotten in the freezer and then, eventually, months and months later, out in the trash. So sad for such a beautiful fruit. I’m not going to waste them again.

Most of our dwarf crape myrtles are finally blooming. I love this plant and only wish it were evergreen. The one at the base of the bird feeders is covered in buds but none are open yet. You might be able to see it on the web cam when it finally does bloom. It’s a bright magenta pink. Or at least, I think it is. For whatever reason, it didn’t bloom at all last year. Oh yeah, I remember now. We ran the sprinklers the night before a record high temperature day and too much water stayed on the leaves and buds from overnight and the next day, the whole plant burnt to a crisp. I am surprised that it came back at all but there it is, nearly twice as big as it’s supposed to be and just covered in buds.

Okay, tell me again why I thought having those field mice, Ham and Cheese, live around our fountain was okay? Oh, that’s right. Because I thought they were cute. What a friggin’ idiot I am. While I can live with the occasional mouse hole dug out here and there because when the winter rains come, most of them will be washed away or filled up with bark dust, I know they are squirreling away some of our squirrel’s peanuts in the shell. And just where are they storing these peanuts in the shell? In our fountain water flow valve boxes. And when it rains a lot like it has been for a few days, those peanuts in their shells swell up and effectively turn the water flow pillar valves, turning off the water to the pillars and we end up with a fountain that’s barely running.

Or least, that’s my theory. I’m waiting for the rain to let up a bit before I go out there, take all the rocks off the top of the valve boxes, remove the slate squares that’s under the rocks, clear away the kinikinick branches that are spread over all that and slowly pry up the water valve covers. With gloves on and using a long, long prying stick.

Have you ever read Stephen King’s “Graveyard Shift”? where the workers have to clean out the basements and the sub-basements and the sub-sub-basements and they find all those rats, then start finding huge, blind, hairless pink rats and finally find the monsterously huge slug-like queen rat that’s popping out more rats and eating big things like humans?

Yeah, well, I did and I’m not going out there without a slew of defense weapons just in case. I’m sure I’ll just find a mouse nest or two and a hundred or so peanuts in the shell crammed in there and while wearing a dust mask just in case hanta-virus is around, I’ll carefully clean each box out, turn the valves back to where they should be and everything will be just peachy again.

Which reminds me of a story of a temporary neighbor we used to have at the old rental house we used to live in. The house next to us had a horrible history of renters that came and went and I don’t think anyone lived there longer than eight or nine months straight. So, this one family created so much garbage, they didn’t want to pay for the extra cans to be picked up and started dumping their trash in their back yard, along the very back fence. Which wasn’t too bad to look at because they also didn’t mow their grass and it was already well over two feet tall. Out of sight, out of mind.

One month and out of the blue, the landlord company came by, which surprised everyone because no one could remember when the last time that ever happened, and the trash-dumping neighbors were told to mow the grass in their back yard or else.

An hour or so later, some scraggly, biker-looking guy finally got an ancient, badly smoking, gas lawn mower running and started mowing the grass. Or at least he tried to. He’d get one row done and have to take a breather. By now, the grass was well over three feet tall and very, very thick. Especially back where they had been dumping the trash.

All this time, I was out in our back yard, weeding our vegetable garden and glancing over through the three-foot high, chicken-wire fence that separated all the yards in the neighborhood and watching the guy trying to mow his jungle. Push, push, push, he’d laboriously push the mower a few feet and then, he’d have to stop to have a beer and a cigarette.

About an hour later, he finally got to the back of his yard where all that garbage had been dumped for all those months and I think he must have thought he’d just mow right over it. I heard the mower labor to keep running for a minute and just as I looked up, the guy let out a LOUD squeal, just like a little girl discovering a life-size Barbie under the tree on Christmas morning, and he let go of the mower, which promptly died. Then, he started hopping around, his knees almost touching his bearded chin and ran back into his house, nearly taking out the screen door in the process.

At the same time that he was hopping around and squealing, I saw at least a dozen large, maybe 6 to 8 pound, small cat-size, brown rats also hopping around in the tall grass, trying to get away from that mower and between laughing my ass off at the sight of this scraggly, biker-looking guy squealing like a little girl and running through his screen door and being horrified that all those rats could hop easily over our shared wire fence and eat our vegetables amongst which I was then standing, I was in tears. I’m not generally afraid of rats or rodents of any kind but I am aware of the diseases they can carry and I certainly didn’t want to be out there weeding, with these things running around my ankles.

So, I went inside our house, not quickly, and watched out the back kitchen window for a while until things settled down. About an hour later, I went out there and there was no sign of any rats, the lawn mower was still over there, silent and partially on it’s side and no scraggly guy in sight.

Things stayed that way for a week. Then two weeks. Then, in the middle of the night as so often happened, the neighbors packed up and moved away. A day later, a neighbor from down the street came and took the mower which had been left, still lying in the back yard. One by one, other scavenger neighbors came and took things that had been left: a trash can, an old couch, some 55-gallon drum cans in the garage, and some dug up a few of the bushes that had originally been planted there. Within the month, the landlord company sent out a labor crew who cleaned up the remaining garbage, which strangely still had no sign of rats around it, cut the grass and repainted the house. A week later, new renters moved in and promptly trashed the place.

But that’s another story for another time. Thanks again for reading.

August 27 2004

So, determined I was to go out back
And find the reason why our fountain water was slack
I suspected those field mice, Ham & Cheese
Whom I mistakenly allowed to roam as they pleased.

I figured they had stuffed the valves boxes with nuts
And the rain had swollen them and the water valves shut.

So I went out there, dressed to the nines,
Wearing long pants, long sleeves with a big pitchfork with tines.
A dust mask, thick gloves and a long, pointy stick
Work boots, a shovel and a bucket ought to do the trick.

I pulled away the branches of a ground cover I love.
Tossed the rocks in the bucket which scared off some doves
Who were innocently feeding across the yard
“They’ll be back,” I said, “this won’t be hard.”

Removing the slate tiles, all that was left was to pry
Up the lid of the valve box, easy as pie.
And scurrying to the side was a light gray mouse,
Away from what looked like a warm little house.

Built into the mountain of dirt she had brought in
That buried those valves tight and filled to the brim,
A small little nest, no bigger than your hand
Was some leaves and some bark upon a bit of soft sand.

And nestled, sleeping within, what did I spy?
But seven, no eight baby mice with unopened eyes.
With fawn-colored fur and mere flaps for ears,
The small mother continuing to stand her ground near.

So I’ve decided the fountain doesn’t need fixing right away,
And I’m looking online for something different today.
A hawk or an owl or some hunting kind of bird,
Something to just kind of “thin out” the herd.

I really don’t want to cause the mice any pain,
Maybe I could find something a little more humane.
Don’t they make birth control pills for mice now-a-days?
And how long does it take for mice to leave home anyways?

August 30, 2004

We busted our butts over the weekend but wow, what a difference in both our front and back yards. Plus, WS finally started getting our landscape lighting installed. I can’t express how happy and excited I am about getting the lighting put in. Yeah, I know, I’m odd. Most women want diamonds, I want landscape lighting, patio furniture and more chrome car parts.

Late Friday afternoon, we completely trimmed, shaped, hacked down and cleaned up our front yard. I left the ragged-looking pansies in our annual color bed though because I don’t know what else to put there that can handle the heat we’re still going to get, plus be able to go into the fall months without needing any coddling or maintenance while I’m off my feet next month through October. I can’t have anything there that WS will need to fuss with because he’ll have enough on his hands.

Saturday, we did grocery shopping in the morning and by 2:00 pm, WS was tearing into our large fountain pump area to try to figure out why the fountain isn’t pumping water like it used to. It turns out it’s NOT the mice. It’s the pump that’s located in a completely different area and submerged in over four feet of mucky water. We’re both pretty certain it’s the mucky water that’s the cause of the problem. Mucky really isn’t the right word. Sediment-filled is better. The fountain and that pump has been running 24/7/365 for over three years straight now. It’s bound to have sediment in it.

So, he was able to empty all but the last foot or so of water (probably 200 gallons or so left) and unfortunately, that’s the part that had the most sediment in it. Since there was no way we could get the rest of the water out, we figured that refilling the whole thing at that point would dilute the sediment, the pump would clear itself out and everything would run great again.

No dice. The pump is barely working at all now and the fountain just trickles. It’s time to call for professional help and pay whatever it takes to fix it. Ugh. Not the best of timing, but we absolutely love the fountain as does all the wildlife we’ve worked for years to bring back to this little housing development. We can’t give up on it now.

Saturday evening, we worked on trimming and hacking down way-overgrown stuff in the back yard and continued Sunday afternoon and evening too. WS hooked up one of the big landscape light transformers and about half of the tree up-lights we want back there. You might have seen us on the web cam, scurrying back and forth, whacking at this bush and that, hauling garbage bag after garbage bag filled to the brim with branches, stems, spent flowers and leaves. By the end of the weekend, we were looking at about a dozen filled, 39-gallon trash bags. The trash company would kill us if we put them all out at the curb at once, so we’ve only put out four plus our regular can and we’ll work on getting the rest out over the next couple of weeks. At least it’s only yard debris and not kitchen garbage like The Dimmers used to do. I don’t know what’s up with them exactly, but they’ve been putting out their garbage for pick up just like everyone else for almost a month now. Of course, it’s too late. Their mice have moved into our yard.

So, on that to-do list I made up about a month ago of stuff that I need to get finished before surgery, we’ve got about half of it done. Go us!

Tomorrow morning is Emil’s ultrasound finally. I’ve got my 32-ounces of water (four cups) all measured out and I know about what time to get up so I can urinate one last time before drinking all that water and beating cheeks to the ultrasound place. I’ve considered taking the rest of the day off from work but depending on the ultrasound results, I won’t decide that until then. I’ll probably just work like usual. Next Monday is a paid holiday here and knowing that I have a three-day weekend coming up, can keep me going this week.

And finally, it’s an ex-husband’s birthday today. He’s 50 now and if my sister would come out of her fog long enough to pay attention, I’d be willing to bet she’d be horrified. She’s another one who is perpetually mortified by age and aging, just like MsNoManagementSkills whom recently posted in her Online Journal about how old some of the Olympic athletic women were “34? OMG!!! SO OLD!!!”. I can’t help but really dislike people like this.

August 31 2004

Let’s hear it for the end of August! C’mon fall weather!

Yeah, I know. It’s a good month away but I can dream. So, I’m firmly in the No-Peeing time frame and just about ready to down the 32-ounces of water for Emil’s ultrasound today. Around quarter to ten, we’ll head off for the doctor’s office and I swear, I SWEAR, that if they make me sit there with a full bladder that they made me have for longer than ten minutes, well…let’s just say I won’t be happy.

Apparently, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Big surprise there. It started with MsNoManagementSkills scheduling a meeting today during my doctor’s appointment and having some of her work pawned off on me. Top that with some communication breakdowns with WS and way too much pet fur in this house right now and I’m downright snappish.

I’ll update here as soon as I get back and hopefully, my doctor will have some information for us. In the meantime, pray for those ultrasound technicians. They just may need it.

UPDATE: Okay, what an emotionally exhausting day. You all know by now that I wasn’t’ in the best mood this morning and that must have helped WS get pissed off at the world as well. Or maybe it was that EVERY.SINGLE.STREET surrounding our development is under some kind of major road construction and we couldn’t find a way out to get to the doctor’s office without having to do some serious 4-wheeling in WS’s little sports-type car, and me all the way, trying not to pee my shorts. Too fun!

We finally get there and mercifully, they called me within two minutes. WS went in with me and I get all situated on the table with the warm goo on my abdomen when the ultrasound technician starts pressing the ultrasound thingie (highly technical medical term there) around my bladder. At that point, I was praying to the urinary gods to get me through this. At one point, I think I asked the technician if there was plastic sheeting on the floor just in case.

She, the technician, kept rubbing and pressing the ultrasound thing around and around and got great pictures of Emil, but then found what may be his much-smaller twin, Hubert, pronounced “Oo-bear”. Hooray for those of us who, when we do things, we do them really well!

I might have multiple tumors, but because Emil is so very, very big, he was blocking most of the view of everything else, including whether or not he is in my uterus and the view of my ovaries. It became apparent quickly that she hadn’t seen anything quite like this before. At least she didn’t see either Emil or Hubert sucking their thumbs or anything like all the posters on the walls in that room featured.

That’s when the technical left (and oh god, I had to pee) and brought in the attending doctor, who had also never seen anything like Emil before. In fact, they told me I was definitely “the case of the week.” Hooray again. You know me if you’ve been reading here long. When I do something, I make darn sure I do it better than anyone else.

Finally, they let me pee…but that was so they could stick the dildo shaped vaginal ultrasound instrument up there in hopes of getting a better view. Emil wasn’t having any of that and continued to block the view of everything. What a camera hog he was! It looks like he is taking up my entire left side abdomen and groin area, pushing everything else off to my lower right side groin area. They asked if my pants were getting tight. Ha! They have no idea and I told them about not being able to lose any weight on Atkins for a year now. They got a kick out of that.

So, that was the end of the exam, and basically, more questions have been raised than were answered.

a) Yes, Emil exists and is large. Damn large. But exactly how large is anyone’s guess right now.
b) It is likely there is a second, much-smaller tumor, hereby named Hubert but there could be more.
c) It is more likely that they or all are fibroid tumors, although that has yet to be 100% positive. Because I’m not showing obvious signs of having anything cancerous, they are fairly certain it is fibroids.
d) Where exactly Emil is located is anyone’s guess. Let’s just agree it’s around my uterus as to not scare anyone.
e) A MRI would give them more information than today’s ultrasound did but that is up to the surgeon to request.
f) It is unlikely that the surgery date will be changed but that is up to the surgeon upon ultrasound review.

In the end, I didn’t pee on anyone but spend a luxurious amount of time in their tiny, sterile, cramped bathroom and could care less if I made anyone wait for me. To say I loved that toilet would be an understatement. Also, upon surgery on September 23rd (provided they don’t change it), I’ve decided to let them take everything out. I don’t want to go through this again and I’ve never liked my ovaries anyway. Take it all. Just let me know if you plan on keeping Emil pickled in a jar somewhere.

So, now the wait begins for the doctor to call me back and give me his take on things. After getting home today, all we wanted to do was take a nap and so, we did. And now, we’re working late into the night to make up for it. In the meantime, WS ordered the reading lamp we’ve decided on so I can read in bed while I’m recovering. We’ve nearly finished all the yard work I wanted to get done before surgery and I’ve got definitely one, maybe two car shows left before the 23rd surgery date. Let’s see how much more I can cram in before Emil and Hubert’s coming out party!

September 2 2004

Happy September! Today is the last day of the cool, cloudy and sprinkly weather we’ve enjoyed here for the last few days. Tomorrow ought to be a bit on the cool side as well, but mostly sunny. The hot weather is back for the weekend, just in time for me to participate in another car show. The good thing is that this show is only about twenty miles away and during the evening hours. It’s a drive-in cruise that I wanted to do last year but couldn’t. I think people will like my car, but I don’t think I’ll win anything. This one is just for show.

Our local news channels have been saying that fall is being predicted early for us here and you know how happy that makes me. They are saying to expect a windy first half of the fall/winter season and a warm but wet second half. No ice storms like last year. The coast ought to be great for storm watching and I wish I was there. It doesn’t sound like we’ll get any snow this year, but we’ll see. It could happen.

MsNoManagementSkills is about two weeks away from getting married to DorkMaster, who continues to show his true colors on his Online Journal with talk of his various chat room escapades. Once again, MsNoManagementSkills is choosing to look the other way at things her significant other is doing and probably shouldn’t be doing. Just like what happened with FatHead and his strip club/pool hall/gambling/treat-your-wife-like-crap habits. And remember, DorkMaster just wants someone else to take care of and pay for his kids.

This also means she isn’t paying too much attention to anything else and as far as we know, doesn’t know about my surgery and upcoming time off. She’s also going to Company headquarters for some reason the week before her latest wedding and I’m assuming it’s to “train” some new employees that MrSmartButFakingIt has hired lately. What this basically means is that she REALLY isn’t paying attention to anything going on around her unless it has anything to do with her trip or her wedding, and it also means we get new employees that are horribly “trained” and the rest of us will need to get back into the usual “cleaning up someone else’s messes” mentality that we’ve been spared for about a month now.

It could also mean that in about five years, she’ll see what the rest of us see in DorkMaster and divorce him too. Except this time around, she won’t get any money out of him because all DorkMaster wants to do is quit his job, play video games and chat on the Internet.

But it doesn’t matter to me at least. I’m taking time off in three weeks and I’ve discovered just recently that I’m not looking forward to having Emil and Hubert removed and recovering, but am looking forward to just being away from the daily soap opera that is my job. How sad is that?

But the really good thing about being away for that long is that when I come back to work, it’ll be closing in on the holiday season, when hardly anyone is paying attention to job stuff so lots of slacking goes on. Add WS and my anniversary in there, a few multiple day weekends off, my Company anniversary (of which I’m proud of even if it doesn’t mean anything to anyone else at The Company), and I think it’ll be around mid-January before the job soap opera gears up again and I start feeling work stress again. This very well could be like a three-month vacation and how could you not like that?

September 3 2004

Boy, if there was ever a day that a hawk could have a field day eating the mice that live in the rocks of the fountain, it would have been yesterday. Our fountain pump finally burnt out and quit Wednesday afternoon and the fountain is fairly dry. Only the middle and lower pools have water in them and we’ve tossed Mosquito Dunks tablets in them so we won’t help promote West Nile Virus.

Since the rest of the fountain and pond area is dry, the mice are scampering around, in and out of the rocks, making good targets of themselves. About mid-afternoon yesterday, I did hear a hawk screeching in the distance but none came to sit on our bird feeder like last fall and watch for a meal. I can assure you I won’t be chasing away any hawks that come to visit this fall, nor any neighborhood cats. At this point, I’d invite the coyotes that live in the cow pastures behind our development, though I’d prefer they not dig up too many plants in search of MouseMeals ™.

Also scampering around the nearly empty pond area are thrushes who are seeking out SnailSnacks ™. I don’t know where the tiny cone-shaped snails originally came from, but we do have a thriving colony. And this delights some of our ground feeding birds to no end.

Earlier this week, WS called a big, well-established landscape and water feature company in our area and this morning, they came out to look over our problem and probably to see how much they can suck out of our wallets. I had to have WS call for help with our fountain because I have proved over the years that I can’t pick a contractor or contracting company to save my life without major headaches.

This morning, the landscape and water feature guy came out, assured us that our pump burnt out (Gee, we could have saved $75 there) and said a bunch of mumbo-jumbo of which WS can’t seem to convey to me about what is going to happen to fix the problem the right way and when exactly it’s going to happen without us getting into a heated argument about details. I just want the fountain back and the wildlife does too I’m sure. And don’t get me wrong, I do want it done the right way this time since the original fountain guy cut some corners. I just hate, hate, HATE being in that holding pattern of “We have to wait until half the company gets back from vacation to get the estimate and time schedule written up” crap which could mean months or years away or even never as has happened with any and all contracting companies I’ve personally dealt with. I just do NOT have any patience for this because, for some reason, that always tells me that me and my money aren’t important enough to do it right NOW.

WS, of course, has patience coming out his wazoo…which is why he is dealing with this and I’m not.

And finally, an update on that little, de-clawed kitten that had been dumped in our neighborhood a month or so ago and that we finally took pity on knowing damned well no other neighbor would. Max, a.k.a. Jaws, passed all his vet tests, is home here and is eating well. He’s made great strides in learning not to bite and we’re able to pet him almost anytime we want. He’s become good friends with that other pet we adopted a couple of months ago (the one that also was de-clawed and had his tail docked) and they actually play on and off during the day. He’s still not too thrilled about any of the other pets we have but he’ll learn that here, everyone has their own space and everyone gets along for the most part. I think he’s becoming a good member of our family and has definitely raised the cuteness factor around here which currently is hovering at about an 8 out of a possible 10.

September 4 2004

Here it is, the beginning of another month and Mr. Dimmer next door has obviously refilled his medication prescriptions. How can we tell? Well, at the beginning of every month for the past four, he’s picked up all the hundreds of discarded children’s toys in his back yard, tossed them into a pile a back corner, then mowed and edged the grass.

You would think this would be great for us and the rest of the neighborhood. But then, you’d be wrong and now we come to the title of this journal entry:

Reasons to leave your home to fight the holiday traffic.

This month, after mowing the grass, he’s erected a huge camping tent close to our side of the fence and by huge, I do mean one of those “sleeps 10-12 or 60 to 62 if you are taking in illegal immigrants”. The thing is nearly the size of our office, which is far from miniscule. All I can figure now is that either a) he’s been kicked out of the house, b) they have decided they don’t want to pay for electric and running water anymore, or c) all their relatives from Tennessee, perhaps half the state, are coming in for the Labor Day weekend.

And joy of joys! There isn’t just one tent, there are multiple tents being set up! We’ll see how long these monstrosities remain up. Seeing how he routinely leaves the grass trimmer, lawn mower and let’s not forget about all those toys out there 365 days of the year, I suspect Tent City over there will be up until at least our first freeze, which should be around mid-to late October. Or maybe they’ll bring out propane heaters and Coleman lanterns?

Oops, typed too soon. Here comes a new firepit/grill setup. Can roasted marshmallows, S’mores and rounds of Koom-bye-ya be far behind? I can just hear it now. In the middle of the night, other neighbors yelling out their windows “One more verse of ‘99 bottles of beer on the wall’ and we call the cops! Now SHUT UP!”

Next out comes various blankets and tarps spread out on the remaining grass, a colorful myriad of folding chairs, a wobbly-looking table with a plasti-cised tablecloth tossed over it, an ice chest the size of a washing machine and the assortment of obligatory camping foods: Doritos, Dinty Moore stew, beef jerky, a package of hot dogs, boxes of Captain Crunch (WTF?), CSGBC (Cheap, Shitty, Generic-Brand Cookies or just Cheap Shitty Cookies for short) and a single can of Spam. Looks like they are stocking up for the long weekend. And Oh.My.God. They have those hats with the holders that hold two beer cans and drinking hoses out of them. AND THE KIDS ARE WEARING THEM! Yes! WITH BEER CANS IN THEM!

This is just so wrong on so many levels.

One thing we can all be certain of is that any grass living under any of these things will be dead within two days. Perhaps sooner if they plan on digging out a latrine too. I am so wishing our web cam could capture the view but it just doesn’t reach. Maybe I should finally invest in a wireless one. Our bedroom window would offer a great view. Uh, of The Dimmer’s back yard! Get your minds out of the gutter.

September 6 2004

We were absolute slugs yesterday after working in the back yard for a couple of hours. Honestly, we both had other things we wanted to accomplish but it was hot out there and it just sapped any remaining strength we had left. So….

Today I think we’re going to try to finish what we didn’t do yesterday. And topping the list is to find more of the landscaping lighting we want. Which means a trip to a different Lowe’s because the one by us (the only one in our town) takes forever to restock their shelves and we wiped them out a couple of months ago of the fixtures we chose. We might also check out Home Depot, but that place has just always depressed me. The two that are closest to us are horribly dirty and dusty inside and always smell like strong forklift exhaust.

One thing on my list of stuff to do is to drive around a couple of neighborhoods close by that were build by our same development company and see what any of the homes for sale there are going for, price-wise. Yesterday, we discovered that one of the homes up the street from us just went on the market and they are asking a whopping $300K for it. OUTRAGIOUS! None of our homes are worth that, but hey, if they can sell it for that, and The Ca-LEE-fornians across the street can sell theirs for $260K, all the more power to them. It’ll make our house worth a whole lot more than we thought it would be worth this soon after building it.

September 7 2004

Is the holiday weekend over already? Well, alrighty then. Let’s move on.

Still no word from my doctor on whether he’s reviewed Emil’s ultrasound from last week. No word on whether I will need a MRI or that they want to change the surgery date from the 23rd or even what hospital I’ll be in. No word back from the Big and Established Landscaping and Water Feature company either on how much it’ll cost us to get our fountain back to running and when they will start. No word yet on when they will come out and give us an estimate on regular yard service either. No word back from the professional Christmas lighting service yet. I think WS has an appointment set up with them and it’s likely that if so, it probably already conflicts with something else going on. Hair appointments on the 14th and Max back to the vet for booster shots on the 17th which conflicts with WS getting his car fixed the same day. So many unknowns.

My head is rapidly filling up with appointments and stuff to get done before my surgery which is probably why I had the weirdest dream last night. This dream was not influenced by any medication of any kind since I’ve been medication free for a while now, but probably was influenced by my subconscious feeling of losing control. Or at least, that’s what WS says.

I dreamt that I would wear a huge, over-sized, long black robe with a hood around the house all the time, and that it completely covered every square inch of myself but under it, I wore a dark blue, lacy teddy and the reason behind this was to feel attractive under what I wore to hide and be non-descript from the world. It was also to attract attention from WS, which hadn’t happened in months. Either way, while I loved the lacy teddy, it was too small (as usual) and wearing it, I looked like twenty pounds of dog doo crammed into a five-pound bag.

For some reason, WS invited someone into our house and I want to think it was just someone delivering pizza or something. It was odd that the guy was invited in because we rarely if ever invite anyone in our house normally. So, the guy comes in, sees me sitting there in my black, blobby robe, not showing an inch of skin or lacy under things and is instantly smitten. Every time WS turns away or walks out of the room, this guy is all over me, telling me I’m beautiful (HA!) and trying to kiss and touch me. And every time the guy does this, I freeze and can’t move and the room starts spinning like in the movies when two people kiss for the first time and the world spins around them. The very instant WS turns back around, or comes back into the room, the guy backs off and I snap out of it and regain my balance.

Then there was a part where I went outside alone to get some fresh air to get away from all this and it was raining and I was picking my way barefoot across a large, long, grassy yard filled with rocks and small boulders. And as I was stumbling over the long hem of my black robe with the big hood covering my eyes and the rocks in the yard, the guy ran out to me and tried to sweep me off my feet, both literally and figuratively.

Yes, I dream odd things. And in vivid color too, even though scientists claim no one dreams in color. Could my black robe be my black car and the teddy be my chrome and painted engine compartment? Could I be that attached to my car? I am mortified at how large my abdomen has become over the past month and how downright awful I look. Could anyone find someone this large crammed in a small teddy attractive? And was picking my way over the rocks something related to thinking that my surgery recovery is going to be rough?

Or….could it just be a random firing of brain cells bringing up random images with random thoughts while trying to connect enough of the dots to make a random story plot out of it all? If so, it would make for a very boring, made-for-TV, Lifetime TV for Women chick-flick.

Back to reality, I’m actually looking forward to the next couple of weeks of work because they are my last for about eight weeks due to my surgery. MsNoManagementSkills is going to Company headquarters this week and won’t be in my hair. Then, she’ll be all about getting married the following week and just a couple of days later, I go into surgery and won’t have to hear her for a while. I won’t even have to listen to anything about her for a few days at least while I’m in the hospital, doped up, even though by the end of the third day, I’ll probably be begging for any information about the outside world. I tend to lose my patience with hospital stays and I think that stems from a subconscious fear of catching some hospital staph infection or some such stupid thing and dying needlessly too soon. Yeah, I might watch too much TV or read too much about stuff like this, but if you don’t want me to lose patience, just get me out of there!

September 8 2004

The Tale of Two Neighborhoods.

I want to share the tale of two neighborhoods, one a new, fresh, friendly one and one that is rapidly declining into decay. This is the story of my neighborhood, where I live. This is my world.

Once upon a time, about six years ago, the land here was a cow pasture that had seen very heavy use for over a hundred years. There were very few trees on the few acre lot and it had just been sold to a rising housing development and construction company in our town. In the fall of 1998, the bulldozing had begun and soon, cement curbs and asphalt roads wound through the raw earth that was waiting for people to come, view the lots and buy up the land. In January 1999, we selected one of these lots which assured us our first place together to call our own and one that afforded us a view of three mountain tops at the time, a quicker work commute for WS at his REAL job and the chance to help create a completely new neighborhood that had no prior history of nasty or nosey neighbors and no history of crime or kids who grew into car prowlers, burglars or thugs.

The first houses were built in late spring and early summer. Ours was house #11 built and by the time we moved in, we had introduced ourselves to the other ten neighbors and to all the future neighbors who’s homes were yet to be built that year. Every one of us new neighbors loved this area and felt tremendously fortunate to live here and be a part of something new. Even though some of our neighbors seemed hell-bent on reproducing offspring at a positively alarming rate, we all seemed to love the land and with gentle messaging from the development company about this being their first “higher class” development, we all vowed to keep our new neighborhood neat, clean, well manicured and free from the problems of decline and decay that we all came from.

And for three years, it worked. Three wonderful years. We had neighborhood get-togethers and cared about and looked out for each other. People met each other at our community mailboxes and talked, sometimes for hours. We helped each other plant flowers and trees and shared bark dust mulch, this region’s answer to weed control and instant beautification of flowerbeds. Everyone had pride and it showed.

Then, people to our immediate west bought the lot, built their house and moved in. This was DrunkTank Willie, his wife Leona and his two, tiny daughters. Within months, all neighborhood dynamics changed. DrunkTank Willie was, well, quite frankly, a drunk and a foul-mouthed drunk at that. Within the year, people who genuinely liked each other previously, no longer talked and avoided any contact. DrunkTank Willie had wasted no time introducing himself by throwing parties. Wild parties. Parties that featured lots of cheap alcohol, obnoxiously loud music, chest and ass grabbing, public urination and vomiting, spousal abuse and the occasional fist fight and always ended with wildly spread accusations, couples in tears and near divorce and DrunkTank Willie passed out on the floor or in his bathtub with a smile on his face.

A year later, there was an accident with major damage done to another neighbor’s car, lots of broken bones and hidden evidence but it didn’t matter. By then, only three couples were speaking to one another. Everyone else was tired of the rumors, scandals and mistrust and had retreated to their own worlds within their own walls. And then, DrunkTank Willie up and sold his house and moved away, taking his suffering wife and his foul language-learned daughters with him.

The damage was done. Since then, a few people have discovered the source of many of the nasty rumors that were spread about them but most don’t want to hear anything about it. Most of the original dozen home lot buyers have moved away by now and others have moved in bringing their own personality mix into the spirit-broken neighborhood. No one seems to remember when we all used to talk, laugh and help each other out and I’m convinced that because of this simple fact, our neighborhood is decaying rapidly. No one cares about the appearance of their homes, lawns go to weed and un-mowed for months. Broken tree limbs, basketball hoops and vehicles of all sizes and operational conditions block sidewalks. Beer and soda cans, empty water bottles and fast food wrappers litter the once-clean gutters. Loud obnoxious music wafts in and out from multiple directions amid arguing couples and screaming children. Cars race up and down the streets and the Harley mechanic the next street over revs his engines every other afternoon for hours. Graffiti-laden political signs lie ignored in once-manicured yards among sun-faded Fischer-Price playhouses.

In January, MsNoManagementSkills moved into the neighborhood, within view of our house and to this day, no one understands why. Previously, she told everyone who would listen or read her Online Journal how very much she hated the development we had chosen to live in and felt the same for the style of home we chose to build. Yet, there she resides, in a once beautiful home that was built to look just like ours but is now a high-turnover rental house, and sadly, looks it. With un-mowed grass, children’s toys lying forgotten in the weeds and broken down cars permanently dead in the driveway, she and DorkMaster, her upcoming husband, are an eyesore to our neighborhood, but sadly, they fit in now. It is us who no longer fit.

Yesterday, MsNoManagementSkills got DorkMaster’s kids ready for the new school year. The bus stops right in front of their house for pickup and she wanted those kids to look especially good when they sent them off. DorkMaster’s ex-wife had the same plans and had driven across half the state to also see them off. Much loud unpleasantries ensued. Loud arguing is considered normal here in the neighborhood now. This is okay.

Last weekend, we ran into Ms. Blinder, the women who used to live across the street before her nasty divorce and the Ca-LEE-fornians bought her house. She looked haggard, like life hadn’t treated her kind in the past year, and she told us that we were known as the “Weird Ones” in our neighborhood because we had no kids and liked our yard neat.

Originally, we were told those traits were cool and unique. We fit in and brought a fresh perspective to neighborhood get-togethers. Now, us, one of the few remaining original home owners who still have no kids, don’t argue loudly or have ex- and future spouses acting less than civil in public and still like our yard neat, we’re the Weird Ones. This is my world.

Angry today? You betcha I am!

September 10 2004

Just under two weeks from today is Emil’s and Hubert’s “coming out” party. I’m STILL waiting for Dr. Poke and Peck to call me back to let me know exactly when, where, what all he’s going to do and what he thinks of that ultrasound I took over a week ago. I haven’t heard a peep from anyone about anything.How odd is this? I did get my Federal Medical Leave Act paperwork back through and CRAP! I really wanted eight weeks off, not six. My employer will give me twelve. I don’t know why my doctor thinks I have to rush and hurry to get back to work and MsNoManagementSkills- ugh! Now my stress factor is back up and that can’t be good for healing.

Late yesterday afternoon, we met a yard maintenance guy from the big, established Landscaping and Water Feature company we found a couple of weeks ago. We were hoping for a reasonable estimate on mowing our miniscule front yard, adding seasonal color in a couple of tiny flower beds and trimming and shaping half of the rest of the fifty or so bushes, shrubs and trees we have, and to do all this on a regular basis. We were expecting something ridiculously high. We were expecting them to try to sell us lawn “treatments” which are similar to car dealerships trying to get you to pay for “special undercoating” for a car and these are scams with a capital S. We were expecting to have to turn them away, after we get over the price shock of course. And we were nearly right. The jury is still out on whether we’ll pay the $140 a month, plus $550 for initial shrub and tree shaping.

This afternoon, we’re supposed to have an appointment with the Christmas lighting company and basically, I’m expecting the same as with the yard maintenance company. I mean, when their flyer features something that says: “Present this and receive 10% off on installation ($300 minimum order)”, I get scared. $300 minimum order? Yikes! Yet, better to have someone else up on the roof this year than me. I’ve never had any problem getting up on roofs but not this year when I’m supposed to be recovering. And Christmas is all about the light decorations for me since we don’t exchange gifts.

Today ought to be a good day compared to the past couple. I still feel hugely bloated thanks to Emil and Hubert, but some things are starting to fall into place and get taken care of. For example, last June, I slightly damaged one of the custom painted engine parts on my car and I immediately called the guy who created them to get a new set painted. Because he was swamped with work orders coming in from around the country, he couldn’t paint a new piece for me until August something. In the meantime, I slapped some paint in the damaged area and polished the bejeezes out of it. Still looks like crap but I don’t think anyone notices it much. Late yesterday, I finally got my custom painted replacement part delivered. Sure, I only have one more car show to do this season and the part is a bit late, but now I’m ready to swap the painted part and be ready for next year. I could care less how late it came. It’s here now and there’s one less thing to worry about.

That’ll be my winter project, getting my car into shape for the next car show season come April 2005. That, along with recovering from surgery, working on building some serious muscle and losing fat again. Since my back injury in July, my poor elliptical machine is certain I have forsaken it, I’m sure. And WS’s rower? An inch of dust is on it. WS isn’t even using it anymore. I’m starting to lose patience with Emil whom I feel growing larger every few days, squeezing more of my innards and making me tire easily. C’mon surgery date – September 23rd, so I can get on with the rest of my life!

September 13 2004

Just lovely. Fricken’ lovely, I say. I was not stressed in the least about my upcoming surgery. Not a peep. Really. But now…..I.AM.FUMING!

Finally, finally after I had to call and leave multiple messages, Dr. Poke’s receptionist calls me back and sounds alarmed herself that no one had called me yet to set up a pre-op appointment. Apparently, this was supposed to be done weeks ago. Minus one for them.

So, we finally come to an agreement on when my late pre-op appointment will occur and then I ask if Dr. Poke had any thoughts or comments on Emil’s ultrasound I had a week and a half ago. I hear the receptionist shuffling through papers on her end and she says “13 inches by 9 inches in size. Yes, I’ll talk to him to see if he can do something about that during the surgery.”

Uh….excuse ME?? Do “something about that??” What exactly the hell am I having surgery for if not to REMOVE Emil??

Jesus and Mary on a motorcycle! Can you say stress now? Oh.I.Think.So! Minus two for them.

Then she hung up as I was stammering, “Uh, uh, uh…” like a dork in shock. I even forgot to ask where exactly my pre-op surgery appointment will be, not to mention where the actual surgery will take place. Could be in the back of a moving van driving randomly through Portland, Oregon streets for all I know.

Basically, I’m just typing this out for proof of what transpired in this phone call in the off chance that when I come out of surgery, I’ll have had a leg amputated or a sex change (not that THAT is a bad thing) or am told later that I gave birth to quints or something. I have found a young sympathetic ear finally in The Company HR department who told me her fibroid/hysterectomy horror story where her post-surgery catheter had become blocked for a day or so and when she complained of the pain, a nurse flippantly told her “Of course you are in pain! You just gave birth!” She had NOT given birth but had a hysterectomy thus ensuring she would never be able to give birth. Only hours later did a visiting doctor discover the blockage. Oh, the fun I have to look forward too. I am wondering if a leg amputation would prevent me from having a catheter put in; something I desperately dread, dread, DREAD, nearly as much as I fear having to have an enema (please, not that!!)

UPDATE: As I sat here, quietly FREAKING OUT, WS was kind enough to call Dr. Poke’s receptionist back and left a message and within the hour, Dr. Poke himself called and calmed me down a bit. No, I didn’t tell him his receptionist needed to have surgery herself ON HER BRAIN. Nor did I tell him I was concerned that I would end up with an amputation other than the one that should remove Emil and Hubert all because his office seemed a bit less than organized. Doctors don’t like to hear those kinds of things and I do have to take into consideration that in less than two weeks, I, who may have said these things to him earlier in my life like just an hour before, I would be lying there, naked and unconscious with him standing there in a mask with a knife.

So, Dr. Poke, on his own and unprovoked by me, apologized for his receptionist having less information than she should have had and assured me that my surgery will be a routine multiple fibroid tumor removal and hysterectomy. He also told me where my pre-op appointment is and where the surgery will take place and thankfully, it won’t be in a parking lot somewhere.

Okay, I can breathe now. Inhale, exhale, repeat. It’ll all be okay.

September 14 2004

As you might notice, I’ve changed this journal’s colors back to the beige, green and burgundy for the fall and winter months. I’ve taken great pains to make sure everything is working correctly (let’s not talk about that remote camera window just now) but if you find something amiss, please let me know.

Last week, last Wednesday to be exact, our local TV weather people were promising rain and cooler weather was on the way, to start last Thursday. Yeah, you could say I was a bit excited. I mean, autumn is my favorite time of year and the summer here has been nothing less than hot, dry and full of yellow-jacket wasps. But Thursday came and went and no rain and no cooler weather. Friday was a bust also and I just didn’t get it. I religious watch our local weather just because I like weather stuff, I had been reading blogs around the country, including Mary Lou’s who lives a bit northwest of me. She was seeing autumn so why wasn’t it here too? I was vexed. Terribly vexed.

Assured by the late night local TV weatherman just the night before that I would wake to the sound of rain pattering on my bedroom skylight Saturday morning, imagine my disappointment when there was no rain in sight. Lots of blue sky and a few puffy clouds here and there but definitely none that looked like they held any rain whatsoever.

“Fine,” I said. “We will hunt for autumn today and if we can’t find it, we will make it autumn here at home regardless.” What I really was thinking was “We will hunt autumn down, kill it and drag it home to enjoy.”

And off we went, first to have lunch and then to the French store which proved to be a huge disappointment as they seem to be changing from a charming French décor shop into a baby clothing store (do we really need another Baby Gap?). Then across the street to a teensy-tiny home décor shop whom have always seemed to embrace autumn before anyone else, but unfortunately, this year, their stock is nearly entirely depleted because it is all on display at a local, crappy, disappointing and wildly overpriced homebuilder’s show for an entire month. After that, we looked toward Bed, Bath and Beyond in hopes of finding comfort in new fall flannel bedding, comforters and duvet covers, but no! They are still milking all they can from gaudy-looking summer home fashions that only seem to feature the colors of teal, hot pink and lime green with various fish prints.

Across the street from BB&B, even Barnes and Noble bookstore seemed to want summer to last forever and had huge displays of “Summer reading” selections. Even their quasy “Starbucks” coffee shop area was still pushing summer drinks and treats and frankly, the whole area smelt strongly of sour milk and baby spit-up. Very strongly.

“Okay, so THAT’S how it’s going to be,” I grumbled and since I was driving, off we went to cross the river to hit a heavily commercialized business that we hoped contained at least an early touch of autumn. And we struck pay dirt. “YES!” we said as we gladly filled our baskets with the smells and feels of fall. Pumpkin-scented candles and fall harvest scents like cinnamon rolls and home baked bread, silk fall chrysanthemums and berries and snuggly sheared velvet throws. Combined with our still-packed away autumn decorations at home, it could be 105 degrees outside and we wouldn’t care. Our place would scream “AUTUMN IS ALIVE AND WELL!”

Later and for the rest of the weekend, I dug out garland, silk flowers and mantelpieces in the colors of orange, red and gold out of hiding and with a tasteful hand, redecorated the house from top to bottom. All that’s left is the permanent wreath outside the front door, which I am waiting to do until the first overnight freeze or two because it has a small wasp nest built in it.

Then yesterday, after stressing out from Dr. Poke and Peck’s receptionist, autumn finally arrived. It arrived outside that is. It’s been fall inside our house since Sunday afternoon. Outside we’ve got rain, heavy at times, a touch of wind, thunder, a few spotted funnel clouds just north of us and a good twenty-degree drop in temperature. Our winter ground birds seem to be visiting in larger numbers today and I have yet to see a mouse anywhere. In between the showers, a new neighborhood cat has been visiting and he seems to be well aware of our mice and where most of their holes are around the fountain. You might be able to see him here and there on the web cam. He’s black and white spotted, reasonably friendly, looks to be well fed and has sharp claws. I met him over the weekend and told him he is welcome to all the mice he wants (but to leave the squirrels alone…and I think he actually understood me on this point). He’s exactly what we’ve been hoping for in the field mice department and, as long as he doesn’t get sidetracked by the birds, I think we’ll be happy to have him visit anytime.

September 14 2004

Yes, this makes two posts in one day.

One drama after another

I’ve been sleeping poorly since late last week. Yes, it’s stress. It’s to be expected. My surgery is about a week away on the twenty-third. Nearly everything I needed to get done before then is finished but it’s easy to worry about those things that aren’t done. I’ve got six weeks off for recovery and still have two weeks of paid vacation after that. I shouldn’t have any worries.

Then, I find out bright and early this morning that The Company, the one I work for, has sold their souls to a very, very large, no, make that HUGE web search engine company for millions. 160 to be exact. To a company everyone loves except it’s employees. Also, a company notorious for laying off workers, especially ones from other companies they buy up.

What this means is, realistically, I’ll be lucky to have my job here by this same time next year. This is a certainty. It’s highly probable that I’ll not have my job much after the holidays before major restructuring will occur. Sadly, my job which entails creating and correcting Company documentation, is one of the jobs this HUGE company outsources to temp contract employees for much lower pay than what I’ve been pulling in. This HUGE company outsources nearly everything. Welcome to the job world of today.

The same goes for WS who will lose his second job here. At least for the time being, he still has his REAL job but with layoffs there coming up next year. The ride, which was the sweetest one I have ever fortunate to be on, is basically, over. Our own hemmorage of money for this bobble and that bobble is being clamped and sealed off as I type this.

One of The Company CEOs sent me an email asking if I thought this was exciting. Well, I guess if you yourself just made thirty million and your significant other just made fifty million and everyone in your CEO clique just made a minimum of twenty million a piece, yeah, I guess you’re having a red letter day and I’m excited for you. If I’m supposed to be excited about losing my job, which is a certainty now, I can’t really share your enthusiasm. Sorry.

Now, I have to wonder why MsNoManagementSkills was flown to Company headquarters late last night. Was it to hear all this and to meet the HUGE company’s Commander in Chief in person at a meeting we were supposed to be conferenced in on but someone “conveniently” forgot about? Are we supposed to believe that this new Commander in Chief is going to keep us around now? Are we supposed to believe anything MsNoManagementSkills tells us when she comes back tomorrow? She is not our boss, knows nothing of the projects WS and I work on for The Company and can’t really speak for or correctly represent our thoughts on all this, but she was the only remote employee invited to hear this first-hand.

If I didn’t just want to break down and bawl my head off right now, I’d be looking to lop off some heads.

Random thoughts over the past few days:

Oprah gave away 276 cars. Actually, Pontiac gave them away. Oprah just got the publicity. Doesn’t anyone see this? Also, they were given to mostly “beautiful” young women who looked jiggly on TV when they were jumping up and down, seemingly for-EVER. I’m sure no one noticed this either and it would seem that the world is falling all over themselves to praise Oprah.

I found out over the weekend that in Belgium, people buy their chocolate daily, when it’s fresh, as someone might buy bread from a neighborhood bakery. It has occurred to me that we’ve never had “fresh” chocolate. Is it different? Could a person raised on Hersey bars tell? And if I were to find some place online that could ship “fresh” chocolate from Belgium to Washington state, would it really be “fresh” then?

This week feels long and slow but thankfully, free of MsNoManagementSkills, who is at Company headquarters, probably pushing to get her soon-to-be new husband hired on. She was off Monday, flew to Company headquarters Monday night, comes back Wednesday night, is off work Thursday and Friday and gets married on Sunday. Nice week.

Sunday is also the last car show of the season for me and nearly everyone else in our area of the country. And it’s supposed to rain. I’m excited! This means I don’t have to bust my butt to clean my car beforehand. The really good thing is that the show is being held less than fifteen minutes from our house. Happy day! I’ve been feeling exceptionally tired lately, mostly due to stress I’m sure, and feeling very bloated as well and knowing that this is the last show, that I don’t have to drive far, I don’t have to clean my car very much and that the club holding the show likes me and my car has made me feel better about choosing to participate this last time. Sure, there will be the old car club people there, whispering about this and that like last month’s show when I told them about Emil, but who cares anyway? I don’t.

September 15 2004

After yesterday’s news of that HUGE company buying The Company I work for and someone at Company headquarters making sure we weren’t patched in on The Company conference call to hear whether we could keep our jobs or not, I have found myself feeling lower than asphalt on the streets. I am still furious that MrSmartButFakingIt didn’t connect us into that important meeting and everyone since has made it sound like we were the ones who didn’t bother calling in. We were sitting here both online and on a silent conference call until 4:30 in the afternoon for the 3 pm meeting. How DARE them!

WS and I argued late into the night about both of us leaving The Company and living off his REAL job. The problem with this is that his REAL job isn’t any more stable and layoffs are coming up again. He thinks he’ll be okay and would like me to not have to work at all. That sounds wonderful, but I have found that life is anything but wonderful and I hate having to scrimp and scrape every penny again just to be able to enjoy anything. Me not working means no more hope for real vacations (something we have NEVER taken. Ever.), no more luxuries like new sheets or gourmet food shopping and no more impulse buying. Ever. I would feel that I couldn’t enjoy my car and would feel guilty driving it when WS would be the only one buying gas for it, not to mention any service that it would need. I would feel like I couldn’t ever smile or enjoy things because he would be the only one working hard to bring in money for us to live on and what right would I have to be happy doing nothing when he is miserable working? I can’t let him work his ass off just so I can lounge around and whine about wanting “annual spot color” in our garden each season. If I needed socks or makeup or wanted something not on what would become our very strict budget (and we have already made a realistic one up – ouch!), I would feel less than a person, knowing that I would either have to sneak to buy these things or whine and cry about wanting them until either WS gave in or we ended up not speaking to each other.

Supporting someone is hard and a huge responsibility, especially when that person is perfectly capable of working. Being supported is equally as hard as I’ve always felt I needed to “earn” my keep. And so, I bust my ass doing everything from manually washing every square inch of our house a minimum of once a week, to watching the stock market for chances to make money with our tiny retirement fund, to trying hard to understand WS’s engineer work-speak when I’d really rather babble on and on about some giant earthworm I found in the garden earlier that day.

Basically, I turn into a basket case, torn with guilt and looking for smirks on everyone’s faces around me that say, “She’s lazy and won’t work. Poor WS.” While I definitely turn into a basket case when working, it takes a while longer to happen, and in the meantime, I’m pulling in a paycheck.

Working has always been nothing but misery to me, ever since my first job at age fifteen. Now at the age of 48, I’ve had seventeen different jobs over the years and have hated each and every one of them. I have an overly strong sense of loyalty, responsibility and what’s right and what’s wrong and I’ve found that working in the corporate world is no different from working service or manual labor jobs: They are all fraut with wrongs and disloyalty. I could tell you horror stories of walking in on managers in compromising positions in backrooms, coworkers spitting on customer food, CEOs stealing wallets and purses from employee lockers, coworkers actively getting each other fired, companies who’s policy is to suck every penny from their consumers and laughing about “our stupid customers”, employees stalking and preying on coworkers they don’t like, fist fights in company bathrooms (and this was the women!), etc.

I also have the problem in that there is absolutely nothing I want to do and anything I DO want to do, no one pays anyone for it. I no longer want to learn how to do anything. I don’t want to go back to school. I don’t want to learn any new kind of computer this or that. My brain is so very tired. I am mentally exhausted.

I completely understand the point of medicating oneself now. It’s to dull the misery and cloud the mind to all the wrongs.

The HUGE company that bought The Company I work for allegedly said yesterday that they would try to find jobs for everyone who’s job was a duplicate of one they already had. And that the layoffs would be minimal.

Am I supposed to feel better about this? Everyone at Company headquarters seems to be nothing less than thrilled. I heard rumors of actual dancing in offices and aisles. Is someone piping something into the air conditioning there? Was something put in the water? I don’t see either of those things allegedly said as positives. I strongly suspect that not a single one of my coworkers know a single thing about the HUGE company, less of all, it’s glaringly obvious track record of layoffs. What are you people thinking? Or are you thinking at all?

What is wrong with me that I can’t be happy too?

The Company CEOs say that everything is business as usual until after the holidays so I’m going to try hard not to think too much about it until I come back from my surgery recovery. I will try not to think about not having a job to come back to. I will try not to let myself think about the pros and cons of looking for another job (in this economy??) or applying for unemployment when they lay me off. Basically, I’m going to try not to think about anything at all, like everyone else seems to be able to do, and maybe this mental pain will go away.

Oh, look. Birds!

September 16 2004

How to survive a dot.com take-over:

Breathe deep. Cry if you need to in order to get out some frustration and anger.

Don’t wait for anyone to tell you whether you’ll continue to have your job because you might be waiting a long time. Or at least until you no longer get paychecks. I’m STILL waiting for someone to tell me and so, I took matters into my own hands and asked. And I was just informed that there is no guarantee I’ll continue to have my job after my surgical recovery.

If you were fortunate to have stock and/or stock options, find out what the take-over means in regards to that. It may mean you are screwed and the stock/stock options are gone. In that case, you may want to call a lawyer. On the other hand, it may mean new stock is issued in place of old stock/stock options. It also may mean a cash payout for your stock/stock options. If you had no stock or stock options, count this as one less thing to worry about and believe me, you do have other things to worry about.

Check the take-over company’s online job listing. Don’t get discouraged. All jobs listed will sound like they are looking for God. It’s likely they do not list jobs that require little qualification and/or are similar to what you used to or are currently doing. Unless you are God. Don’t be discouraged if all jobs listed require a college degree and you don’t have one, or have no intention of getting one. Time worked (sometimes referred to here at Blogeois.com as “time served”) can often be viewed as an equivalent to a basic, low level college degree.

Check the take-over company’s policy on vacations, holidays observed, medical leave, etc. You don’t want any surprises later and you may find you get more than you’ve become used to. On the other hand, you could get less. Better to know this upfront.

Do not obtain an “Us versus Them” mentality. No matter how badly you want to.

If a take-over company CEO says no one will lose their job, get him/her to tell you this in person. To your face. Make sure you have at least one reliable witness who could later testify in court. Get it down on paper too. Do whatever you need to do to assure the take-over company that they will benefit from keeping you…and mean it. Be wary of “spin-talk.”

Keep doing your job in the meantime and do it well. If you allow the take-over news to affect you for too long and you do your job in a crappy way, you will be demonstrating to the take-over company that you don’t care. And maybe you don’t. The point here is that if you want to try to keep your job, you have to prove to the take-over company that you are valuable. Don’t get hung up anything like “But I already proved myself!” This is a new company with new management. If you proved yourself once, you’ll have to do it again. Sorry. No one said life would be fair. Get over it.

Search the Internet for testimonies from disgruntled ex-take-over company employees. Read them, absorb them, but under NO CIRCUMSTANCES dwell on them. This is for informational purposes ONLY. This is not meant to cause extra stress but to educate you. At this point, there is no need to continue to go through life with rose-tinted glasses.

Keep in daily touch with your coworkers. This is called networking. Stick together. You may be able to help each other keep your jobs. If not, you’ll have someone to share scathing emails about the take-over company with and who can relate.

Immediately prepare a written resume of sorts. This is called “marketing your skills on paper.” Be prepared to send this when asked and to answer impromptu questions about exactly what your job was or currently is. Have this information readily available in both corporate-speak language, loaded with big buzzwords like “I enabled 24/7 markets, optimize cross-platform portals and helped incetivize mission-critical schemas” and also in normal, every-day conversational speak like “I help customers use our software.” If you think it may be helpful, also have a text message version ready such as “Dood! LOL! OMG! R SW is ‘da’ bomb & I rawk wit’ it!”

If you think it may help, and it DEFINITELY will, act upbeat. Put on an academy award performance if need be. Trust me. You want to sound as though you are truly happy even if you are having a stroke inside.

If at all possible, clamp down on all personal spending outside of paying your bills and start aggressively saving money as though you will be losing your job tomorrow because you just may. Even if you can only save $20 a month, $20 is better than $0 a month. Do NOT buy anything extravagant. Do NOT buy anything you do not need to survive. Do not beat yourself up over wildly spending every penny you ever made over the past ten years. And absolutely, positively, do NOT start living on credit cards. You aren’t currently doing this, are you? If so, stop now. Immediately. No excuses. End of issue.

Finally, try as hard as you can to stay positive. Sure, the world may be crashing in on you, but try, try, TRY to find a silver lining, even if it’s a badly tarnished, poorly applied silver plate lining. And lastly, visit Odd Todd. You aren’t in this alone and Odd Todd just may help.

September 19 2004

It’s been lightning and thundering here for a while now but let’s see if I can get this typed out and posted. I so love this time of year! Welcome fall!

It’s been an interesting yet very relaxing few days around here. Thursday evening, WS and I had haircut appointments and went out for dinner. Early Friday morning, I had my pre-op appointment and it went smoothly. I know exactly where to be and when and what’s going to go on. No problems expected.

Friday afternoon, Max, the new kitty, went in for his follow-up, booster shot appointment and he behaved wonderfully. No biting, no lunging and he didn’t go after anyone’s jugular. He’s almost a completely changed cat now and we’re glad we didn’t end up calling him Jaws after all.

Saturday morning, we did most of our backyard cleanup in the soft rain: Moved tree roses, geraniums and a pot of chives to a more sheltered location to ride out the winter, chopped down the tomato and Thai pepper plants and brought in the wind chimes for the year. WS will stack and cover all the patio furniture sometime in early October and put away the garden hoses then before covering our outdoor faucets with the Styrofoam covers. The Styrofoam covers are on all our under house vents for the winter.

Saturday afternoon, I dug out that Great American Novel I thought I was going to write about ten years ago and somehow managed to get WS interested in it this time. I might play around with more character development and back story during my recovery next month.

Today, Sunday, was the very last car show of the season for me and I’ve been more than ready for this season to end. Emil and Hubert have been tiring me out more easily lately and making it difficult for me to get down on my hands and knees to clean my wheels and tires once I’m at a show. Luckily, this show was held about twelve minutes from our house and WS, who went with me today, did most of the cleaning while I yakked at people left and right who stopped by to say hi.

During the car show today, I was approached by one of the main guys who puts on the big Portland, Oregon Roadster show and he wants to see my car entered for next spring’s show. In my usual pre-pre-pre-planning stage for next year, I have already decided it’ll be all about going to Quality shows instead of Quantity of shows. I’m thinking of maybe somewhere between five and a dozen shows tops as opposed to the twenty I attended this year. I just don’t feel the need to prove myself anymore with the exception of two things I’d still like to accomplish: 1) Participate in a major, national, invitational car show, and 2) Have my car featured in a major, national car magazine.

I just might decide to try to participate if for no other reason than to see how different this kind of thing is from a participant’s point of view. Back in ’85 and ’86, I took care of and cleaned a good friend’s 1934 coupe in a major show like this and I know what it takes, but it wasn’t my car. Never did I think I would have a car that someone else felt worthy of inviting to participant, let alone one of the main guys.

But this is too far off in the future to think about now, so I’m not going to.

Anyway, at today’s show, I took home two separate awards bringing my award total to seventeen for the season. Not bad at all. I am pleased. And Emil and Hubert hardly complained at all. Shhh, don’t tell them their time is almost up.

September 20 2004

This week, I work Monday and Tuesday and have Wednesday off to prepare for Thursday morning’s surgery. They’ll be keeping me for four days in the hospital and I figure I’ll get out sometime next Sunday. I’ve got my loose PJ’s packed with slippers and a nice, new, comfy robe and I’ll put together an overnight kind of bag late Wednesday with the basics: Toothpaste, Ivory soap (because everything else makes me itch), shampoo (just in case they let me wash my hair and somehow, I am able to), Chapstick, face wash, deodorant (‘cause I can get stinky) and a notebook for WS to jot down his observances and anything I might mumble afterward and hopefully to post here in my absence. I figure my mumblings should mainly consist of something that sounds like “OWIE! Did ANYONE get the license plate number of that BUS?!?!” and “You want me to WHAT?!? Uh, excuse me Ms. Nurse, but you can go screw yourself!” Or it could be something completely off the wall like “I LOVE wet bunnies. Especially with tapioca pudding and socks!” Depends on how good the drugs are, I suppose.

Yesterday, I completely forgot to mention what we found here at home when we got back from that last car show: A big hawk sitting in our backyard, on one of our lawn torches, looking for mice. Yippee! And that visiting black and white cat carrying off a mouse (to devour under the Ca-LEE-fornian’s front porch). Double Yippie!! I don’t think we’re going to have much of a mouse problem this winter.

Over the weekend, MsNoManagementSkills married DorkMaster. Luckily for everyone at work today, she’s busy changing her last name on every thing in sight instead of bitching about this or that. Naturally, this also means she isn’t getting any work done. Gee, big surprise there….not! Man, I am so looking forward to eight weeks away from her.

September 21 2004

T-minus two days until Emil and Hubert’s (Oo-bear’s) “graduation” day.

Today is my Friday for work. I’ve officially notified my department of my leave and got back a few good wishes already. That was nice. Only a small handful of coworkers know the details behind why I’ll be out and those have all be told that it’s okay to share as much as they want with anyone else who asks. MsNoManagementSkills knows nothing other than that I’m having surgery for something. She doesn’t really care to know anything about anyone else who doesn’t revolve in her universe. Besides, she just got married late this past Sunday night and her head has been elsewhere. She’s probably just now realizing that she should have saved up time to take off for a honeymoon or something. I suspect today won’t be fun in the least here at work as she gets back into the daily grind (having spent yesterday flitting here and there getting her last name changed instead of working.). But who cares really? My day is already half over! W00t!

Tomorrow morning, I need to go get my pre-op lab work done and WS has to pick up his MS medication for the month. Then, he’ll ask if I’m hungry and I’ll say “of course” and then remind him that I don’t want to eat anything other than my chicken broth and miso soup from here at home because I don’t want to have to have a monster poop too quickly after recovering from surgery. If I’m going to have a monster poop, I’d prefer it to be smooth and soft and not crammed with fast food chunks and smells.

Oh, I’m sorry. Was that disgusting? Heheh, trust me, if you were reading what I had been reading about hysterectomy recovery here, you’d understand. Sounds like the number one thing the doctors and nurses look for after surgery is getting you on your feet to get your bowels moving. If you aren’t passing gas in a day or two, and passing gas LOUDLY in their hallways, they get concerned. Delightful! Never pass gas ever was only the number two rule my mother beat into me (spitting was number one). Now someone insists that I do? I suppose I could eat Taco Bell the night before surgery but I’d be worried about exploding on the operating table. Naw, I’ll stick to miso soup. I like it.

Tomorrow, we also desperately need to get squirrel food. We’ve definitely got five squirrels visiting now and it provides us with endless hours of joy. Just two years ago, there wasn’t a squirrel to be found alive in this neighborhood, thanks in part to all the construction going on and The Cat From Hell. We’ve got young, identical triplet squirrels with no rips or tears in either their ears or tails which is how we usually identify each one, Nips is a middle-aged mother squirrel who still looks to be nursing something as her nipples really stick out there, and a plump, gorgeous-looking male who is new here. No sign of Wart, a squirrel with a slightly deformed nose who used to frequent the feeder box most of last spring. No sign of any mice lately either. I suspect they are coming out at night. That black and white cat is really doing a great job.

I’ll also be using tomorrow to finish up laundry, finish packing my “overnighter” bag for the hospital and clean up the house. I don’t want to leave a mess for WS to work on. He’s already going to have his hands full as it is. The Landscaping and Water Feature repair guy is coming later this week to start work on fixing our fountain. God, has that only taken forever. I just hope mice haven’t built houses within the rocks below the usual water line or someone out there is going to be in for a big surprise when they turn on the water. I can just imagine mice scrurrying, swimming and floating everywhere. Ugh.

September 22 2004

T-minus one day before surgery. I’ve decided to tell Emil and Hubert just before being wheeled into the O.R. What they don’t know won’t hurt them.

I’ve been feeling very crampy over the last day or so but having taken anything for it because I don’t want anything to interfere with my lab work or the surgery. I don’t know that it will but I’m just being extra cautious. And of course, Aunt Flo showed up bright and early this morning – right before surgery day – and right at the most inopportune moment. And so tomorrow morning at 7 am, when I tell them my period started, they’ll tell me I can’t have a tampon in there but I just don’t DO pads. Leaking, stinky things that those diapers are. Never met a pad I didn’t hate. And don’t even talk to me about the “thin” ones that are supposed to catch everything. Right…if you weight 122 pounds and don’t gush.Won’t matter to me shortly anyway. I’m considering throwing a tampon and Midol box burning party later in the year. Should have bought one of those fire pit things.

On a much less icky note, yesterday afternoon, I took it easy around here and had some bonding moments with our backyard nature. Our huckleberries are finally ready for picking and so, I picked a bunch. Boy, are these things small. And the stems all pull off with them. But what was I to expect? I’ve never grown huckleberries before but I know I like ‘em. These things are tasty!

I left at least half this much on the 5 small, evergreen bushes I planted back in March. I like sharing my food with whomever happens by. (I also play well with others and color within the lines but do have a problem running with scissors.)

While I was out there, putting fresh water in our dry fountain, I saw the black and white cat munching on something. A closer inspection showed it was half a mouse. Good boy! No, you won’t see any pictures of that.

Then I decided to take a picture of our basil that finally, after nearly six months of trying to grow, decided to do something with itself. Sure, it’s a bit bug eaten but hey! This is the first time we’ve ever been able to grow it. Next year, if we bother at all, we’ll plant it and just forget about it.

But then, just as I walked past the feeders, I saw my first nuthatch! I practically walked right up to it. The feeders are less than four feet from the walking path but it just sat there, hung there actually, upside down, pecking at the new suet cake I had put out there a couple of weeks ago. I’d never seen a nuthatch before but somehow I just knew what it was. I just have to watch again to see if it was a red-breasted or white-breasted one. (I believe it was the red-breasted variety.)

Scampering around at the same time was one of our squirrels who is getting good at letting me get close. Here he is trying to cram a walnut in his mouth to go bury some place where I’m sure I’ll just dig it up later this year when I plant spring bulbs. I mentioned earlier this month that I thought the squirrels knew something we didn’t at the time, that fall was coming faster than normal and they were getting ready. I can’t believe how many peanuts in the shell we’ve gone through in the past month in keeping these guys happy.

And finally, our poor pineapple quince is so loaded with large fruit this year, the branches are sagging. Good thing quince wood is fairly strong wood. I’ve been watching for any fruit still hanging that had soft spots growing or any disfigurement and have removed those to help take some weight off the branches, but to date, only five have needed to be removed. I’m sure when the fall winds arrive, I’ll lose a few more and I’m fine with that. I think I’ll end up with a dozen or more of them anyway and I promised myself that I would cook them this year in a spicy cinnamon/allspice syrup and eat them right away, instead of wasting them next year. It won’t be until late October/early November before they are ready.

September 23 2004

T-Minus 3 hours before surgery.

Well, it’s just before 6 am and we’re off to the hospital. I need to be there to check in at 7:15 am and surgery, after several scheduling changes yesterday, should start at 9 am. The head of OB/GYN, Dr. Poke and Peck, is doing the surgery himself so let’s hope he really knows what he’s doing and not just showing off to a bunch of second-year med students.

WS will be staying with me at the hospital on and off throughout the next few days but he said he would post an update as soon as he could. We need to give him time to calm down and get some sleep sometime in there. He’s trying very hard not to be a nervous wreck and doing a great job. In the meantime and in a day or two, look forward to all the gory details of painful pooping and hallway farting and maybe even a short essay on “Things I’ve Learned While Staying in a Hospital” featuring stuff like why they come wake you up to give you something to sleep, why they won’t give you a straw with your Jell-O and what’s up with the plastic utensils anyway. Fascinating, I’m sure.

Off we go now. Type to you all later. Let’s wave bye-bye to Emil, Hubert and Aunt Flo!

September 25 2004 (by WS)

Last night was not a good night for Blogeois. After being taken off of IV pain meds, her nausea got completely out of hand, causing vomiting that has to be really rough with the major cutting they’ve done on her. This limited her ability to be up and walking and now the medical staff is concerned about her lungs and the potential for pneumonia. They changed her anti-nausea medication today and the first dose seemed to go well, but she was looking for a second dose about three hours before her next dose was due. She can’t reach the phone and doesn’t feel up to talking on the phone anyway, so it’s tough not knowing how she’s doing. Today did hold the milestone of the first post-surgery passed gas. So at least that one is behind her (pun intended).

I’m a bit of a mess at this point in my desire to take care of the house and pets and be there for her as well. I think tomorrow I’m going to try a different approach by going in earlier, coming back to take care of the pets in the middle of the day and then going back in the evening and staying later. It is dreadfully frustrating to not be able to do anything tangible to help. I was extremely proud of her today when she got up for her first walk with me not prompted by the nagging of the nurses, but it’s rough when that and bringing flowers is about the extent of what I can do to help.

Thanks to everyone for their positive wishes and thank you to Mary Lou for the card. It was a bright spot in today’s otherwise not-so-bright day.

I did get a batch of laundry done today and I haven’t forgotten to feed the pets or the squirrels, or the birds. The bathrooms have all been cleaned, the sheets changed and the vacuuming is done. I was hoping I would be bringing B back Sunday to a nice clean house, but I think her discharge will be delayed and I’ll need to do another cleaning pass if the house is going to be clean when she returns home.

September 26 2004 (dictated by Blogeois)

Back from the days of the dead.

Yesterday was about as fun as a barrel of dead monkeys. We’re talking three month old, beyond all hope of resuccitation monkeys. Just picture “bad” and let’s move on.

Haven’t needed any pain medication in two days because my pain isn’t that bad. Unfortunately, my nausea level is absolutely excruciating. It seems like every time somebody comes in to check on me or my roommate, the topic of food comes up. When that isn’t happening, somebody is wheeling a huge cart of steaming this or that up and down the hall. I feel like I could never eat again, but have asked WS to bring back these poofy plain crackers and a ginger ale when he comes back today. The nausea has been so bad at times, even water has made me feel ill. Then there was that whole thing with bright light being snapped on, too much movement and too many voices around me – kind of like how a person would feel who had migraine with nausea but without the headache. But then, I warned people about my nausea, didn’t I? Yes I did, and did anyone listen to me? Nooooooo! Dr. Poke and Peck stopped by this morning and apologized for not taking the nausea thing seriously. Let’s hope the nurses finally get it too.

I slept last night for the first time and I didn’t need any medication of any kind all night. I dreamed of random things, random people, random situations and then I dreamed of marshmallows – poofy, soft, comfortable marshmallows – and I was sitting on them. You know where I’m going with this, don’t ya?

Good news and bad news. Good news: I was passing gas. Bad news: It was more than just gas. Really bad news: It wasn’t marshmallows.

So they got their 23 pounds of flesh out of me and one pound of poop – just like they wanted. All that’s left is for me to say, “GET ME OUT OF HERE!”

Operation Urination is a success!

Since I woke up, they’ve been saying, “Press the button if you need anything” so I pressed that button every excuse I got. Need more water, need a fan, I’m nauseous, I’m in pain, etc.

But then my nurse today told me she was going to be pumping me full of fluids and then removing my catheter. She told me to press the button when the IV machine started beeping that it was done. Uhmm…yeah, right! Do you think that I was going to press that button? ABSOLUTELY NOT.

As the nurse prepared for catheter removal, she tells me “I’m just defalting the balloon. You should not feel this.” Again, right! “I’m feeling that, I’m feeling that, I’M FEELING THAT!!!!”

But it’s out and it was not pleasant. Discomfort level was 7, but at least it was quick.

Then she tells me I need to pee in the toilet insert for the next eight hours so they can measure it. Eight hours of pee in a bucket! How cool is that ?!?

As it is, I’m off of meds this evening – no pain meds and no nausea meds for closing in on 12 hours. No IV and they measured for leggings to replace the pressure cuffs I’ve had on up to this point. I’m nearly wireless.

Drill Sgt. Dave and his girlfriend visited me this evening for about a half hour. At one point, he broke down and started crying, which was not a pretty sight, but I was surprised. I had to change subjects to cars to get things back to a comfort level.

If today’s improvement relative to yesterday is any indication of what to expect over the next couple of days, I hope to be home by Tuesday.

September 27 2004

It’s been a very long day that started late last night.

Around 9:00PM, a group of young African American men came in with an older black man and a very young girl to visit my roommate and stayed until 10:30PM. Of course, visiting hours ended at 8:30PM, which is loudly announced each evening. But my roommate has a certain ability to ignore the rules. Her latest visitors were anything but quiet or polite, telling jokes and saying “Yo, Yo, Yo” at everything each of the others said while the old man voiced his desire, over and over, for my roommate to get out of the hospital so she could make him some “chili with jalapenos.”

The little girl “entertained” everyone by spitting on things. I guess it was something she had just learned how to do. No one told her to stop and for an hour and a half, I listened to “Spit, Spit”, “Yo, Yo, Yo” and “You need to get outta bed and make me some chili with jalapenos.”

I’m convinced that if I don’t get out of here, I will die here. And they will never be able to track it back to a five year old mulato girl’s spit.

After her visitors left at 10:30, the hospital staff caught my roommate faking her urination amounts. She had been telling the Urine Gestapo her output amounts and not saving them for verification per the rules. At about 10:35PM, the Gestapo requested that she pee on demand and she couldn’t. They gave her an hour to conjure up something.

At 11:20PM, the vitals nurse came around to take temps, blood pressure, pulse and oxygen intake. Unfortunately for me, I had just fallen asleep. A vitals nurse comes around EVERY hour, so I got up so they could make sure I’m still alive and found myself unable to get back to sleep. My back was killing me from lying on it so much. The hospital bed sucks badly. The floor would be more comfortable and definately contains less scratchy starch.

At midnight, the night nurse came on duty and did a thorough head-to-toe check of each and every one of us. Just as I drifted off, a flashlight shined in my face and I looked up to see an older, smooth-faced Asian woman. She proceeded to ask me 20 questions in a loud whisper and told me she wanted to see every drop of urine I put out and even to leave my bowel movements in the bowl and ring for her to look at them.

“WHAT?!?!” I said (the whisper broken). “You want to see my sh…”

“Sure!” she replied. “We get very excited here about little things like that.”

Tokyo Rose then went on to babble about this and that while rechecking my vitals and then poked and prodded my stomach and incision. When she finally left, she reminded me to call her whenever I used the bathroom. She then went over to my roommate who got an even sterner lecture on bathroom habits and a longer exam.

2:00AM came and I couldn’t get Tokyo Rose’s bowel movement warning out of my head. I knew if I didn’t get to sleep, I was going to be exhausted in the morning and look like I needed to stay another day. My back couldn’t handle another day. My brain couldn’t handle another night of hourly vitals checks. My stomach couldn’t handle more of the vile smell of what they called “food” here. And my ears definitely could not handle any more noise coming from the refrigeration unit and ice machine located just outside our door. My health was going to start sliding downhill if I didn’t get out of here and to some place where it was QUIET!

I don’t know when I finally fell asleep. Just after 2:00AM, I got up and took my overnight bag into the bathroom and cleaned myself up from head to toe, hoping that would make me feel better. It worked.

At 4:40AM it was time for vitals check again. Who made it through tht night? Who didn’t? Who’s health was looking up? Who’s wasn’t? I was pronounced okay and I went back into a restless sleep.

By 6:45AM I was surprised to see that it was still dark outside. There was heavy fog this morning. I love fog and knowing that it was probably sunny already at home made me all that much more determined to get up and at least look at the fog here while I could. Before getting up, I noticed that someone had refilled my water bottle, meaning someone had probably checked on me at least, but I’m sure I would have known if anyone had re-checked my vitals again.

There was a lot of activity going on over at my roommate’s bedside. She either hadn’t peed all night or did and didn’t tell anyone and the Urine Gestapo weren’t happy about it at all.

After a flurry of activity over there, things sounded a bit calmer and I finally got up, took my overnight bag and went into the bathroom to clean up again. Even though I couldn’t wash my hair and I knew I downright stunk, I tried to clean myself up as well as possible.

I called the nurse to come check my urine amount and decided shortly afterward to take a long walk. They told me yesterday that Dr. Poke and Peck would be in making his rounds early today. I wanted to look as good as I felt and I did feel good.

Up and down, up and down the halls I walked. I didn’t need to hold my lower stomach today, a big switch from yesterday. I felt a bit lighter on my feet and definitely felt more steady. By 8:00AM, I was back to my room, writing this and waiting.

Close to 9:00AM, I was tired already and caught myself thinking of lying back down, but I knew that if I did this, I wouldn’t look as good as I could to Dr. Poke and Peck and he’d have no idea that I really was feeling great earlier. But luckily, within ten minutes, he wandered in and before saying a word, he looked like he’d already made his decision. I could go home.

Over at my roommate’s, a doctor was also talking to her and she was explaining away all reasons why she never called the nurses to check her urine or bowel movements. The doctor listened and told her he would have felt more comfortable if she had followed procedure but that they were sure now that she had Crohn’s Disease and that if she wanted to go home today she could. The only requirement was that she talked to two other doctors who would be in later this morning. She couldn’t get out of this requirement but sounded sure the doctors would be in shortly. An hour later, a nurse came in and asked her what she’d like for lunch and she nearly freaked out. “Will I still be here for lunch?!?” she squawked. “Oh, I don’t know,” the nurse said, “but just in case…” “I hope NOT!” my roommate said in a huff.

Another hour went by and WS was here to pick me up. The last thing that I heard as I was leaving was my roommate on the phone, yet again, saying, “Where am I? I’m still in the hospital. What am I doing later? I’m planning on running a fuckin’ marathon. What the hell do you think?” As far as I know, she’s still waiting there. I sure hope she’s told someone she’s peed.
To be continued…I go home.

September 28 2004

WARNING: This is where I complain about my care while hospitalized. Yes, I know, I should be more grateful. I am, after all, alive and rid of Emil, Hubert and will be free of Aunt Flo (in about four weeks). But I did have a very, very, very rough day three of which I’ll talk about in a later post. I just didn’t think of the exact reasons why some people die of unrelated things while trying to recover in a hospital…and now I know.

Home. What luxuries await me here? An endless amount, thanks to WS. Considering that we are on our own budgetary cut while I’m off work for eight weeks, here’s a taste of the simple pleasures I am now basking in and how budget cuts are affecting patients and patient care in today’s world at the major metropolitan hospital I stayed at.

A shower. They didn’t “have one available for me to use” at any time during my five-day hospital stay, for some reason, and the one I did see looked downright frightening.

All the shampoo I want and the plain, clean-smelling Ivory soap I love. Not some over-industrialized, rank-smelling hospital wipe soap that made me nauseous at the smell and will take weeks to get out of my senses.
Clean nightgowns. On morning three of my stay, before they began to believe us when we told them EVERYTHING would make me puke, I barfed up the strawberry Jell-O cup they gave me to eat the night before and they made me wear that barfed on gown until I physically got up and stole a clean gown out of a cabinet down the hall on the afternoon of day four. Thankfully, the Jell-O was well diluted with the gallon or so of water I drank and even through the nightgown was pink, I knew the barf was there. It was….stiff and crinkly-feeling.

Clean, un-starched sheets. I don’t really need to re-relate the marshmallow dream, do I? When was that? On the night of day three? I laid on the same sheets and on the same quilted, 30 inch by 30 inch pad, in the stains of my own filth until WS took me home on the morning of day five. Enough stiff starch on those same sheets probably helped develop the two quarter-sized bedsores I have on either side of my middle back. Ouch!

Quiet time. Immediately outside my hospital room door was that wing’s ice machine and refrigeration unit. The refrigeration unit was in the process of dying and exceptionally loud. The added benefit to this was seeing the occasional “plumber’s ass crack” when the maintenance crew tried in vain to quiet it down when trying to get the attention of a nurse’s aid who couldn’t hear the call button over the racket. And what is it with the rule about not keeping a patient’s door closed? My ears still hurt. And I am not joking in the least. I hear a low-grade buzzing sound still.

A TV with more than 5 and a half channels on it AND MY OWN REMOTE CONTROL. If I had to watch one more soap opera, one more stupid game show or Total Makeover: The Home Edition again, I would have gotten out of bed, taken a walk and never returned. I guess when you have to stay in a room with someone else, whomever gets there first is who gets the choice of what to watch.

Clean floors. Really. Don’t make me spell out to you what I saw and for how many days in a row once I was able to get up and walk around.

A view. Of something other than a multi-level parking garage and the bright red, glowing EMERGENCY sign 24/7.

The loving, smiling face of someone who doesn’t ask me every hour how much I’ve peed today. Let me share with you the story of Natasha, one of two day nurses assigned to me. Recently moved here from Romania, she angrily told me on day two that the U.S. had just decided to not accept most of her and her husband’s Master’s Degree courses in medicine from the Romanian university they graduated from, the only university there that was accredited. Why? She didn’t know but if they ever wanted to be more than “mere nurses” in her words, they would need to start all over with their education and now, couldn’t afford to bring the rest of their family over. As she was telling me this, she was listening to my stomach for bowel rumblings and was a bit rough, I thought, with how hard she pressed here and there. Later in the day, I felt she was really pushing me hard to pee on demand for her and told her so. She got quite defensive and luckily, WS was there to defuse the situation as I walked away from her and into the bathroom. She was only a bit less defensive by day four and on day five, I was gone before she came on shift.

Again, the loving, smiling face of someone who knows that nearly every medication known on the planet makes me nauseous. Truly, it was exhausting for both me and WS to try, unsuccessfully day after day after day, to convince them that I would never recover if they didn’t stop forcing this drug and that drug into me. It’s even in my medical records, for pete’s sake. But everyone there was convinced that they would be the One to change all that. Never happened and I think I almost “left the building” on day three.

And finally, my own bathroom. One without a wastebasket overly full of stinky, soiled unmentionable items from my roommate who, quite frankly, I thought leaked like a sieve, considering she wasn’t in for the same thing as me, a hysterectomy, or anything related, but had just started her period and went through an industrial-size thickness pad an hour.

I really can’t thank WS enough for how hard he worked to keep this place up while working two jobs and driving across town to be with me every other waking moment. We’ve talked about what I saw there at the hospital and what I experienced and now we both know for the next time, should there be one for either of us. Hopefully, this will stick in the back of your minds too so your loved ones don’t have to be subjected to potential life-threatening problems with cleanliness and personal care.

And thank you, for all your comments and words. I hung on them as proof of intelligent life out there when I was still hospitalized and it seemed that no one would listen to me there. You all deserve big pats on your backs for helping me get through this. Thank you!

September 30, 2004

Let the outdoor healing therapy begin!

A week ago today, I had surgery. Today I’m determined to get out of the house.
They finished the fountain repairs yesterday though the lighting still doesn’t work because of a problem with the outlet. We’ll have to work on that. It’s so relaxing out here with the water running again. I feel like I’m a bit more aware of things today than I have been in…well…a week. And the biggest thing I’m aware of today is my body.

How would you feel if one day you woke up with a completly different physical body? One that’s X number of pounds lighter than it was before.

Would you not really notice and go about life as you always had? Would you alter your lifestyle to keep it? Would you make radical changes or would you alter it within reason? Would you stress and worry about waking up the next morning and having the old body back as if it were just a dream?

We’re about 40 miles south of Mt. St. Helens, which has been rumbling and is now making national news. We can see the mountain from our back windows, though is is partially obscured by a deciduous tree and the webcam makes it look quite a bit further away than it actually is. But in the off chance that it should blow out an ash cloud, you should be able to see it from here and we’ll adjust the camera if that happens. For the best view on the planet, please visit the Mt. St. Helens Volcano Cam. The weather service says that if it blows out anything within the next week, it will blow whatever it blows directly over us. It could be like snow in October.

I finally finished this month’s Vanity Fair – a major accomplishment for me. I now only have six more back issues to go through. I’m still a bit too tired to spend much time reading. I get a page or two into anything and I just want to sleep.

October 1 2004

Happy October! Lots going on today and I am up for most of it.

First, Mt. St. Helens burped today. Naturally, we had just left our house to run some errands and missed the newscast of it happening live. But, no worries. It was small and the cloud it produced was mostly steam which dissipated quickly. Not much in the way of ash and so, we don’t expect to see anything here at all. Your local news channel and/or CNN will have footage and while it looks impressive, the actual event was miniscule in reality. There may be more in the coming days or weeks, but it’s a bit too soon to know. In the meantime, here is what our web cam sees along with where things are located. Like I said earlier in the week, our camera makes things look twice as far away as they really are and if the air is hazy as it has been lately, it’s impossible to see Mt. St. Helens. If a really big, dark, ash-filled plume erupts through, you should be able to see that. Our remote camera window automatically updates every two minutes or you can hit “Refresh” on your browser window for the main window.

I got to meet our new yard maintenance guy today. Nice guy. I think we share a brain cell or two on what we’d like to see this place look like by springtime. I only wish I had him longer in the course of a day. He spends less than an hour here and I know that when I get to puttering in the yard, I’m just getting started after an hour. So, he’s here every Friday and now I feel like a rich snob who gets their lawn cut and bushes trimmed around their estate grounds just before the weekend, when, if I really were a rich snob, I’d have all the polo club’s wives over for cucumber sandwiches and a German Riesling and implore then to write huge sums of money to send to the charity(s) of my choice.

Gosh! Kind of went off on a tangent there, didn’t I? Where was I?

Oh, yeah, so Spencer, the yard guy, gladly pulled most of the nasty clover and lots of wayward grape hyacinths from the moss bed I purposely tried to start last year, under a weeping Japanese maple and he did it exactly as I would have, could I have gotten out there to do it myself. Color me happy and call me Ms. No Dirt Under My Nails Today, thankyouverymuch.

In regards to getting our fountain back up and running this week, amazingly to say that no animals, meaning field mice seemed to be hurt or killed during that process. Apparently, no one built any home or nursery lower than the usual water level and when WS opened that valve box that was serving as a mouse nursery last month, not a single mouse was seen. I was sending lots of “GET OUT” vibes in the general direction of that box over the past few weeks and had hoped that they would find other accommodations when the repair works got started.

Actually, what I really think happened is that black and white neighborhood cat that hangs out back there is really doing the mousing job I had hoped he would. WS says every few days, he finds a dead mouse or mouse bits somewhere out there and that’s just fine with me. Over the past few days, I’ve sat there for up to an hour looking for any mouse movement anywhere and I haven’t seen a thing. I think that cat is worth his weight in gold about now. The really cool thing so far is that he really seems to listen to us when we tell him sternly, “NO squirrels!” So far, he’s stuck to the mice and seems to have no interest in either the squirrels or birds. Good kitty!

And finally a warning to the squeamish. If you do not want to see a graphic picture of and read of my surgical incision, please be forewarned. You may want to stop reading now.

Okay, anyone still here? I had my metal staples removed today. Metal staples, you ask? Yeah, when some places do an exterior hysterectomy, meaning not vaginally, the surgeon will usually slice a lateral cut from pubic bone to just below the belly button. They don’t do much in the way of “bikini” cuts crossways from hipbone to hipbone anymore because they’ve found those kinds of cuts don’t heal as well in the underlying muscle. At least, that’s what they say. To “sew” up that slice, they stitch the underlying muscle and use metal staples to hold your skin together for a few days to a week.

So during surgery, they did the lateral cut on me but quickly found that Emil had increased in size considerably and grown from my lower abdomen area to nearly up under my breastbone. No wonder I was having problems cleaning the lower parts of my car, ya think? Emil was squeezing part of my lungs by that point. I saw the actual Polaroid and was I ever impressed!! (I’ve asked for an electronic scan of that picture so you might get to see that in the future.)

So they had to continue the cut from my pubic bone to a few inches below my breastbone to have enough room to get Emil out. What a cut! To me, it looks like I ran belly-first into a buzz saw! Ouch! My stomach feels like I’ve just finished doing about a billion sit ups in a row but I am really glad to have those staples out. I kept worrying that they would eventually snag on something (they never did). Getting them removed was a breeze and I don’t think I even flinched once.

And while this may leave a nasty scar, or not, I don’t even care really. At my age, these are battle scars and I’m proud of it! Now, I’m just begging that MsNoManagementSkills, Miss “Everyone over 30 should be shot”, wanders over here and I can flash my stomach at her if she gives me any grief .

October 2 2004

We went out into the big wide world today: A bit of plant shopping, lunch and grocery-getting. And I did pretty well. Okay, actually, I ate too much at lunch and had to make an emergency restroom trip at the grocery store before things got messy and you can be assured I learned my lesson about overeating this early in my recovery.

We picked up a flat and a half of winter pansies, white for the front yard and bright yellow for a couple of spots of color in the back and got those planted. WS really stepped in and would only let me plant half of them. I have to admit, that man has learned more about gardening how-to than he’s ever let on. While I don’t really think he “likes” anything to do with gardening, I don’t think he absolutely hates it like he used to. To see him whipping out those pansies and sinking them here and there like a pro, made my eyes mist over.

Almost.

Since yesterday’s Mt. St. Helens’ burp, tens of dozens of small planes have been flying around our area; either coming from or going to get a peek at all the excitement. Currently, the mountain is at a Level 3 alert and another eruption is due sometime within 24 hours. Winds aloft are blowing North, North West this time, so any ash fallout is expected to blow away from us here. Very hazy skies this afternoon from dust blown up in that area yesterday and last night and the weather remains very dry. We’re getting to the point of really needing a day or two of steady rain to wash things down again.
Again, this is the best place to see Mt. St. Helens live. The camera there looks directly into the crater and updates automatically every five minutes.
I’m getting ready to take my car out for a very well needed drive to keep the battery charged and things lubed. This is what I do for it all winter long: Wait for a day dry enough to take it for a spin or two around the ‘hood or, if it’s raining too much, just start it up in the garage and let it run for ten minutes or so. Hey, it sure beats washing and polishing it once or twice a week like I do all summer long.

Later, I plan on seeing how me and my ignored elliptical machine get along. I feel good enough going up and down the stairs here to think that I can get at least two whole minutes in on that beast and that’s a good start. No need to kill myself just yet. I’d start doing that after the four week point when I’ll be ready to hit the rowing machine again. In the meantime, I’m also going to go through some of our weight lifting books and make out a mild, non-stomach affecting workout routine to get some meat on my arms starting next week. Nothing major. Nothing heavy. I just want to tone up my underarm area so I don’t get much more of that flappy “winged” look.

October 3 2004

Sunday, and I’m finding out that people are getting or have gotten married all over the place. Where have I been?

The good marriages: First, Danelle and Mark over at “This could only happen to me” finally tied the knot today. Congrats, you two. You deserve all the happiness in the world.

Secondly, my youngest brother, who I rarely if ever talk to, got married and took his bride to Paris for a day or two (that was all they could afford and she really wanted to go.)

On the “interesting” marriage side, last night I found out that the Nice Competition Boy and the ex-wife of Drill Sergeant Dave got married a few weeks ago. They both divorced their original spouses in January/February. Seems a little fast to me, but what do I know?

I also found out that Drill Sergeant Dave himself got married in mid-August and didn’t tell anyone at all. He did it on a Thursday, before they both went off to work, and later, in the evening, he attended a car club meeting without his new bride. She is someone he recently met in a Yahoo! Chat room and has been married four times previously and divorced because “there was no passion.”

Okay. I can honestly say that no one will ever use the word “Passion” when describing Drill Sergeant Dave. Again, seems a little fast to me, but what do I know?

And finally in the “WTF?” marriage department side, FatHead, MsNoManagementSkills recently divorced ex-husband apparently got married last month himself. Yes, FatHead. The guy who boasted loudly that if his marriage to MsNo didn’t work out would never, NEVER get married again. I think he even went as far as to take out an ad in the local newspaper saying the same. Goes to show that you should never say never and I am not convinced that someone is putting something in the local water system.

October 4 2004

A bit of advice: If you are trying to sell your home for 75K more than it’s worth and for 50K more than the rest of the neighborhood can support, do NOT insist that your house look like this to prospective buyers every single day of the week. This is the view from the front of our house, every day, day in and day out. At this rate, the only people who would ever buy the Ca-LEE-fornians house would be blind ones. And Ms. Ca-LEE-fornian tells everyone her daughter and son’s chalk drawings make the place homey. Right….

Autumn returns. It’s been a bit warm and sunny here for the past week with a return of early summer. But that’s all scheduled to end later this week with the return of the autumn weather we love. For the past couple of days, we’ve had foggy, misty mornings with a definite crisp bite to them before the fog burns off mid-afternoon to sunshine and temperatures in the low 80’s. The main hill behind our development is just starting to show off fall color. The vine maples in our own backyard are starting to change color and drop leaves. Soon, the birches will all go yellow, the cedars and junipers will wake up and seem to inhale the moist, cool air and small, last minute flowers from this bush and that will pop out to say “Good bye summer” while plants like this sedum, variety Autumn Joy, says “Hello Fall!” I love this time of year!

Before I went into the hospital, I bought a bunch of Fuji-esque apples with no real plans for them other than to enjoy their aroma and eat raw. We ended up not using them for anything over the past couple of weeks and yesterday, I really took notice of them, sitting there on the kitchen sideboard, on a beautiful matte black platter ignored. They smelled wonderful and were only a little spongy-feeling on the peel. I’m surprised how well these apples held up and promise to get the real name of them the next time I’m at the local, gourmet grocery store we like so much.

WS had been begging me to make baked apple dumpling the last time we thought autumn weather had finally arrived but I just didn’t get to it. I had other things on my mind at the time. Today, knowing that this is most likely the last day of sunny weather, I got to work on them around lunchtime with a very easy recipe. Using Splenda instead of sugar, a few cups of water, some cinnamon, nutmeg, cardommen and the insides of a freshly scraped vanilla bean, I whipped up a syrup on the stove and set to work making a light pastry dough to cover the peeled apples. Just before popping the whole thing in the oven, I added some dried cherries to the syrup and ladled it over the doughy apples.

Forty-five minutes later, the house smelled wonderful, WS is happy and I’m a baking goddess. Again, I love this time of year!

October 5 2004

Last night, I was admiring looking at my surgical incision while lying in bed and asked WS off hand how long he thought it was. From my angle, I figured it was about 18 inches or more in length and said so.
WS laughed and said, “Yeah, if you’re using guy measurements…”
It’s official. I have more testosterone than estrogen now. No wonder I’ve been hankering to look at Craftsman tool boxes again at Sears. By the way, the incision was only 12 inches.

Mount St. Helens is going off again this morning with lots of steam and some ash. We’re calling it Mount St. Helens 3.0 around here. Today’s wind is pushing the ash cloud toward the North East, more toward Mount Adams and nowhere near us at all. We’re directly to the south. At 8 a.m., I could see the mountain in the clear morning air, however, by 8:30 a.m., haze had formed and now, the view is obstructed. Annoying if you trying to see anything from our web cam. If a dark cloud spews up, you’ll see it. If the cloud is mainly white steam and light gray ash like today, you won’t be able to see it. Again, this is the best place to see Mt. St. Helens live. The camera there looks directly into the crater and updates automatically every five minutes. As of now, a bit after 10 a.m. the view is great!

And finally, late yesterday, we went to our P.O. Box to pick up mail that had been sitting there for nearly a week. And amongst the huge pile of mail order catalogs, most of which I throw out anyway, was the best “Thinking of you” card I’ve ever received. It’s from Mary Lou over at Life after NEXCOM. She knows how much I love fall weather and it’s true, I haven’t been able to get out much other than my own backyard to see any leaf color changes. Her gorgeous homemade card features a photo of a beautiful rural autumn scene set on fall-color card stock with the kindest words of get well encouragement inside on decoratively-edged parchment paper. Mary Lou, thank you! You could go into business with cards like this and you know exactly what to say. Thank you again!

October 6 2004

It’s spring bulb planting time around the Blogeois compound and with a ton of help from WS because I’m definitely not up to doing this alone, we were able to get all 190-something bulbs planted IN ONE DAY. That NEVER happens and is a big deal around here.

To fill you in how things used to go, usually WS begrudgingly okayed a bulb purchase that I wanted to make from a bulb farm located a hundred miles or so to the south of us. We’ve both been to this farm and love the way they do business, not to mention the huge bulbs and variety available to the public. Also, if you remember, I talked about participating in a Tulip Festival car show earlier this past spring. It was this company who originally started this Tulip Festival. Anyway, the bulb prices aren’t any different than what you would find at your local nursery, but the bulb sizes and condition are usually much, much better.

Then, when the bulbs arrived, I would plant them all myself. If I could wrangle WS out there, and that was a challenge in itself, he just hated it. So I usually planted them all myself and that would take several days if not weeks.

Fast forward to today and he’s out there vastly improving on my usual “Spade in the ground – lift up – insert bulb underneath – remove spade” method of planting by actually digging out entire planting areas to the correct depth and covering the bulbs first with garden soil THEN the bark dust covering. Extra work, sure, but much better flower return come spring.

And the best part was that he said he didn’t hate doing it. That he had built up this notion in his mind that he just hated this kind of thing, but when he actually did it, it wasn’t bad at all. It was enjoyable.

Amazing.

Back when we first moved in here, we had brought with us well over 200 different tulips, daffodils and grape hyacinths from the old rental house and that first spring, things looks wonderful. But then we decided to have an automatic sprinkler system installed and the sprinkler guy was less than enthusiastic on saving any bulbs that might have been in the way of his digging. In fact, nearly every one of those 200+ bulbs seemed to have been in his way and they were all destroyed, save a handful.

Two years ago, we ordered a dozen or so of WS’s favorite tulip, Temple of Beauty, and although they continue to do well in the spring, the mass drifts of my favorite daffodils were wiped out and never replaced. Varieties included Geranium, Tahiti, Passionale, Ice Follies, Tete-a-Tete, Unique and just plain King Alfred; all gone. This year, before we knew that my job (and WS’s second job) might end, we ordered many of those daffodils I loved and missed so much. And yes, we got another dozen of WS’s favorite tulip. Come spring, we’ll have lots of pictures to share, but in the meantime, here’s a great shot of a misty web from this morning’s fog out back.

October 7 2004

The day in the life of a hired killer.

Drama can happen right under a person’s nose on any given day…if one only pauses their personal rat race for a minute or two… and watches.
I present Exhibit A: The profile of a killer. We have purposely chosen to not show his face to protect his identity.

A month or so back and unbeknownst to our friends and neighbors, we hired a killer. It seemed we had a little “problem” around here that needed to be “taken care of” quietly and swiftly. The “dilemma” had gotten out of control and there was no going back to the life we once enjoyed. We knew just what needed to be done and who could do it. A few days later, a verbal contract was hashed out, specifics were agreed upon including “compensation” and the okay was given. Our “contractor” was free to carry out his end of the deal whenever he saw the right opportunity. We knew he wouldn’t disappoint. We saw it in his eyes and those eyes said that our problem was as good as taken care of.

As much as we tried to keep the meetings and negotiations covert, it was impossible to completely elude detection. We eventually felt as though we were being watched. We instituted a surveillance program of our own and found we had an audience (Exhibit B). From past experience, we knew this individual and were certain we could buy his silence with “compensation” of a more artificial kind from PetSmart.

As anyone who has worked with a natural born killer knows, the professional views everything as prey. It can be difficult to differentiate between agreed victim(s) and protected parties. We went to great pains to insure our hired hand understood that some targets, while being of the same family, were strictly off limits (Exhibit C).

Our associate wasted no time getting right to work. We witnessed him putting in long hours, alternating between stalking and lying in wait (Exhibits D and E). And we could only imagine what he must be thinking. Just before arriving, would the victim stop, sniff the air and get a sense that something wasn’t quite right before creeping undercover onto the premises? Perhaps the victim would use the heavy brush and soft ground cover to slip in undetected while keeping crouched close to the ground. Or would the victim boldly walk out in the open, down the walkway, out into the bright sunshine, completely unaware of the immediate future and impending doom? Only he would know. He and his victim.

Over time, there was some confusion about other potential prey. Guidance was given in each situation, though some of the possible targets required less protection than others. Please see Exhibit F, a concrete rabbit.
Evidence indicates our “problem” is currently being well managed. Life has returned to being quiet and peaceful, though the continued presence of our associate tells us he has not completely eliminated the issue. Our business relationship carries on equitably for all (with the possible exception of the riffraff that started this whole thing). Only time will tell if this was a good decision or not and when our professional feels the job is done and moves on to greener pastures. Or whether he feels that with our “PetSmart compensation” a.k.a. catnip, the greener pastures are here and stays. Perhaps, we were the intended victim(s) all along? Who really knows the mind of a killer?

October 9 2004

Lots of rain around here for the past few days. It’s been wonderful. You can see how gray the skies are on the web cam, which is still pointed toward Mt. St. Helens though nobody can see it because of the clouds. Don’t worry. Next week looks to be dry, hot and sunny again.

Yesterday we went on a small grocery shopping trip to round out things in the house and I think it was around aisle 8 when I realized this was the first grocery shopping trip I’d made in 30+ years that I hadn’t had to buy any kind of feminine absorption products. First it struck me as very odd, but after I got over that, I felt downright giddy! Not giddy enough to say, skip over to the bakery department and buy a chocolate cream pie or anything. But giddy nonetheless. I could learn to like this.

Over the past few weeks, WS and I have been teasing each other with the prospect of going to a local gourmet food shop where they have the BEST orange spice biscotti we’ve ever had. But we just couldn’t bring ourselves to go because it’s inconvenient to get to, a bitch to find parking for and we wouldn’t be able to stop ourselves at just the biscotti. A few times last year, back when we thought our jobs were a bit more secure, we innocently wandered in there and found ourselves in the checkout line with $400 worth of specialty cheeses, pastas, meats, wine and of course biscotti. We knew we were in trouble when we told the woman at the bakery counter, “We’ll take every orange-spice biscotti you’ve got.”

That was some good biscotti, but really, who needs five dozen?

Fast forward to this morning when what has become the inevitable question came up. Should we go to that shop to get biscotti? Obviously something had to be done. And this is where the Internet gets good. Within minutes, WS had found and printed out several great biscotti recipes. Luckily we had most of the supplies in the house because we had conveniently just done our shopping. Five dozen biscotti later (because they’re WAY to easy to make), we no longer have any need to go to that gourmet specialty foods shop. We highly recommend do-it-yourself biscotti.

I continue to feel good, although fatigue sets in around 3:00 every day. I’ve been resisting the urge to lie down and take a nap because for the last week, I’ve been sleeping through the entire night without any medication. Naps have always screwed up my sleep schedule so I try to avoid them at almost all costs. Next week I plan on starting some weight and elliptical workouts. Slowly at first, of course, and I’ll probably avoid any kind of exercise that tugs on my stomach muscles. My stomach definitely isn’t ready for any workout yet, but the rest of me is screaming for some kind of activity and WS isn’t allowing me to resume any of the cleaning. He’s holding up pretty good, or at least appears to be, and the kitchen has never looked better. Although we won’t talk about that dishwasher load that ended up being washed three times. Those dishes are clean…REAL clean. I’m not complainin’.

October 11 2004

Today, I’m tired for some reason. Has it only been two weeks since coming home from the hospital? Well, then I guess I’ve got a right to be tired. Over the past week, I tried to get back into the swing of things and get some kind of routine started. WS had to go back to work today and me and the pets have the place to ourselves. We all know how much housework pets can get done on any given day of the week. Yeah, right. We’ve got two that are completely unafraid of the vacuum cleaner. You’d think that we would have been able to train them to do the daily vacuuming by now, wouldn’t you? Trust me, if there wasn’t that whole issue about not having thumbs, we would certainly have tried.
To voice their opinions on what the pets thought of WS going back to work, a few of them made sure that I had something to do when I finally got out of bed around 10 a.m. this morning.

First was to clean up a projectile barf that covered a quarter of the wood library floor. Like some parents, I can, with a 99.8 percent accuracy, correctly identify each individual pet’s barf (and in most cases, poop too), and I knew who belonged to this mess, little Miss Barfs-A lot-During-Seasonal-Changes-But-Aren’t-I-Cute-Anyway.

Then, I saw our library floral arrangement had been knocked off the bookcase and was lying in part of the barf. Dried moss and ornamental seed pods were everywhere and remember, I promised WS last week that I’d wait another full week before trying to vacuum again. This particular mess belonged to Max, a.k.a. Jaws, who loves to try his hand daily with artificial flower arranging. So the arrangement went into the bathtub for washing down and re-arrangement, and the floors were hand-washed and wiped clean.

While I was in the library bathroom, I noticed someone, meaning probably a certain other pet who’s name I won’t mention to protect the guilty, Mr. I-Have-No-Tail-And-That-Makes-Me-Twice-As-Cute-As-Miss-Barfs-Alot, had his way with the toilet paper on the roller. I guess I shouldn’t complain. At least he left the toilet paper in the bathroom. The last time this happened, the entire house looked like an out of control high school TP prank.

Finally making my way downstairs, I find bunches of fake grapes are lying here and there in both the living room and kitchen and the long kitchen basket we use to store bread, Atkins’ bars and lately, a bag of pistachios is sitting precariously on the edge of the countertop. This seems to be another one of Max’s latest calling cards and he’s knows better to even get up on that countertop, not to mention play in the breadbasket. A few weeks ago, we mistakenly left a new loaf of bread in there overnight, not thinking a thing about it. We’d done this for years so imagine our surprise when we got up the next morning to find bite marks through the plastic bread bag and a quarter of the bread, a low-carb variety, eaten and gone.

While the grapes and basket were much easier to clean up than the library mess upstairs, the fun didn’t stop there and I spent the next hour yelling at this pet and that to “Get down!” or “Get out of there!” or just plain “Knock it off!” WS definitely needs to have a heart-to-heart talk with the bunch tonight about being good during the day time and how he had to go back to work in order to keep them in the manner of which they’ve become accustomed, meaning their food bowl won’t be empty anytime soon. And how they need to give me a bit of a break so I won’t be tempted to get out the vacuum cleaner any sooner than I promised WS I would.

I’m still recovering here, you loved bunch of pets, you. Now, stop chewing on that, stop antagonizing your sisters and go take a nap or something! Geesh but I’m exhausted!

October 12 2004

It’s nearly mid-October. WAY into fall season for me. You know how much of a autumn junkie I am, so you won’t be surprised to hear that I just had to go out and get some traditional outdoor fall season home décor. Naw, nothing like dried cornstalks that just get limp and mildew-y in the weather around here. And no, no bales of straw that get even more mildew-y (and gosh, don’t even try to lift one of these if it should happen to get wet – Ugh!) I stuck to large, orange vegetable orbs and pots of chrysanthemums, one of which has got to be one of the biggest in existence. These will last us until our U.S. celebrated Thanksgiving in late November. (No, I’m not going to carve the pumpkins into Jack-O’Lanterns. Don’t get me started on a Halloween rant.)

I’ve done a bit of catching up on people here and there, including MsNoManagementSkills and what kind of havoc she’s been creating since I’ve been off work. She’s finished blowing through her divorce money, taking herself and her new husband, DorkMaster, to Vegas, buying his kids school clothes and supplies, paying for their recent wedding, buying into an expensive vacation time share scam (and she’s scared shitless to travel anyway!), and just bought herself a new SUV. Then, this past weekend, she bought a bigger, more expensive SUV for DorkMaster, whose incredibly bad credit history won’t allow him to buy a thing until sometime around spring of 2009. All of this is exactly what she told everyone she would never do. But she’s getting lots of mileage out of it at work. Seems she can’t stop talking about buying this and that,…even when they beg her to just.stop.talking.

Now, if she would just mow her lawn… Gosh, she’s a horrible neighbor in that respect. But at least she doesn’t live right next door. Instead, living right next door are The Dimmers and while they’ve continued to take their trash out with some regularity now, mice are still coming under the fence from their yard to ours. Where could they be coming from now? I wonder. Luckily, our hired killer is still doing his job. Just yesterday afternoon, I saw him traipsing off with another one to devour under the Ca-LEE-fornians’ front porch.

On the other side of us, after witnessing Mr and Ms. SportsOrNothing packing up and leaving on vacation earlier in the day Sunday, their left-behind teenage kids threw a Jacuzzi party at 2 a.m. I finally closed our bedroom and bathroom windows when I distinctly heard teen-boy SportsOrNothing shout “Just take it all off! Everyone else has!” I’m sure their parents know all about what goes on over there, in the Jacuzzi, at all hours of the day or night, right?

Across the street, the Ca-LEE-fornians don’t look any closer to selling their house. Ms. Ca-LEE-fornia grabbed her kids the other day, roughly shoved them into their truck and madly took off mere seconds before a big Home Inspection company van pulled up. Since she had just taken off, the Home Inspection guys had no way to get into the house and had to sit there and wait nearly an hour for her to return. And when she did return, she didn’t look too pleased to see that the guys were still there. The guys didn’t look too happy either. Not quite sure what that was all about, but WS says he’s getting the feeling that she doesn’t really want to sell the house. It’s Mr Ca-LEE-fornia who’s selling it. Just a week or so ago, Mr Ca-LEE-fornia sold his mini van and brought home a used, butt-ugly Pontiac Vibe. He should have kept the “Mommy van.” Not sure what that was all about either.

October 14 2004

Today is the last fully sunny day around these parts for about a week or so. Fall weather is coming in the form of clouds and rain beginning tomorrow. It’s been over two weeks since I took my car out and probably the last good weather day I’ll be able to do so before tucking it away for the winter. So, what did I do to take advantage of the last of the sun?

This is as close as they let anyone get to Mount St. Helens. The mountain puffed a little bit of steam and ash for me right after I got there and I was thrilled. I drove to the closest you can get, where the road has been closed off by the US Geological people, parked about an eighth of a mile away from the closure signs and started snapping pictures.

Being there wasn’t anywhere near the zoo I figured the whole place up there would be and the way the media made it sound like. There was hardly anyone there and of those that were, all were happy to sit there in complete silence, listening to nature and the mountain. I’ve never witnessed anything like it. Usually, things like this bring out a kind of carnival atmosphere and you’ve got people yakking up a storm, kids screaming, someone playing their stereo, tuning their car or playing with a chain saw. There was none of that here today. It was like people actually had respect for Mother Nature and were more than happy to let her do all the talking.

I could have spent hours up there, just watching and listening like the rest, but I had to get home before I started tiring out. It was a delightful drive and one I’ll remember for years.

October 15 2004

Another couple of pictures from my drive up to Mount St. Helens Thursday afternoon and some observances I jotted down after getting back home:
1. I was very surprised and happy at the lack of traffic from the I-5 exit to Mount St. Helens. The drive was a breeze at speeds of 55 mph, the posted speed limit most of the way.
2. Lots of wooly caterpillars crossing the road, most of them solid black with little to no orange stripe in the middle. I’m sure some farmer’s almanac says this means something but I think it just means there is a solid black variety.
3. All wooly caterpillars were crossing the road from south to north, or, when the road curved that direction, from west to east. ALL of them. There were none going the other way. (BTW, I purposely tried extra hard not to run over any because that’s just the way I am.)
4. The Toutle River, the river that gets most of the snow and glacial runoff from Mount St. Helens, is running fast and is as solid gray in color as the ash at the bottom of anyone’s wood-burning fireplace. Because the magma in the lava dome in the mountain is keeping temps up there between 600 and 1300 F degrees, the glacier that had been growing on the back side of the lava dome is melting away fast and was filled with gray ash.
5. The Castle Lake viewpoint is completely closed off to everyone other than media personnel only. The entire parking lot there was packed with news vans from everywhere. All local Portland, Oregon news channels, Vancouver, Washington, Longview, Tacoma, Seattle, etc as well as some big networks like CNN, ABC, NBC, FOX and a few I’ve never heard off. There’s a sign saying you’re not supposed to photograph that parking lot but I sneaked one, accidentally of course, not that you can see much through the brush.
6. Peak fall leaf color up there is nearly gone already. I thought this was odd. Lots of leaves on the ground and on the roadways. Peak leaf color viewing is just starting here around home, 40 miles to the south.
7. And finally, lots of helicopters flying around up there. My favorite sign seen for a helicopter tour business read, “Helicopter pilots: Watch your ash up there!”

October 17 2004

Random weekend thoughts:

On the good side, it’s official. It’s autumn here and downright COLD outside right this very minute. It’s been raining on and off all day and dark, thick clouds have been blanketing the area since Friday. This is expected to continue through next weekend. We are so happy. This is our time.

On the bad side, the last good people to live in our development are moving this weekend. To Alaska. They were the only people other than us in the entire development of 72 homes who don’t own a minivan or SUV. They were originally from Alaska but moved here for jobs about ten years ago. Every July they’ve gone back for a month vacation and like some people who pick up local newspapers or housing magazines, they casually look at the jobs market wherever they vacation. This year, she found a State government job listed, and so she applied, never thinking she’d hear another peep about it, and then, landed it. She had exactly what they were looking for in the state’s education system and the pay is enough to allow her husband of 38 years to retire at last. They were back here in town this weekend to pack up the rest of their stuff and sell their house, which was just around the corner from us. We are sad to see them go. We are the last “odd” ones living here.

Back to the good side, WS and I have been to the grocery store three times now since my surgery and yesterday it finally dawned on me: I’m not having to add feminine absorption products to our grocery list. In fact, I am easily able now to completely bypass the entire aisle that usually carries these items, which also has baby diapers, wipes and other assorted baby items on it. This feat has, essentially, given us a $10 to $15 a month raise. Let’s hear it for no more visits from Aunt Flo!

And on the really, really good side, my ex-stalker has died. Yes, I once had a stalker in real life who did bad things to me before there were laws invented to prevent such a thing. And it was WS who literally rescued me from him just over sixteen years ago. Oh, the things you don’t know and the things I could tell. Now, I just may dig out that novel I once thought I might write about that time in my life, dust it off and pick up where I left off.

October 18 2004

The sale of The Company went through today. The CEOs and all the Vice Presidents are multi-millionaires. The rest of us will be seeing the new organizational chart hopefully by this coming Thursday. They said some of us will be getting letters asking us to continue to work and the rest of us may be getting severance of some kind and help from recruiters to find other jobs. No word on when, exactly, this will happen. Given that they said the sale of The Company would take between 30 and 60 days, and it’s been less than 30 days, it seems they are rushing through everything.

For only the second time ever, MsNoManagementSkills fears for her job. Funny, since both WS and I have feared for ours every single month since 1998, partly because of her mouth. While it certainly would be nice to hear that she’s out, it doesn’t get her moved out of my neighborhood.

It’ll be interesting to see what they plan to do with me since I’m off work on Federal Medial Leave until November 18th, a solid month away. Anyone wanna take a guess on whether I have a job or not to go back to then? Maybe I should start a pool with the person coming closest to the dates of when I find out whether I have a job or not AND if not, when my last day will be OR if so, if my job remains the same as it is now, receiving a batch of home-made biscotti.
Anyone want to guess on whether MsNo keeps her job or not? I say she will. She’s always seemed to be made of Teflon: Nothing sticks to her and everything slides right off.

October 19 2004

Okay, tonight, we’ve had a real pisser. Please excuse my ranting. I just needed to get this all out.

Tonight, Tuesday night, at 8 p.m. we received an email from The Company CEO telling us we needed to fly to Company headquarters Friday in order to attend the new Company orientation and benefit fair being held on Monday and Tuesday morning. They will pay all travel expenses, car rental, motel stays and food for the entire trip. They want us to be there on Friday evening so we can go with The Old Company early Saturday morning to Mexico for a 24-hour “Let’s spend the last of the money/party-until-you-puke” turn-around trip. It is implied that if we go, we might be able to keep our jobs. If not, well, there’s nothing that can be done.

Now…(deep breath)… if you were four weeks into an eight week Federal Medical Leave thing because you had a 23-pound tumor removed and a hysterectomy, would you go? I would think someone, anyone, there at The Company would have an ounce of respect for me trying to recover and would make provisions for me not being able to attend any of this in person, but apparently not. I know I’m not special but c’mon! I can’t begin to vent my fury over this. I’m supposed to be recovering here, people!

Mere minutes later, while WS was venting HIS fury over the whole thing and raving about all the reasons why we shouldn’t be put into this position, MsNoManagementSkills popped into Company chat with WS and plied him on whether we would be able to make it or not. She’s going and taking DorkMaster with her for the Mexico portion of the trip. Oh, joy. We might have to sit there, on a six hour bus trip and listen to the man publicly entertain everyone with his musical asshole.

Okay, first, let’s address WS’s REAL job that doesn’t allow him to just take off work left and right, especially after taking a solid two and a half weeks off to care for his recovering significant other, just for the chance to try to keep a second job that pays a whole lot less. He’ll need to come up with a reason why he needs to take off Friday through Tuesday, without much notice. Not good. I’d hate to think he’d potentially lose his good REAL job just for a chance to keep his crappier second job that no one is even sure exists anymore.

Second, if I can make it to The Company trip to Mexico, why can’t I make it back to work earlier than my expected return date of November 18th? Won’t the New Company question this? Won’t everyone question this? I know I would. Or maybe that’s just me. I can tell you I have no intention of “partying until I puke” and will probably end up sleeping most of the time.

Third, WS is really venting his fury. He’s got reason to. He’s worried that all this stress and this trip will set back my recovery.

Fourth, I’d really like to keep my job for another couple of years. Sure, I hate the people, but I love working from home and getting paid a decent amount to boot. So, my first reaction after the “Oh shit!” part is to just deal with the timing and fly there. I realize my surgery and the sale of The Company came at the worst possible time with each other. It’s ironic really. I work here for just short of six years and never take any sick time off and the moment I have to take time off, boom! They sell The Company and start telling everyone they need to jump through hoops and maybe, just maybe, you’ll be able to keep your jobs.

Fifth, WS is still venting his fury.

Sixth, I’ll need to call the pet sitter and hope they call back before Friday and call for a car to take us to and from the airport. Our bottled water delivery was supposed to be on Monday, so we’ll need to figure out something there. We need to get pet food. We need to figure out what to wear. We need to get cash and re-find our birth certificates (I know where they are). And we need to do all this, plus laundry and cleaning before Friday afternoon. Oh, and I’m supposed to be taking it easy.

Seventh,…say it with me…WS is still venting his fury.

How fun is this going to be? How pissed would you be? And how pissed would you be if you knew that there is no guarantee that you’ll even have a job coming out of all this?

Welcome to today’s job world. Now, jump! Jump! JUMP!

October 20 2004

When life hands you lemons, start liking lemonade.

Okay, after late last night escapade with being told we had to fly to Company headquarters on practically no notice, the official word today is No, we don’t have to go after all. By going, I would actually be in violation of my Federal Medical Leave because I would be going on company business to conduct company business. That’s a no-no regardless if it may have been in order to save my job. I finally came to that conclusion after a good hour of heated arguing with WS. Somewhere around 2:30 a.m., I just gave up on thinking I really needed to go to save my job.

Upon waking this morning, WS told me he had gotten back an email from The Old Company’s CEO stating that they only sent us the email telling us to come “for our records” and that per my Federal Medical Leave, I couldn’t come. They also said they were going to send WS a separate email explaining all this, but that email has yet to arrive and I think it never will or would have. Technically, by sending us the email telling us to go in the first place could be cause for a legal matter if we wanted to push it. It was very unprofessional and disrespectful. But when you look at all the years of similar emails I’ve got squirreled away, just in case, it’s to be expected. I should look up what a statue of limitations might be on un-professionalism in the workplace.
After hearing this, I have given up on thinking I’ll have a job to come back to. Official, per FMLA, I will have a job to come back to; there’s just no guarantee that it’s the same job, or that I’ll have a job longer than it takes them to let me go. This whole thing has been too stressful and too tiring. Yes, both WS and I are still pissed that all this just HAD to happen at the same time as my surgery (for some odd reason, I keep hearing The Old Company CEO’s voice saying, “Lost to attrition. Lost to attrition” over and over again. It was one of their favorite phrases to drop everywhere.), and pissed that so far, nearly everything we were told about how the Company sale was going to take much longer than it actually did has been a lie. With how we feel right now, it’s probably best to assume our jobs are gone, get over the fury of that and get on with our lives. If it turns out we still do have jobs, then, hey! Life will only be looking up at that point, right?

So, in the meantime, we’re waiting to hear what kind of compensation we’re supposed to get in lieu of us not getting to go to Mexico, as was promised in an earlier email, and of which I’m certain we will never hear another word about and waiting until tomorrow evening or Friday to hear about the jobs fallout; who got kept and who’s going bye-bye. Since the entire Old Company is leaving early Saturday morning to get drunk in Mexico for the weekend, I’m half-expecting to not hear a thing until sometime next week. And since The Old Company CEOs have been caught in the past telling headquarter employees specifically not to share information with remote employees, I think we may be in for a stressful week or two….if we let it get to us. And I think we’re just about at the point that we’re not going to let it.
Thanks to everyone who has wished us well during this job thing. Your thoughts have really helped us feel much stronger.

October 21 2004

Well, that’s it. I saw it coming when we received a resignation email from The Old Company CEO last night. This morning we both got a phone call from MrSmartButFakingIt. We’ve lost our jobs. We’re to continue through to mid-January and then get the official boot to the ass. Get out. You are not wanted here. We get a paltry severance, but that’s better than nothing. Lots of people get nothing.

Severance. What a horrible word. What an emotionally filled word.

Why do I feel that I failed?

No word yet on what fate awaits MsNoManagementSkills.

I’ll update later when I find out. And when I can see the keyboard better to type.

UPDATE: How do you “Y*del”?

Today has been a day of complete shock and awe. Monday, The Company sale to the mega-giant search engine company was completed. This morning, we’re told we’ve lost our jobs. We get the official boot in mid-January. However, MsNoManagementSkills gets to stay on until the end of May, along with several of our coworkers. WTF?

In addition, they, the “Y*del” people, have reduced both WS and me to bottom level support people from our lofty Admin management and high tier support positions and stripped me of my Information Specialist status. They have also screwed up my email address because they didn’t spell it right. How hard would it have been to just copy and paste? Oh, that’s right. That would have been redundancy, and that’s what we were told we are now: Redundant.
Good-bye, redundant people.

In other non ex-job related news, we found out tonight that FatHead, MsNo’s ex-husband, who got married just this past August, did so because HE WAS RACING MSNO TO THE ALTER! No shit! But wait! It gets better. MsNo divorced him because he told her he didn’t want to have kids. Okay…

…and so he marries a woman with kids! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

We also found out tonight that BikerDude, the bad news guy who used to work for The Company before he tried holding The Company hostage for more money before The Company finally, FINALLY gave him the boot, and who caused WS and I such unfathomable grief, is moving back into town, moving back in with FatHead and his new wife, and has sworn to look us back up. No joy there. Allegedly, BikerDude told the guy who was telling us all this that he, BikerDude, was a big fan of us, because “we were interesting.” Yeah, I bet. More interesting than MsNo, his ex-lover? More interesting than FatHead, his “best friend”? You can bet our doors will be shut and locked tight from now on. Of course, now there is no way he can threaten to get our jobs yanked out from under us anymore like he used to do, is there…Still, I wouldn’t trust this guy any further than I could throw MsNo…who has blown up like a whale over the past month since I’ve actually seen her last. Holy Moly! Well, no more having to listen to her tell me in a Company meeting how much weight it looks like I’ve gained.

So, if you can’t tell, I’ve entered the anger stage of this whole job loss thing. That, and survival mode. Already, I’m turning off lights that I used to leave burning. I’ve asked WS to reprogram the thermostat at a lower heat temperature. I’ve started mentally checking off gourmet items from that grocery shopping list I have running in my brain at all times. WS has started reworking our monthly budget and we’ve discussed what we will ditch and what we will keep until the very last minute.

Satellite service goes, yard service goes, landscape lighting repairs and additions goes, bottled water stays until the end because we got it originally for our pets’ health and it has helped. Refinancing the house will be good, refinancing what’s left on my car is a no-brainer but new tires are out of the question until we absolutely, positively need them (I don’t drive it that much anyway.). No new clothes for winter. I’m okay with that. I’m not a big clothes person anyway and if I lose a few more pounds, I’ll be able to fit into my old jeans from two years ago, before Emil and Hubert’s bloated appearance in my life. I think WS is okay on clothes and shoes for now. In the coming months, we won’t be spending anything extra for our anniversary or the holidays and that’s just the way that’s going to have to be. We’re okay with that.

All in all, I think we’ll do fine. Things will be tight, but we’ll be just fine. We’ve got each other and that’s a lot, for love, we’ll give it a shot….Whoaaaa….We’re halfway there…Whoaaa-oooo, living on a prayer…

(I swear I have not been drinking tonight.)(Yet.)

October 24 2005

We had a decent amount of rain here yesterday and lots of big storms skirting us to the north. The colors were gorgeous as were the swirling clouds. I couldn’t help but think the storm clouds were all too similar to our feelings around here about being laid off last week and how we were feeling toward all our coworkers partying it up down on the Company-paid trip to Mexico, while we sat here restructuring our budget and our lives. I haven’t cried since early Saturday morning and I suppose that’s a good thing. Saturday morning, just before noon, I just got downright pissed because the “all important letter packette” from the New Company that was supposed to be hand-delivered via FedUp on Friday, never showed up. We were supposed to sign everything in this packette and return it immediately so it will be in the hands of the New Company people by tomorrow, Monday, October 25th. Yeah, well, we’ve yet to see it and it’s now Sunday.

Thank you, New Company, for forcing us to sit here for days waiting for a packette that I question you even sent when we really needed to go get pet food. Our pets understand completely, just like I understand how you’ve basically made me feel like I’ve had to go back to work all last week when I’m supposed to be recovering and not waiting for conference meetings, phone calls, checking my work email, replying to work email and waiting endlessly for letters I’m supposed to sign and rush right back to you. Thank you for setting my mental recovery back months. Thank you for caring. In return, you’ll understand if I never use your software again for the rest of my life.

October 25 2004

Late this morning, we finally received that New Company paperwork via FedUp that we were supposed to fill out and send back so it will be in their hands by….this morning. Clearly printed on the envelope is the delivery date of today, October 25th 2004, NOT last Friday’s date or last Saturday’s date as we were told. Lies number 4 and 5. I’ve got the feeling they are trying, purposely, to get us to quit before our January 14th lay-off day out of frustration and maybe so they won’t have to pay severance. They can try all they want. These people just really suck at professionalism and it really looks like they don’t have their shit together at all. Or worse. Like they treat people very, very badly. On top of this, they didn’t include a return envelope or tell us where to return the paperwork at all! This will add to the delay in getting it back. My coworkers are right this minute in individual meetings at Company headquarters, getting relocation offers and new job offers, but only after they return their paperwork. Talk about feeling out of the loop. So fricken’ typical.

…and so to get on with my life, because I do need to at some point for both my sanity and the sanity of those around me, it’s been just over a month since I had Emil and Hubert, my 23- and 5-pound fibroid tumors, removed. My battle scar is healing about as well as can be expected given that it looks like I ran belly-first into a running chainsaw. And with how large those tumors were, it was indeed my belly that stuck out there the furthest.

The very top of my scar area still hurts a bit when I get up too fast or twist wrong but it’s coming along. I started using that Neosporin scar reducer product about two weeks ago and we’ll just have to wait to see how well that works. They are buff-colored gauze BandAid type things that you wear for a minimum of twelve hours a day for three-to-four days in a row for twelve weeks total. Each box, which isn’t cheap but any means, has enough BandAids for twelve weeks. After each day, you wash them with mild soap and water, let them dry a bit, then slap them back onto your scar for another day. Odd sounding, I know, but I have read good things about them. I’m in no way looking to completely get rid of Emil and Hubert’s liberation scar, just tone it down a bit and this seemed like the right time to start, after the surgical incision has healed shut.

Since surgery, I’ve gained back two pounds of the twenty-one total I lost, but I’m not too worried. I’m not in a big rush to start back on Atkins’ just yet and it wouldn’t really be healthy right now anyway. Nearly two weeks ago, I started a reasonably heavy weight workout for my arms and shoulders and am doing squats (without any extra weight). No workouts around the stomach yet, but I’m starting to think about it.

Yesterday, I wore my next size down smaller levis because the ones I’ve been living in for almost a year threatened to fall off over my hips to my knees. In fact, I recently caught myself sticking my stomach out on numerous occasions to make my pants feel less like they were going south. I’m sure that was terribly attractive. But now, I’m out of the 38 inch waist size and back to square pants: 36 by 36. 36 waist by 36 length 501 button fly. Eventually, I’d like to get back to my ideal 32 by 36 but if it doesn’t happen, I’m not going to beat myself up over it. I haven’t been in that size since my 20’s. Twenty-five years later and four inches thicker in the waist ain’t that bad.

October 26 2004

I’m sitting here this morning listening in to a New Company conference call and wondering why I should care about any of it. Yes, I’m supposed to be recovering and not doing work stuff but the New Company (and The Old Company for that matter) does not care. We, as remote employees, were sent specific instructions on how to call into this conference meeting that is expected to last until later this afternoon. Joy. Given that we’re the ONLY remote employees not flown down to Company headquarters, I guess that means us, specifically, and we’re expected to call in.

And so, as I’m not supposed to be doing this, here I sit, working and not getting paid for it, while listening to this high energy PR guy yammer on and on about how cool the New Company is and I’m thinking “blah, blah, blah, quack, quack, quack” because in two months, I won’t have a job anymore and it’s because these people lied to us all.

I’ve started reading and re-reading some of my “How to Write Novels” books and when I can get into them, it’s going good. I’m retaining information. But for the past week, when I’ve got some kind of work crap to deal with first thing in the morning, and trust me, it always comes early in the morning and it all needs to be dealt with immediately regardless of whether I should be dealing with it or not, it just ruins the rest of the day. I can’t concentrate. I forget everything I read previously. I have the most horrible apathy towards anything, most of all, reading. I’m very resentful about this. But I trying to talk myself into remembering that this will only last a couple more months and for the time being, I still have three weeks left of “recovery.”

I just want my employer to leave me alone and stop pressuring me into having to deal with some job issue every.single.day!

I don’t know how the heck anyone would expect me to do any actual work, let alone quality work, once I get back to work in mid-November, knowing that they have let me go and I’m only there on borrowed time until mid-January. I would think they, the New Company people, would limit my access to everything just in case I have a bad morale issue and feel I need to disrupt things. And if my access is limited, what will they expect me to do, work wise? I’m sure they have something in mind. And I’m sure I going to be less-than-enthusiast to do it.

October 27 2004

Another day. Another slew of New Company job stuff. This entry contains more whining about losing my job. Move along if you are as tired as I am with reading about it. It’s just that I still have words burning in my heart to say about it. I swear to you, I’m trying hard to get them all out and move on.

When they, the Old and the New Companies stop sending me new stuff to become enraged over, I’m sure the healing will begin. Until then, I feel the need to write it all down, if for no other reason than to record what’s happening as it’s happening. Someday, I’ll look back and reread all this stuff and think: Oh, just shut UP already!

But until that time, yesterday I found out why they are letting me go six months earlier than everyone else. Listen to this reason. It’s good.

So, remember over the past year when I was given this and that project to work on? All those proofreading assignments? All that time spent changing The Company name from one spelling to the other and then back again on all those thousands upon thousands of Company documents? Remember that last project that The Old Company CEOs themselves told me to do even though I was completely unqualified to do it, but I did anyway and got a nice pat on the head (but no extra money) for doing it well?

Yeah, well, it was those projects that sunk me.

Earlier this month, the New Company requested all Old Company employee online work records for the department I work in. These records show how many customer emails any given employee processes and how long it took to do them. Everyone averages between 30 and 300 customer problem emails each day, depending on degree of difficulty. The records have no way of showing special projects or assignments worked on. It has no way of proving you were doing something asked of you instead of doing customer email. It’s just all about email numbers and there is no other way to verify doing anything else. Even so, this should be great for me…if the New Company wanted to look at the records further than the past year.

You see, up until this past year, I had the highest number of emails processed (and processed correctly the first time too) for almost five years running. But after five years of doing nothing but email and seeing MsNoManagementSkills, Ego, BikerDude, FatHead and WS move in higher level positions and away from having to do email, I voiced a desire to move into one of the Management Admin slots along side Ego, WS and MsNoManagementSkills. After all, The Old Company had hired a butt load of people at Company headquarters to do nothing but answer customer email all day and all night.

The Old Company CEO was fine with me moving away from doing email and started giving me special projects to do. Proofreading, changing, updating and creating documents, researching, etc. I did it all. In between these projects, I mentored the coworkers who then processed the emails I used to do. I offered them suggestions for customer resolutions and was always available, day or night, for information brain-picking. When BikerDude and FatHead were let go last year, I took over half of their job responsibilities as well (WS took over the other half) and continued doing the projects the Old Company CEOs came up with.
But all the New Company wanted to know was who was processing email over the past few months. Their decision is this: Whomever did the most email, gets to stay for an additional six months. Those who don’t process email or did very little of it according to the records, regardless of if they were assigned to another project and/or unless they are officially recognized as management, are asked to leave in January. WS and I were asked to leave in January. Everyone else is staying until May. Sucks to be us, as a few coworkers have literally written to tell us. As if we didn’t know that already.

So, effectively, when I voiced a desire to do something other than answer hundreds of customer email a day after five years, I cut my own throat. WS tells me it is really the New Company who is cutting their own throats by not looking beyond a bunch of numbers on a chart. Only time will tell if he is right. I’m sure he is. It’s just hard for me to see it just now.

October 28 2004

Because I am not a heartless bastard, I do actually feel for most of my coworkers, who were told this week that there is nothing for them, New Company job-wise, after their six months are up. I was sitting in on that last short meeting, learning why WS and I were being let go early and what job in the future, if any, I could maybe latch onto. I heard the New Company job director tell us all to check the external online New Company jobs listing once a week and to NOT ask for access for the internal New Company jobs listing. No explanation was given as to why we’re not to ask for access even when someone spoke up and asked directly. The silence that followed told us why. It’s not that we, the New Company, doesn’t need you, it’s that we don’t want you.

With every additional question asked during the meeting, it became glaringly apparent that this job director knew he was in a tight place, facing thirty-some people in person and a dozen more via conference call-in who are all scared for their jobs, and that job director skirted every single question asked. He kept saying, “I don’t want to say no, but…there’s always hope for someday in the future…”. Wouldn’t someone think that a job director, from just the job title itself, would be more upbeat and helpful? It began to sound like the only way he was being helpful was in protecting the jobs that were already filled by his own employees, and screw the rest of you! After a while, no one had any more questions and the meeting abruptly came to an end. I could hear everyone file out of the room and during so, no one said a word.

While this meeting was going on, I went out to that external online New Company jobs listing and found two jobs out of the 381 listed that didn’t require a Bachelor’s, Master’s or PhD degree in various multiple computer languages. Both of those jobs are in New York and are for facility waste workers. Bathroom cleaners. I can visualize the horror on all my coworkers’ faces when they got back to their desks and looked for a new job. None of my coworkers, MsNoManagementSkills and MrSmartButFakingIt included, have a degree of any kind. Only Ego has a degree. Ego will do well. Ego is a heartless bastard. For him, it’ll be like flying back home to the mother ship.

October 29 2004

I had a doctors check up appointment today. Everything is going well. I’m healing nicely. On the way home, we splurged on a couple of Starbucks and lottery tickets (we never buy lottery tickets, by the way). In the parking lot of the Starbucks, which is shared with a snooty-looking Safeway, we immediately noticed this car parked out front that obviously denotes that the Crown Prince of Safeway must be in town. This is one of those kinds of cars that even we, who are bonafided car-noticin’ people, see only once every five years if we are lucky. It’s a Saleen Supercar 7 and they start around $430,000 BEFORE the nice candy apple red paint job you see here on this one. Why this would be parked in a Safeway parking lot, one can only speculate, and we did have fun on the drive home coming up with reasons why it really might be there.

The “Risky Business/Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” scenario came up with parents out of town for the weekend and grocery-bagging teenage son decides to take dad’s pride and joy to work in lieu of riding his skateboard. “I’ll drive it home backwards to take off any mileage I put on it.” Or the suburbanite wife who’s SUV is in the repair shop and decides she really, REALLY needed to run by the grocery store just to “pick up a few things” and the only car available is the perfectly good one sitting in the “special” garage under a car cover. “Really dear, I don’t know how a little bird poop/a little car door ding/a little shopping cart scrape got on your car!”

In other news, with all the various stuff going on, my surgery recovery, the upcoming loss of my job, cutting back on living expenses, remembering all the things I wanted to buy and can’t/shouldn’t/wouldn’t buy now and trying to get over it, starting to think about going back to what’s left of my job in a couple of weeks, I haven’t slept well all week. Big surprise. I don’t have any problem getting to sleep. It’s the staying asleep part that’s starting to give me fits. It’s all the stuff colliding in my head at the moment. I keep thinking of all the things I wanted to do, things I should have done and things I wanted to buy but, for whatever reason, put off. Now that my job and WS’s secondary job is coming to an end, I’m kicking myself for procrastinating.

I think the biggest thing I wish I had done was get us away on some kind of a real vacation. Or maybe just a couple of real, non-working weekends out of town to the beach. But work always got in the way. Hehe, no worry about that anymore. Now we just don’t have the money.

Isn’t that just the way it always goes? Either you’ve got the money but no time, or you have all the time and no money.

Well, that’s the way it is here anyway…

Our big mission tomorrow is to make up a realistic meal plan for the next three weeks, then create a grocery list without any specialty or gourmet items on it and then, go grocery shopping and stick to the list. No special apple wood smoked bacon. No fancy-brand luncheon meat. No dessert cakes from Joseph’s bakery. No cut flowers from Argentina. No bottled fizzy water from Italy. No pate from France. No caviar from the Caspian Sea.

Okay, I don’t really buy caviar, but I seriously was considering it for this holiday season since recently finding a great local gourmet grocery store that carries it. I like caviar and used to be able to get it at a local ritzy restaurant in town before they went belly-up. (That wonderful, world-class restaurant building was turned into yet another one of those obnoxiously loud, party-type restaurants where the waiters and waitresses wear striped clothing and suspenders covered with dozens of buttons with clever sayings on them. You know the kind I’m talking about. Needless to say, they don’t “do” caviar.)

In creating our grocery list and meal plan, we’ll be trying to find a happy medium between what we’ve become used to over the past six years and how poorly we used to shop and eat before becoming corporate whores. Back then, when we only had one income, a mountain of debt and were half a step away from living in a cardboard box, we lived on Kraft Mac-n-Cheese, frozen French fries and Blogeois’ infamous Poor Man’s Soup.

What is Poor Man’s Soup, you ask? Well, it starts with boiling cubed potatoes in a huge pot. To this add whatever vegetables you might have in your fridge: Carrots, celery, a bit of onion, maybe some mushrooms if they aren’t too old. Add some dried beans or grains if you have that too. Since we were so poor back then, we shopped exclusively at a low-cost grocery store that had bins upon bins of bulk food. We used to stock up on bulk barley, rice and lentil beans (if the weevil infestation wasn’t too obvious in the bins that month.).

To all this, add a packet or two of any brand (or no brand) brown gravy mix, some salt and pepper, maybe a bay leaf or two if you have any and let it all simmer for about an hour an a half. If you like a thicker soup, stir in a few tablespoons of flour or cornstarch pre-mixed with room temperature water.

Makes about ten servings. Store in large Ziplock bags in the freezer for future meals in financially-lean months. Just heat and eat. Additionally, if you find you can’t afford to pay your electric bill, gallon bags of frozen Poor Man’s Soup packed tightly with the rest of your food can keep things cold for up to four days. In a pinch, you can also use a gallon Ziplock bag of frozen Poor Man’s Soup as an ice pack for a burn or strained muscle. During the heat of summer, pressing a bag of frozen Poor Man’s Soup against the base of your neck can help relieve heat stroke. If you haven’t already figured it out, Poor Man’s Soup can really be a life saver.

Gosh, I had hoped I would never have to think about Poor Man’s Soup ever again.

October 30 2004

It’s raining here today, a lot of rain, and raining while the sun is shining. I love it when it does that. We went grocery shopping early this afternoon, on that dreaded “stick to the meal plan and budget” trip (in which WS says we did great in spending $31 less than what we set as our limit), and at one point, it was raining so hard outside, we could hear it inside the store. I really love it when it does that.

I got pretty depressed and overwhelmed near the end of the grocery shopping when I found myself constantly trying to figure out which of some product was a lower price than another product and mentally trying to pinch every penny. Let’s not talk about that right now.
It was pretty cool to come home afterward and be able to fit everything into the fridge for once though. Usually, I need to do some creative cramming to get everything to fit in there. Not buying a bunch of boxed dessert items will do that! And who really needs that crap anyway? Not us.

Tomorrow is Halloween and I, for one, will be happy to have that holiday done and over with. I used to be such a Halloween fan, but given enough vandalism and bad mouthing (we dressed up too grimly), we stopped recognizing it a couple years ago. I never really felt good giving candy (and not the cheap stuff either) to demanding kids and in some cases, adults, which in my eyes just further helps create generations of Napoleans who cry and scream for everything they see.

I think this is a great place to tell you that The Ca-LEE-fornians moved out today. Yep, no one was more surprised than us this morning when we opened our blinds and saw a big U-Haul truck across the street and Ms.Ca-LEE-fornia herself, with her big pregnant belly sticking way out there, ripping these god-awful children’s lawn decorations out of their grass and throwing them literally, into the back of their pickup truck. For all the people they had moving them into this house less than one year ago, including a big fancy moving company, they looked like they were just trying to beat cheeks out of town today. So much for telling everyone they were in no hurry to move out.

Oh, and by the way, no, their house hasn’t sold. It seems like, to us anyway, that everyone who comes by to see the house on the inside, walks back out with either a shocked or pained look on their faces. Something tells me the place isn’t as “nice” as it was when they bought it, which is giving the old owners, The Blinders, a lot more credit than they deserve. Those people were outright pigs.

So, nothing else traumatic is planned for the evening, or tomorrow either. In about an hour, I’m planning on bringing in our big pumpkins, chrysanthemums, hose reel and chairs sitting out by our front door just in case the neighborhood gets a bit rowdy tonight. Oh, and our doormat too. An old friend of ours told us a few years back that in areas of British Columbia, Halloween night is also the night that people with nothing better to do with themselves steal people’s doormats and toss them into the streets. I don’t know why this is, but I really like our plain, black doormat and I’d like to keep it, thankyouverymuch. Anyone else ever hear of this?

November 1 2004

It just keeps getting better at my place of future unemployment. Today, the last Old Company CEO quit. Last week, all the other Old Company CEOs left.

Just before all that happened, we sent this last CEO a request for a reference letter, something I might be able to take with me when looking for another job come next spring. Usually, this CEO replies to our emails quickly, but not this time. As soon as I started reading their resignation email which was sent out company-wide, I knew we’d never hear from them again. That leaves trying to get a reference letter out of MrSmartButFakingIt, something we asked for the day after we found out my job was going away. Unfortunately, MrSmartButFakingIt has ignored every single email we’ve sent him since August. Frickin’ delightful! I guess I can write off getting those reference letters, unless I want to fabricate them myself.

And here’s another job quandary: Both WS and I have three weeks of vacation we need to take before the end of the year. We originally planned to roll it all over to next year, but since there isn’t going to be a next year for either of us, we figured we ought to take it before the end of this year. Here’s where the problem lies.

MsNoManagementSkills just sent out an email saying absolutely no more than sixteen hours of vacation time in a row will be given between Thanksgiving (U.S. celebrated) and New Year’s. And that if you need to take time, its first come, first served.

Now, look. I don’t go back to work until November 18th. That’s a week away from Thanksgiving. All our coworkers are going to be around until next May. They’ve got up until then to take their vacation time off! We’re being shown the door fourteen days after New Year’s for christ sake, and those fourteen days will no doubt be filled with exit interviews, debriefings, information exchange and paperwork shuffling back and forth between us and them, the New Company people. There is no way we can take our time off then, nor do we trust the New Company to pay us for time not taken come January 14th.

They’ve lied to us left and right. I’m not giving up what I’ve worked for. They may take my job from me but they aren’t taking my vacation time, and neither is MsNoManagementSkills. Though, trying to get the time off ought to be a hoot.

Onto happier, more cheerful things, around here in the Pacific Northwest, we’re sliding into the end of fall leaf color season. The maple and conifer covered hill behind our development is starting to change from yellow and orange to the soft gray greens of winter. One of the brightest colored maples grown in our area is a variety called October Glory, which turns brilliant red in, you guessed it, October. Last spring, I planted three of these between our house and The Dimmers and this year, we are really enjoying the color. Unfortunately, I wasn’t smart enough at the time to plant any of these where I could see them from inside the house, so I have to go outside the side garage door to view them. Silly me. I’ll know for next time.

November 2 2004

Okay, you’ve read my whining about being laid off come next January, about how depressed I got over knowing I’ll be losing the big income I’ve become accustomed to over the past six years and used to decorate this house and buy frivolous things here and there. And about how I’m trying to come to gripes with going back to lean financial times. And just when I think I’m ready to handle that, WS surprises me by doing what Donald Trump and Alexis Carrington did when they ran out of money: Buy something! He wasn’t exactly setting a good example for me, now was he? But wait! He bought…

…me my first laptop computer! And only a few weeks after I completely dissed all the ones we looked at over at Circuit City!

Confession time. I’ve never been a laptop computer fan. Ever. To me, the keyboards are too small or the battery life is non-existent. Or maybe it’s just that for years I listened to too many people go on and on and on about how cool laptops were. I don’t know, there’s just something about listening to people go all ga-ga about something that makes me want to run screaming in the opposite direction. And I’m sure the laptops of today are vastly improved from those of just a year or two ago.

And I’d be right! This thing whoops the llama’s ass! Finally I get it! I can now write journal entries anywhere! If I want to, I can now type merrily away while sitting on my lazy butt in front of the TV downstairs. All day long if I choose. I can take it with me to the kitchen, to the laundry room, outside even. I can even bring it to bed with me! I don’t have to get up, trudge to the office, power up my old desktop, circa 1996, just to type out something I thought clever but probably forgot half of by then. Noooo, now I can just whip out my laptop wherever I am and clickity-clickity, there’s a record of my thoughts.

And here’s the really cool part: Its got wireless, just like WS’s work laptop does. Yep, not only can I type wherever I want, I can read all your journals wherever I want. The living room, the bedroom, the bathroom…er, or not. But if I wanted to, I could. Consider yourselves warned. Good thing it didn’t come with a web cam, huh?

November 3 2004

The other day, I went wandering online, clicking other people’s journal links and found a strange looking icon on some journal somewhere that had a cartoon bunny on it. Now, everyone knows I’m a big sucker for cartoon-drawn bunnies and I thought it looked kind of like one of the 30-second cartoon bunnies. And EVERYONE knows I’m a huge sucker for the 30-second bunny theatre so I just had to click on that icon.

What I wasn’t paying terribly much attention to was the cryptic words also on that icon: NaNoWriMo participant, but luckily for me, the icon directed me correctly and promptly to the NaNoWriMo site. NaNoWriMo actually stands for National Novel Writing Month and I tell it, it was like a sign or something.
National Novel Writing Month occurs only once a year, for the entire month of November, and here I was on October 30th, at a strange site that talked about trying to get people signed up to each write 50,000 words between November 1st and November 30th.

Now, who was it who said they thought they would want to get back to writing, maybe for a living this time? Oh yeah, that was me. I tell you, it was a sign.

So I decided to register (it’s free and you don’t have to enter your real name or anything) so I could check out some of the information areas and messages in the forum areas. I started with the General FAQ and Technical FAQ which had me rolling on the floor in laughter, or maybe it was just me but then I moved into the message areas and one section caught my attention – Opening lines.

I’ve had what I’ve thought some really good story ideas but I always, ALWAYS get bogged down by that first line or two. I completely suck at opening lines. I also totally suck at naming stories and journal entries, but that’s another story. And there, in that forum section, there are some doosey opening lines. Stuff like, “You were the one who wanted to go to Mexico!” or “I need another Fanta!” or the standard “It was a dark and stormy night.” Suddenly, something there spoke to me. I opened Microsoft Word and started typing. Yes, yes! I think I just might be able to do this!

Thankfully, the point of writing these 50,000 words in the month of November isn’t to try to write something perfect, or even good. Crappy writing is GOOD. This is first draft writing with lots of plot holes and run on sentences just like here and typos even. It’s all about not editing your work as you work, or at least try not to edit too much. You’re on a timeline here. There is no time for editing. Remember: This is a first draft. First draft, First draft.

Someone once said write what you know. Well, I’m beginning to know all about how brutal the corporate world can be and how the corporate machine can chew up people’s lives and spit them back out broken.

So, I guess you can imagine what I’m going to write my 50,000 words about, Sometime this week, I’ll get my progress uploaded here and you can read along if you wish. Remember: First draft. Very rough first draft. And now, here’s a teaser. My opening paragraph:

“I haven’t looked at myself in over a week. I imagine that situation won’t change much before the end of the month. They say only two things are certain: Death and taxes. This always stuck in my head and lately, I’ve been focused on, no, obsessed with the death part because I knew with absolute certainty that Carrie Hunt must die.”

Oooo…so serious!

November 5 2004

Hi. Is it the weekend yet?

Finally, we got a hold of MrSmartBUtFakingIt today. Actually, WS had to call him long distance because MrSmart had been avoiding us like the plague really busy and for once, it seems like things might be going in our direction. We got our three weeks of vacation off. This means that on and on throughout Thanksgiving and New Years’s, we’ll be off a few days here, a week there, and few more days here and another week there…

THROUGH THE ENTIRE HOLIDAY SEASON! Ya hear that, MsNoManagementSkills? Yeah, you. The bitch whose gotten every fricken holiday season off for six LONG years. The ONLY one to get that time off for six LONG years.

Okay, I’m done. Going to my happy place.

Across the street, the Ca-LEE-fornians aren’t moved out yet. They have 98 percent of their stuff out and are sleeping on the living room carpet with blankets every night (they don’t close their front blinds) and are living out of a large ice chest, but I’m sure that’s just because, in their own words, “Aren’t in any hurry to move out.” get out, already!

They have a huge U-Haul truck parked out front of their house right now, for the second weekend in a row. They seem to only move at night, as if they were a fly-by-night business and it’s creepy.

Around the corner and down the hill from us, the last cool people in the development, the ones who moved to Alaska, have gone from trying to sell their house on their own to putting it up under a real realtor, and raised their asking price from $249,000 to $273.600. We had told them a couple of weeks ago that everyone else in the neighborhood was selling their houses for nearly 300K, so why shouldn’t they? We didn’t really think they would take us seriously, but bring it! If any of these people can sell their houses for what they are asking, the better for us.

It’s been down to freezing here at night already and looks like that might continue for the next day or two. Very foggy and frosty in the mornings. Yesterday, I disconnected our garden hoses for the winter and placed the protecting foam covers over the facets. This weekend, we’ll be stacking all the patio furniture and covering them until next spring.

Our maples have dropped half of their leaves and Spencer, our lawn guy, had a ton of leaves to haul away today. HA! That sure saved us from hauling out and paying for multiple extra trash bags full of leaves (We’ve got no way to take them to any leave collection site.) Spenser does an awesome job of raking all the planting areas out and everything looks so professionally maintained afterward. Which is good, because we’re paying him to do just that. We’re going to try to go as long as we can before we have to get rid of Spenser. Funny, but the one big thing I always wanted in my life was to be well enough off to have a professional gardener at my beck and call, and just a month after we get one, we get news that we’re being laid off. Hmm.

This coming weekend, (no, we’re not going to beach – damn!) I’m going to try to figure out how to install the other side of our backyard’s landscape lighting. We’re got most of the stuff, it’s just been raining, then WS hurt his back, then I was recovering, it’s always been something. But I figure if we don’t get it installed now, it’s only going to get colder and wetter before Christmas and I was hoping to use the landscape lighting as part of our Christmas decorating out there and not have to string as many lights. Technically speaking, I don’t HAVE to string any lights, but I do love Christmas lights, especially, my own.

We’re also going to be waiting patiently for both the Oregon Megabucks and Powerball lottery drawings, because we bought tickets for them today. Megabucks is up to something like 26 million and Powerball is up to 44 million. Yes, I know our chances are astronomical to win, but someone might and it might as well be us.

Besides, how cool would that be to be laid off in two months, but know that you’d won a big lottery in the meantime? Gee, I don’t think you’d see me doing much more crying.

Okay, maybe tears of joy.

November 6 2004

I know. In my last journal entry, I spelled “Spencer” differently twice in the same sentence. I was simply giving him the benefit of the doubt as to which spelling he might prefer. It’s not like I stood out there and asked for the exact spelling of his name, WS.

Oh, I’m sorry. Did I just say WS? Hey, I’m in first draft mode. What I type doesn’t have to make sense. Besides, this new laptop didn’t tell me that either one was misspelled, so there.

My NaNoWriMo novel is going well. I’m writing from the heart of my emotions and boy, do I have a lot of emotions pent up. Yes, my novel is about my job over the last six years. Yes, most of it is true. Yes, I changed the names of all the guilty parties. Yes, someday I will pointedly point my story out to them all. Even sooner if I win a lottery, thus protecting myself better from any lawsuit that might ensue.

Today, the fog never cleared out of our area and it was hazy all day. By 3 p.m., it seemed like it was still 10 in the morning…not that we saw 10 in the morning here. We were absolutely lazy for once and stayed in bed watching TV until noon. I honestly don’t think we’ve ever done that before. Ever. But was nice. We got hooked on a couple of those video crack channels running hour-long shows on volcanoes and Imhotep. Where did the time go?

But by 1, I was up and maybe more importantly, had gotten WS out in the back yard with me to work on getting the rest of our back yard landscaping lighting installed. It had been sitting in the boxes in our garage for months, bought before we knew we were going to be laid off, and what better time to get it in but on a cold, foggy day? (Actually, a more fitting day would have been a cold and rainy day, but we might not see any rain for a week and I was tired of tripping over the boxes every time I got into the bird food.)

By 4:30, not only did WS get the rest of the landscape lights installed, we had buried most of the 150 feet of wire, then stacked and covered all of our patio furniture for the winter, with the exception of our chaise loungers which ended up not fitting into the cover we had bought for it. As it was, the cover we did buy for it has a gimpy seam that wasn’t sewn together as it should have been. Sounds like another trip to Lowe’s is in our future (‘cause they help improve home improvement.)

Now, we’re sitting here in the Library, each trying to write our novels. WS has drunk a bottle and a half of wine by himself and is still coherent. It’s his size. It’s hard for a 6 foot 6 inch tall, 300 pound guy to get drunk. I know, I’ve tried (and ran out of money in the process.). I’ve been really tired in the past couple of days which I attribute to the cold weather we’ve been having and after writing for a few hours, my brain is tired too. I’m ready for bed.

November 8 2004

It’s my second to last Monday off before going back to work. I go back on the 18th, a Thursday and work that Thursday and Friday. The following Monday after that, I’m off again for all of Thanksgiving week on paid vacation. I can live with going back to work for two whole days. It’s after that week that I really have to go back to work. Since I’ll only be around until January 14th, and given that I’ll have yet another week of vacation in there somewhere plus an extra day or two, I’m trying to think of ways to make my remaining work days fun, within reason. I can’t do anything that would get me fired. If so, I’d lose the whole four thousand dollars I’m getting for severance (and four thousand dollars can buy a LOT of Top Ramen noodles!).

I’m going to bend over backwards to put on the air that I’m nothing short of happy, cheery, and downright perky in all my dealings with my soon to be ex-coworkers, supervisors, and manager when I go back. I’ll be finding out this week through WS what I’ll be expected to do when I get back to work. So far, from MrSmartButFakingIt’s conversation with WS last Friday, it sounds like what they, The New Company people, have in mind for me won’t be fun in the least. It won’t matter to me though. This whole thing will and is their loss. They have no idea what kind of stupid move they pulled in getting rid of me and WS now, and keeping MsNoManagementSkills until May. Come January 15th, I’ll be laughing.

Speaking of MsNoManagementSkills, knowing that she’s only being kept with The New Company until May, she’s already found a way she thinks she’ll be able to make as much money as she did working. She’s started to learn how to play online video poker. Yep. Apparently, her crooked accountant dad talked her into it and told her he makes up to seventy-five bucks an hour. I think he forgot to tell her that he only plays a few times a week and he isn’t in charge of taking care of three, completely-out-of-control young children that aren’t even hers 24/7 while their father, her new husband sits on his butt, playing video games and chatting in porn rooms.

I seriously doubt she could make fifty thousand plus a year playing online poker, and that’s what it would take for her to make what she currently does. As a back up plan, she openly shares her plans to not go back to work at all and stay home to take care of his kids, thus saving their father fifteen hundred dollars a month in day care costs over the summer, just like she’s always wanted to do, and exactly what he DOESN’T want her to do. In fact, that was part of exactly why he divorced his children’s mother. He wanted her to go to work, their lifestyle needed her to get a job, and she didn’t want to.

Of course, she’s got about a hundred thousand dollars in Old Company stock and “divorce” money still coming to her (she thinks. I don’t think she’s gonna see any divorce money. FatHead has moved on.). So maybe she will get what she always wanted after all.

Oh, and its official. When I had Emil and Hubert surgically removed in September, they also removed any desire I might have had for coffee. Or maybe…it was Emil and Hubert who were the real coffee lovers, and not me at all. In addition, I no longer have any desire to eat sushi. So odd.

November 10 2004

I just passed 30,000 words in my NaNo novel tonight, actually last night. It’s after 2 a.m. right now and I’m just now going to bed. WS is up to 17,000something in his but he spent a lot of time this evening making out a long and detailed story outline which doesn’t count toward the word count. Up until yesterday, I felt I wouldn’t be able to reach 50,000 before having to go back to work on the 18th, something I’m trying hard to do, because something tells me I’m not going to want to anything after going back to work but whine and complain. I hate how that job consumes my creativity and sucks my very will to live.

Today was the first day that it hadn’t been foggy all day long since last Thursday. Of course, it had to be cloudy instead, but that’s okay. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow and I do hope so. We could use a shower or two just for the plants sake.

Yesterday morning, I watched a solid gray, shorthair male cat eat the leftover bits of cat food I had given our hired mouse killer cat, right outside our sliding glass door. I’ve seen this cat here and there in our neighborhood over the past year and a half. He is very skitterish about people so it was a treat for me to see him up close as I peeked at him from around a corner in our kitchen. He is built like a tank! Short legs, wide, solid body, gold eyes, and the entire tip of his left ear is missing. So, I named him. Oh, c’mon. You knew I was going to. I’ve named him Tyson.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Tyson was the guy who bit off his opponent’s ear. But hardly anyone can name the guy whose ear was bitten off. Tyson it is. I’m not changing it now.

WS tells me someone else’s cat was squished just outside our development overnight. I hate to hear this but feel better knowing not where to walk should I get off my butt and go out walking. He thinks it was a sweet orange and white cat who lived the next street over and who we saw sometimes when we walked the development. If he had a red collar on and had half a tail, it was him.

Also yesterday, across the street at the Ca-LEE-fornians, apparently, they are out completely. They left their trash cans out at the curb and had them marked so the garbage men would take the cans along with the garbage. Also, the For Sale sign in the yard is gone and an electric company guy came by, pounded on the door for a while, then put a tag on their doorknob, walked around to their side yard, and shut their power off. No more lights on over there.

WS says he thinks they were in trouble and had to foreclose on their house. It is the only thing that makes sense, given their attitude about not being worried about being able to sell it and not moving out until they had to. If I were in that position, I would be worried sick for years after that. Old Ms. WorryWart.

So, that’s it. I’m here, not doing much of anything but writing as much as I can before the 18th and trying to keep the house clean. Nothing else is going on. Hope things are going good with you!

November 11 2004

The days and nights are flying by now. Since signing up to hack out a novel, the average day consists of cleaning the house in the morning and writing all afternoon, going well into the night. Sometime between midnight and 2 a.m. we go to bed and shut off the music or TV. In what seems like less than a half an hour later, the sun is up and it’s time to get out of bed. WS heads off to work and the day starts all over again. That will all change soon enough.

I go back to work a week from today.

Across the street this morning, a new family is moving into the Ca-LEE-fornian’s house. I’ll need more time to come up with a nickname for the newbies to the neighborhood. What I can tell you up front about them is that from the amount of children’s toys they are unloading from the back of a relative’s pickup truck, they do have at least one young child who is learning to ride a bicycle. They may have a second (third, fourth, fifth, who knows?) younger child because they have one of those god-awful strollers that looks like large purple bugs with a stick handle coming out of it’s butt.

The adults could currently be described as a mousy-looking, fairly non-descript woman. The man, however, is tall, thin, bald, and has a severe walking impediment. To be honest with you, and from being married to someone who occasionally has a hard time walking due to MS, I honestly don’t know how this guy remains upright because he is all over the place, literally. I’ll give the guy credit though and you won’t see me calling them the gimp, the crab, or the ‘tard family anytime soon. Unless, of course, they ask me to. Besides, I feel like I’ve got a walking impediment all the time. It’s called being fat and clumsy. His just looks a bit more obvious.

The wife (assumably) had placed a large blue bath towel outside the front door so they could wipe their feet before going inside. Unfortunately, the man with the walking issue keeps getting his feet tangled in it. I really don’t want to watch someone tumble backwards off their multi-step porch. So let’s move along, shall we?

MsNoManagementSkills has set up an Amazon wish list for herself in preparation for losing her job next May. She believes that everyone else is going to support her once she is out of work. The sad thing is, everyone probably will. The good thing is, I won’t be one of them.

Behind us, at Cap’t Dan’s, his Harry Potter-looking son has finally tacked up a sheet across his bedroom window. He may have finally figured out that the thing sitting in our office window is a web cam. Too bad he doesn’t know it isn’t pointed at him. Too bad he didn’t notice it sooner.

I ellipticalled for five minutes straight yesterday, the first time since surgery. Outside, clear, sunny weather is promised for today and tomorrow. My brain feels muddled and tired today. Saturday afternoon, we may drive up to Tacoma for a few hours to see some car people we know. We may win the still-unwon lottery this weekend. I may finish the first draft of my novel next week. We may drive to the beach in a couple of weeks. I may get over losing my job next year, not that I’m bitter.

November 15 2004

Generally, I love Novembers. Falling leaves, gray skies, lots of rain: All the wonderful things that make up autumn’s slide into winter…and for most people, the slide into depression. Not for me though. Or, I should say, not for me until this week.

There’s nothing like endearing yourself to your new neighborhood by trying to squeeze too big a truck into your driveway and running over your neighbor’s sprinkler system during the process. No way for us to tell if it’s broken yet. We just had the entire system shut down two weeks ago for the winter. The new neighbor from across the street, flailed over and introduced himself to WS who was out there inspecting the damage. The man offered to pay for any damage if, in the spring, it proves to be busted.

I guess that means he and his family plan on staying at least that long. Oh joy. Since they aren’t anywhere near to being moved in yet, I can hardly wait to see what else he has in store for us.

Also, and just as a tip: If you dump a big pile of Styrofoam packing peanuts on your lawn, don’t later run over them with your lawnmower thinking that will make it all better. Today, everyone in the neighborhood is “enjoying” a little piece of that stupid move. A little piece here, a few more little pieces there, an entire drift over there, and still more way over there. We ought to bill the guy not only for our sprinkler but for our weekly lawn service that will spend more time picking up his mess in our lawn this week than doing what we normally pay them to do.

On the more personal front, I go back to work Thursday and frankly, knowing that the Big-Ass Corporation who bought out The Company I worked for is just laying me and everyone else off beginning mid-January, it makes me want to thumb my nose at every thing. I don’t feel like getting out of bed. I don’t feel like cleaning the house. I don’t feel like writing. I don’t feel like feeling anything. Depression has set in.

And really, it shouldn’t! I only have to work this Thursday and Friday, before taking a week and a half off for vacation. Basically, this means Thursday I’ll spend going through the three hundred work emails I’ve received since the day before my surgery back on September 22nd. Friday, I’m certain someone, maybe MrSmartButFakingIt or MsNoManagementSkills, will contact me to work on some pointless project in order to help transition The Company information into the Big-Ass corporation’s grind mill. Perhaps maybe someone from the Big-Ass corporation will contact me. Perhaps not. Either way, unless it’s something they are willing to wait until December or early January for, I think they’re going to learn rather quickly that my top priority is me and not helping out their multi-billion dollar company whose reputation of treating their employees no better than how someone would treat horse poop stuck on their shoe, is widely known in the computer world.

November 17 2004

Nothing much going on over the past couple of days. I’m trying to keep up a good attitude given that I have to go back to work tomorrow. And you all know how I feel about that. I’m determined to have fun with it though. I’ll be thanking my coworkers for asking about me while I was gone and letting them know that .jpgs are available if they want to see my cool scar.

I’ll be starting the day off tomorrow with a Day In The Life photo shoot. You’ll get to see how my workday goes from the moment I open my eyes until I hit the pillow at night. C’mon, it’ll be fun!

This afternoon, I got my hair professionally done for probably the last time. One hundred twenty dollars every three months is just too steep for me. I caught myself at the grocery store this morning, comparing pennies per pound again. My mindset is definitely gearing up for the job loss. And no, I didn’t stop at Starbucks just because I took WS to work today and had his car. A first, to be sure. But I did go to Craft Warehouse. Settle down! I went to look at their decorated Christmas trees…and didn’t buy a single thing. Another first. I’m learning!

Only 4000 words left to go on my NaNo novel. I’m going to be taking my time with this last bit because I want the end to be good. Not cheapened by simply needing to wrap everything up. I have until the 30th of November to finish it. Now that the story has all the elements of what really happened, I’m now writing what has yet to happen, or could happen in the future (if I really went off the deep end) and this part will be the hardest for me to get out. Thanks for your patience.

November 18 2004

A Day In The Life (of a soon to be laid off support rep.)

WARNING: This is the longest journal entry you will ever see here. Although all images below have been optimized for very slow connections, it is possible that this entry will NOT be DIAL-UP friendly. My sincerest apologies should that be the case.

8:27 a.m.
The day began. Yep, the ceiling is still there. And up there, no less.
8:30 a.m.
Crap. It’s already 8:30. Thinking ahead about eight and a half hours, that means I’ll be working until at least 5:00 p.m. Time to get up!
8:35 a.m.
Grabbing socks. Please avert your eyes to other unmentionables seen on the right. Note how relatively organized my drawer is? Yeah, a person can get a lot done when they’re away from work for eight weeks.
9:06 a.m.
Finally, going into the office to get to work. You’d think by my commute time, all of about fifteen seconds, I would have been to work long before now. But there was that whole brushing teeth, brushing hair, washing face, feeding pets, stepping in pet barf, washing foot, cleaning floor, changing socks, opening blinds and drapes, peeking out windows front and back, and then finding out that my work computer locked up sometime last month.
10:00 a.m.
Here’s WS finishing up fixing my frozen computer, not to mention reminding me what my work username and password was. Yeah, I’m all broke up about forgetting those.
10:17 a.m.
Finally, after wasting nearly two hours, I’m able to log into work. This now means I’ll be working until 6:30 p.m. Grrr…
11:32 a.m.
Yep, still working. Where else did you think I’d be? I only have about 340 emails left to go through. I’ve been chatted at twice for nearly an hour (a great time waster whether work related or not, although MrSmartButFakingIt and Ego regularly go through the chat logs to see what we all might be chatting about, so nothing risqué there!). I’ve been officially on the clock for two hours now. Only seven hours left and you know what that means…
11:36 a.m.
COFFEE time! I definitely need a little caffeine to keep me going today. I’ve got all that backlogged email and I’m still expecting MsNoManagementSkills to pop in sometime and tell me I have to do this or that as an initiation back to work. Yeah, she does this. I think it’s because she hates it when she isn’t the center of attention and it seems that I am today. I’ve already had two requests to see my scar picture.
12:08 p.m.
Thank god for coffee. A few weeks back I thought I no longer had a taste for the stuff. Boy, was I wrong. Starting to stress about going back to work seemed to have knocked that notion out of my head. Luckily for me, I picked up a big bag of Millstone Holiday Peppermint just yesterday. It took me a half an hour to make the first pot because I kept hearing work chat calls, meaning I had to stop everything, go back upstairs, and answer the chat before resuming my all important coffee break.
12:11 p.m.
Back upstairs to answer another work chat call.
12:43 p.m.
Back downstairs to finish making coffee.
12:44 p.m.
Back upstairs to answer yet another work chat call. Rinse. Repeat.
1:19 p.m.
Back downstairs to finally get coffee. Lovely socks don’t you think?
1:56 p.m.
Okay, you caught me looking longingly at my comfy bed. It’s coming up on four hours of work on my first day back from being off for eight weeks to recover from surgery. I thought I was ready for sitting here in front of my work computer for a minimum of eight hours. Funny how I can sit in other rooms in front of my laptop for eight hours, ten hours, even more without feeling tired. It must be the company I’m keeping at work. Yeah, I think that’s definitely it. Ugh.
1:59 p.m.
Back at work. Only two hundred emails left. Most of these are from Ego, meaning most of them are filled with self-puffery, “Looky at what I did here! Looky what I did there! Aren’t I cool?” BTW: Ego does have a continued job with the Big Ass corporation as does MrSmartButFakingIt. Surprise, surprise, though from what I heard from coworkers at Company headquarters, the brown stuff around their lips and noses was noticeably visible for weeks after the sale of The Company.
3:02 p.m.
Fun, fun, fun! Still at work. Boring, isn’t it? Try doing this day after day for eight hours a day while knowing that you’re considered ‘redundant’. Or better yet, try doing this while thinking about how you’ve only got a few hours left today and eight hours tomorrow before you’re off for nine days in a row. I’m trying not to let my mind wander. Oh, I’m not really complaining. I’ve had worse jobs. Trying to become the first woman meat cutter in a male-only grocery store back in the 80′s instantly comes to mind. Nope, don’t miss the stinking meat carcasses or being purposefully locked in the freezer with the store’s regional manager. That guy was disgusting (and I’m not just talking about his breath!) Please note that in this shot, the TV is on in the background now.
3:11 p.m.
Third cup of coffee. No, I didn’t take the camera on any of the subsequent bathroom trips.
3:15 p.m.
So I lied. Here’s a bathroom shot. Sue me. Actually, it’s of our shower. Oh lovely shower. How I long to embrace your soap, your shampoo, and take a half an hour out of my day to use you, to wash my hair, to suds myself up….uh….sorry, this isn’t THAT kind of journal! Alas, another work chat call summons me back to work yet again. The shower will need to wait but not too long – sniff, sniff – No, definitely not TOO long.
4:15 p.m.
After another hour sitting on my butt in front of the monitor, I sense someone calling to me. Here, one of our pets telepathically teases me to come back to bed. BAD CAT!
4:17 p.m.
Yet another pet teases me. “Come take a nap with me!” he insists. Lucky for me, I’ve got a stronger will (it’s called needing a paycheck). They’ll have to try harder than this!
4:25 p.m.
Down to two hours left. And you know what that means? No, not more coffee. It’s time to take a look at everything on my desk! Tissues, seven note pads, four kinds of air freshener, my coffee mug, three computer mice, a couple of calendars, a bottle of lotion that needs refilling, a number two pencil, a bowl of pens, phone headphones, a paper plate, some car magazines (I just might need to go through those later), and more remotes than any one person has a right to own, especially since I’m NOT a remote control person at all. Oooo…look! Something shiny! Paperclips! Who threw paperclips on my desk? Note: TV still on in background. You never know when breaking news about Nicholas Cage might be reported.
4:39 p.m.
Now just look at what I’m missing outside! A heron standing on top of Cap’t Dan’s house right behind us! I think this heron was trying to distract me from working too. BAD HERON!
6:31 p.m.
Finally, done going through my email and finished for the day. I got through without as many coworker interruptions as I expected, only six today, and no one contacted me to begin work on a new project. If I can get through tomorrow like today, I’ll be one happy camper!

As for the email, out of a total of 364 emails, 38 of them were telling me of great deals on Rolex watches, 16 were for software deals I could easily pass up even though they swore I wouldn’t be able to, and who knew how many ways I could enlarge my penis!

All in all, 243 were work-related, 81 were Big-Ass corporation morale busters, including one offering definitely not cheap real estate services for any of my coworkers who have decided to relocate to Santa Monica, as if any of them could afford to actually live there. 102 were morale buster emails from MsNoManagementSkills and Ego, one of which tells us mandatory overtime will be put into place shortly for the holidays (Too fun! Especially for salaried workers.), and the remaining 60 emails were a combination of old Company business information and info pertinent to the department I work in and to my job in particular.
7:24 p.m.
Here I am watching School of Rock during dinner. Yeah, I’m living on the edge here because I salute those about to rock. After this, I’ll clean up around the house and since it’s Thursday, that means TV night around here (the only one we usually observe). O.C. is up tonight and then we watch the taped Survivor episode, followed by the local news and then we usually surf around looking for video crack like something on the Discovery or History channels, or maybe A&E. Excitement, I tell you.
10:12 p.m.
Even more TV. In bed even, under cozy flannel sheets, a coverlet, and a down comforter. It’s sprinkling outside and very cold. Should be down around 30 degrees tomorrow night at this time according to the weather report with snow in the mountains and dry weather here.
11:59 p.m.
Finally lights out! Thanks for sticking with me to the end!

November 19 2004

Looks like tomorrow is going to be a clear, dry day around here. Temps around mid to low 50’s F. Perfect for putting up holiday lights….if one were so inclined. To be honest, I’ve been thinking about it. I’m sure it’s because every major store on the planet has had their Christmas and Hanukah decoration out since before Halloween. At least around here they have and I may have been influenced. No really, I’m debating just getting out a few strings of net lights for the two or three trees (probably, but don’t hold me to that few) in the backyard. It’s not like I’ll be turning them on or anything until after T-day (Thanksgiving U.S. observed).

Next week looks like nothing but rain, rain, rain and honestly, who likes to put up lights when it’s 45 degrees F. or lower in the pouring rain? Not me, yet I do have this ingrain tradition of putting up lights over Thanksgiving weekend. But knowing it’ll be dry this weekend and wet that weekend, hmm, sounds like a no-brainer to me.

Did I mention that we’re officially on vacation now until December 2nd? No? Well, we are. We’re using up the vacation we saved all year because the Big-Ass corporation has a habit of “losing track” of people’s vacations, nor do we trust them at this point to pay us for them when we leave involuntarily come January.

What do we have planned for vacation? Well, a vacation of course, silly. Okay, that’s not entirely true. You know we don’t take vacations (probably should have back when we knew we had jobs though). We both plan on finishing our NaNoWriMo novels, WS has just under 20K words left, I have about 4K left. I already mentioned the holiday lights thing, and a week from Sunday, we’re going to the coast for two days. Yep, we’re going to actually do something! The old Company owes us something in the range of $300, they say, because we couldn’t go on that company-paid, company-wide Mexico trip last month. They told us to do something around that amount and to send them the bill for re-imbursement. So, we’ll be going out of town for a couple of days.

If you’ve been keeping up on how badly this whole Company buy-out and rape the employees thing has been going, you know as well as I do that we’ll go ahead and go out of town, then we’ll send in the receipt when we get back, and never see a dime in re-imbursement. Why should anything go right now?
So, let’s just say I’m going to be making the extra, EXTRA effort to enjoy myself on that two day vacation, because A) It’ll probably be our last for a long while, and B) Because we’ll probably be paying for the whole thing out of our pockets anyway. Good reasons, I think.

November 21 2004

We spent the day today trying to write and ended up putting up outdoor holiday lights instead. Not many, mind you. It is cold out there. Yes, we put them up earlier than usual and before Thanksgiving. That’s because we are slated for nothing but solid rain for the next two weeks and today was the last dry day. Lights are up on the lower level of the house (we don’t have any way of getting up to the very top) and on six dwarf Alberta spruces out front, three on each side up by the fence. Out back, I’ve got the six foot Frasier fir done but still need to do the Alpine fir on the other side, closest to the web cam. Since we were able to get landscape lighting in this summer and fall, I won’t be putting as many holiday lights out there this year. I still think it will look great. And no, none of the lights are turned on yet (other than the few minutes we tested them). We’ll wait until after Thanksgiving for the official lighting. As it was, Mr. Dimmer next door was making fun of us. He had nothing better to do, I’m sure.

As for inside our house, we’re going to wait until Thanksgiving day or later before decorating, except for putting up a tree in our bedroom. I think we might try to start setting that one up early this week simply because we want to get out all the decorations we normally put on it to see if it’ll still look good with the new bedroom wall color. Up until this past January, the walls were deep Burgundy. Now they are an aged basil green. I think everything will look fine because, really, it’s hard to screw up a Christmas tree. I for one, honestly liked Charlie Brown’s scrawny tree in the Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown cartoon. Just the point of designating a tree for the holidays makes them all special to me, even more so if you aren’t chopping one down but have found one of those fake ones that doesn’t look fake. Okay, enough tree hugger stuff.

We’re on vacation until December 2nd and too happy about it for words. This week, I’ll be finishing up my novel and helping WS to finish his. We need to go to Lowe’s for some home improvement stuff and do our grocery shopping no later than Tuesday. No way am I going anywhere near a grocery store Wednesday. I think we’ve decided on pork tenderloin, rosemary baby potatoes, and salad for turkey day with all the other fixings that go with it: Cranberry sauce because we both love it, pumpkin pie, and a special wine because not only is it Thanksgiving, but it’ll be our fifteenth (15th) anniversary too. We honestly don’t know anyone else who’s lasted 15 years together and that seems so odd to us, as if we were the old couple now. I remember hearing about couples who had stayed together 25 years or more back when I was growing up. I’m sure it’s just because I don’t know as many people now as I used to.

We made homemade lentil soup yesterday because WS really, really wanted it, even though I think he’s mildly allergic to it. It’s easy to make. Most of the time spent making it is preparation time. Here’s the recipe I swear by:

¾ pound bacon – Nueskes’ Apple-wood smoked bacon is the best (ask your Butcher or visit www.Nueskes.com)
½ cup minced leeks or substitute 1/3 cup minced shallots
½ cup minced white onion
1 cup finely minced carrots
2 tsp thyme
½ tsp black pepper
3 bay leaves
2 quarts chicken stock
2 cups dried lentil beans
2 cups cubed potatoes – small cubes
1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley

Chop bacon into small cubes and fry in a large stock pot. Make sure bacon is well cooked but not burnt. Keep resulting grease in pan with bacon and add minced leeks (or shallots), minced onion, and minced carrots. Cook until golden brown. Stir and scrape bottom of pot often.

Add thyme, pepper, bay leaves, and chicken stock to bacon mixture. Stir in lentils and simmer for ½ hour. Add cubed potatoes and simmer until lentils and potatoes are tender and soup has thickened, about ½ hour to 45 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in 1/3 cup chopped parsley. Serve.

Eat on a cold, fall or winter’s evening. Makes 8 hearty servings, or enough for 3-4 lumberjacks. Best combined with either a chilled Sauvignon Blanc or a rich, room temperature Pinot Noir (preferably from Oregon) and a hunk of plain peasant or Sheppard’s bread.

November 23 2004

Happy 15th anniversary, WS! Thanks for taking a chance on me when no one else would. Thank you for seeing something in me that no one could or wanted to see. Thank you for helping me to become me. Thank you for continuing to spend your life with me, even though I know I’ve made things “interesting” for you over the years. I have to say as of right now, next year’s contract extension looks to be a go.

We’ve done all the shopping we’re going to do for the week. Ain’t no way I’m going back out there tomorrow or Friday if at all possible. Traffic was bad enough around here today!

This morning, we got up and out of the house early and hit a local gourmet grocery store for one of the last times. I knew we would find every single thing we were looking for both an anniversary dinner and Thanksgiving and well into the Christmas season. We bought semi non-perishable things like smoked hazelnuts, caramel Biscotti clusters, and Twila’s English Toffee, and yummy anniversary and Thanksgiving feast treats like baby squash, Italian pasta, kumquats, and langoustines. We’ve refilled our bottled mineral water stash and bought a couple of bottles of wine to go with the weekend (Fetzer’s Gewurztraminer 2001). For tonight’s anniversary dinner, we plan to start preparations around 6:30 p.m. First course will be stuffed mushrooms made with a blended mixture of the stems, cream cheese, a bit of red onion, pine nuts, and chives drizzled with olive oil (bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes). Next up, fresh pasta al dente (cooked with body left, NOT overcooked) on top of which is ladled a light, Alfredo sauce. On top of the sauce, I’ll lay a few fresh basil leaves and on top of that goes the langoustines which are sautéd in butter and garlic.
For dessert, if we are still alive after eating all this, I bought an Italian custard/cheesecake torte that should definitely finish us off. The Gewurztraminer ought to go well with both dinner and dessert, but in the off chance that we feel the need to get completely shit-faced, we do have a few sweet dessert wines in the closet to choose from.

Thank god we’ll have Wednesday to recover, although we just learned of an area NaNoWriMo meeting not too far away at 10 a.m. I’m willing to go to it if WS is (knowing that WS generally hates things like that.).

Thanksgiving day’s menu will include a whole pork tenderloin stuffed with smoked Gouda cheese and apple wood smoked bacon, chopped mushrooms, and walnuts and slathered in a peach Amaretto marinade. Various steamed veggies will accompany this – baby squash, Brussels sprouts (because we LIKE them), baby artichokes, and gold beets. Tuscan rosemary baby red potatoes are also on the menu as is mixed greens salad and a cranberry/apple sauce. We’re thinking of pairing all this with a Columbia Crest Grand Estates Merlot we picked up.
Dessert will be spicy pumpkin pie (frozen Mrs. Smith’s because I’m not in the mood to make one from scratch just yet this year, thankyouverymuch) and a bottle of WS’s much revered Chateau St. Michele’s Single Berry Select Riesling which he drooled over the thought of purchasing for the past four years and finally found three bottles of this past summer at $175 a bottle (now going for $200 a bottle and up). We’ve been waiting for a truly special occasion to open one of these exceptional, and exceptionally hard to find bottles of wine which was one of the most highly rated American wines anywhere in the world at 98 points. Who knows, in a couple of years, if we have not opened the other two bottles, we might be able to resell them in the wine market for a price upwards of around $300+ per bottle, even more the longer we keep them. This wine is expected to be able to be cellared, in dry, cool conditions (like in a seldom-used household closet, for example) for up to a century. Much sought after, and while it might be a shame to open and drink it, we’ll still have two bottles of the three left. We deserve to enjoy one for ourselves. We have so much to be thankful for: Our health, our house, our journal friends who visit here, and each other. I truly believe you only live this life once. Let’s be thankful and celebrate it now!

November 24 2004

We survived our anniversary dinner. That was a lot of food, good food. Well, all except for that torte that I’m not too keen about. It’s Italian so obviously something was lost in the translation somewhere and now I’m babbling about it. Torte leftovers anyone? Stop by. Please.

We both tried to write late, late, late last night and did horribly. Sleeping went about as well and we tossed and turned all night (not in a good way either.). This morning, we got up early and since WS said he’d like to go to the NaNoWriMo thing across town at a Starbucks yesterday, we got ready to go.

Only then do I find out WS wasn’t really too excited going after all. But he did come up with a great line out of it. “I need to find a way of translating my sheer terror over going to this thing into my writing.” Who knew a big guy would ever admit to being terrified of something like meeting a couple of women writers? Now maybe if we were all writing steamy romance novels and needed a guy’s perspective on some of the finer nitty-gritty details.

So, we went and caffeine was consumed and I learned that there IS a difference between science fiction writing and fantasy writing, and that it’s NOT like Country music and Western music (wherein those are the same thing in my mind). Yes, I know I’ll probably now get loads of hate mail from country AND western fans, but it’s all good. I’ll just include all those people in my next novel, and probably not in a good way either. Golly, I love last laughs.

The truly odd thing that happened when we got there this morning, just after I drank half of my Peppermint Latte and just before I shouted to the entire room “IS ANYONE HERE DOING A WRITERS GROUP MEETING?” (because up until that point, all fifty people crammed in there looked just like people who all should have been sitting in a corporate cubicle somewhere, a woman sitting off to the side looked at me and said that she thought she knew me. It turns out we worked together at an insurance company back in the late 80’s and she truly was one of the few people I’ve thought fondly of over the years.

So I whipped out my networking skills and told her I was just about to be laid off and she whipped out a business card and handed it to me. And I do intend to check out the web site on it, but I do admit that I am leery. This wasn’t exactly the most honest person on the planet back then, not to mention angry and hateful. She despised any and all authority figures like no one else I have ever heard of. No wonder that she now helps run her own company. How can you hate The Man when you ARE The Man? But when she started talking about unemployment tips and tricks though, red flags went up. I can’t go there. Potential repercussions are definitely not worth it.

November 25 2004

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you have all had or are soon to have a good and safe holiday. Here at the Blogeois household, we have watched the Macy’s parade and deemed the chosen Santa at the end to be decent. Not great, but not fake-y-looking either. More of a classic, Old World style Santa and this forecasts a relatively decent holiday season. We loved how he purposely bounced in his seat like a bowl full of jelly and held his arms with his palms facing upwards like the pope used to do. Lord knows, Santa is like the consumer pope to the commercial trade so do your part to spend money, I guess.

We also got the rest of our holiday lights up since it was dry and even partly sunny today. While we were getting this out of the way, yummy things were baking inside: Pumpkin pie, Tuscan rosemary baby red potatoes, and stuffed pork tenderloin. And as promised, here is a shot of the spread before we dove in.
Lots of things to be thankful here this year: Each other, a really nice roofs over our heads, our pets, me finally finishing my NaNo 50K novel last night, the finality of our jobs coming up in January (meaning no more living scared to death of idle threats of being fired by MsNoManagementSkills or MrSmartButFakingIt – it’s a done deal now and we’re coping with it much better now), and not least of all, all of you who visit here. Thank you. Go hug someone now.

It’s still dry outside. I think I’ll go for a walk later and enjoy the cold evening. It smells like The Dimmers next door are finally burning wood in their fireplace instead of the garbage they were burning this morning. I wonder if anyone else has put up holiday lights yet, and if so, who has them turned on already.

November 26 2004

Sometimes when I do things differently and oddly from most other people, it’s a good thing. I put up most of our holiday lights earlier in the week. The Dimmers next door poked fun at us for it. I told him that the weathermen had forecasted rain for the week, but in reality, it only rained once and that was overnight. The weather, although cold, has been great and good for putting up lights.
The Dimmers started putting their lights up at their usual time every year:

Around dusk, making it virtually impossible to see what they are doing. This is aided by their refusal to turn on the lights while they are putting them up. As a result, they try to install them in the pitch blackness of what is our neighborhood, and only after they have stapled through countless wires and fingers, only after they have nearly, or actually have, knocked each other off the ladder and the lower roof section, only after screaming at each other and their two young kids who are left forgotten and hungry for dinner, and only after coming nearly to blows, do they finally, finally turn on their lights. And god help the world if half of the lights don’t light up.

On the other side of the street, we have The Inflatables this year. To properly convey the ambience of having a neighborhood decorated with half-burnt out icicle lights and the sound of countless inflated santas, snowmen, and polar bears, you must do this. Quick! Go pull out your vacuum cleaner, plug it in, and turn it on. Now, bend over and press your ear up to one side of the vacuum canister. Hear that? That’s what our street outside sounds like. To get the full effect, close one eye and squint with the other. Now you’re cookin’ with gas!
This is the holidays, damn it, in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Where anyone can run a blower motor for an inflatable, nine-foot snowman 24/7 for the next forty days! Where at 10:30 p.m., neighbors four houses down have no choice but to listen to a mother scream at her hungry children to “SHUT THE HELL UP! YOU’LL GET YOUR DINNER WHEN I’M DAMNED READY TO MAKE IT! NOW, hand me another string of lights!* And if you’re lucky enough to live on a really great street, like we used to before moving here, you get to witness firsthand admirers of your holiday handy work get out of their vehicles, snap a picture, then grab the end of a nearby string, wrap it around their car or truck bumper, and take off at breakneck speed! (Yes, this actually happened the year before moving here.)

But really, I’m not complaining. Yet. Unless things start looking like some of the examples over at uglychristmaslights.com Oh, and if you’re one of those with an inflatable holiday character this year, keep your neighbors in mind please. Especially at 2 a.m.

November 27 2004

10:00 p.m. on a Saturday night and I’m exhausted. I’ve been letting WS sit and write all day long so he will finish his NaNo novel today because tomorrow, we’re going to the coast for a couple of days. Remember back when The Company took all their employees to Mexico for a drink-until-you-puke weekend? Well, because we couldn’t go because I was supposed to be recovering from surgery, The Company CEO and MrSmartButFakingIt told us to do something that costs $300 and they would reimburse us. Tomorrow is the day. We’ll be back Tuesday.

Now, if I could just get the laundry finished, I’d only have 25 things left to do before we leave, not including packing. Really, I’m trying hard not to be angry about feeling like I’m doing everything myself but who was it who sat on their thumbs last week instead of writing? I’m just saying…

Ever wake up with a craving for a specific kind of food? Like, potato chips? I don’t know where that came from but that was my mood this morning. Maybe it had something to do with only getting three hours of sleep last night and about four the night before. I hardly ever buy or have potato chips around because I don’t trust myself around them. Although, it’s not like some other things I refuse to have or even look at in a grocery store. Some of those things would be Snickers bars (a good 8 years since eating my last one), Hostess snowballs (probably 5 years since the last time eaten), and Kraft Mac & Cheese (last had was early last year). There are some other things too, but those are so off limits, I won’t even type them out or say them out loud. If I knew I was going to die tomorrow, would I rush out and buy any of them? Hmm, probably the potato chips (sour cream and onion most likely) and a couple of boxes of Kraft Mac & Cheese. You can have the Snickers and snowballs.

So why the crappy nights of sleep lately? Hmm, could be any number of things: I was supposed to send $20 to someone about a month ago and I keep forgetting, the longest stint of work I have left is coming up next week (three weeks in a row before more vacation burning), Mr. Dimmer next door chopping wood at 1 a.m. right next to our bedroom wall, and last night on the local news, I heard about a fatal car crash in town that involved a car that sounded and looked familiar. I had to wait until this morning to find out that it wasn’t anyone I knew after all, not that that makes things all better. Someone still died. Someone who had been drinking. Why do people drink and drive? Especially grown people who know better? I couldn’t get to sleep after that until nearly 3:30 a.m.

Well, only a load and a half left. Tomorrow, I’ll need to look through the fridge to make sure there isn’t anything in there that can’t be put into the freezer. I hate coming home to a refrigerator that reeks of something gone bad. WS will need to eat the last piece of torte and pumpkin pie and maybe I’ll take those grapes I bought for Thanksgiving but forgot all about with us on the drive. I probably should take a few other things, food-wise, with us, but I’m just too tired to think of anything else that’s down there right now.

December 1 2004

We’re back from our short vacation. Technically, I don’t go back to work until tomorrow but as expected, MrSmartButFakingIt didn’t tell anyone I was on vacation and as a result, a dozen people have scheduled me for various conference and net meetings since last Monday. So, while I finish up sending out emails to half of The Company telling them I’M ON VACATION, go on a read what I wrote while at the beach:

Written Monday afternoon when I was ON VACATION and missing all those important meetings (like I really cared):

“I’m talking about sharking!”

We arrived at the Bed & Breakfast along the Newport, Oregon coast early Sunday evening. We had just enough time to check out our ocean front room and the beach before nightfall. The beach is nice; sandy and flat. Personally and if given the choice, I like my beaches rocky and/or littered with weathered driftwood similar to what is found along some of the northern Washington coastlines. But I’m not complaining! It’s been years since we’ve been to the beach and I feel revived by the experience once again.

Tuesday, I wanted to get some photos of the working section of Newport Bay. This is the Dungeness crab capital and crabbing officially starts Wednesday, December 1st. Crabbers are allowed to set out their baited pots 72 hours in advance. Last night, we ate at a miniscule restaurant called “Sharks” located just across the street from the docks and we had freshly caught crab alongside steamed veggies and salad. The place, with only four tables and really not much bigger than a couple of closets, boasts no fried food, which is a plus for me but the prices! Holy Orcas, Batman!

Across the street while we ate, we could see workman loading crab pots (cages, actually) onto the streets and sidewalks for pick up by forklifts, pickups, and flatbed trucks. Huge stacks of pots upwards of nine feet tall, they stood, ready to go aboard the boats that were lined up at the docks before heading out to sea.
Early this afternoon however, not a crab pot could be found on the same streets. They’d all been loaded and are currently resting at the bottom of the ocean about a mile off shore. Last night from the toasty warmth of our room, we watched the fleets of crab boats sail out under the bay bridge, and line the horizon. Big halogen lights ablaze onboard light up the night sky around the boats as the workmen throw the baited pots overboard and marking their lines. We watched the bobbing and moving lights dotting the horizon until nearly midnight, hard not to do since this was the equivalent to TV. No televisions in the rooms. Heaven, but hard to get used to at first.

Whole, fresh Dungeness crab will be going for $4.00 each here. Served in the small Ma & Pa restaurants that dot the wharf, it goes from between $9.99 to $27.00 per dinner. Crabbing must be good here for as long as it lasts, which is into May here, although most crabbing fleets stop in February and move to a different fish harvest.

For lunch today, I wanted some clam chowder. Something about small working coastal towns always makes me think about clam chowder and I’m talking about the thick, chunky kind. In reality though, clams make me itchy and I break out in hives and I get a sore throat if I eat too much. I have a mild shellfish allergy but as long as I know when to stop, I’m okay. And nothing much was going to stop me today. We found a place called “Mo’s” and I can honestly say it’s the best clam chowder I’ve ever eaten. Luckily, they have a web site.

Back to the B&B we’re staying at, a small, charming home, recently remodeled with five rooms overlooking a few trees and the wide sandy beach below. We’ve never stayed right on the beach before but have always lusted to do so. Now, I wonder why we never did it before. It’s sad to think with the end of our jobs coming up in January, that this might be our first and last time for a long while to do so, but I’m not going to dwell on it.

The ocean is slate gray today and the surf is flat. The tide is going back out right now at 6.9 feet by 7:30 p.m. Way out on the horizon, the sun is shining brightly on the water, creating a white strip at the edge where the sea and sky meet. Here on the beach, the sky is cloudy and the slight breeze is COLD. Everyone who lives here says it’s not usually cold like this until late in December or early January, and that the weather still seems to be five to six weeks ahead of where it normally is. The cold breeze makes my face feel rosy and tight…and much to WS’s horror, it makes me want to recite lines from the movie “Jaws”. Yet it was him who started it by saying “We’re gonna need a bigger boat” when I said we’d need a bigger bag when we were filling one at a local salt water taffy shop.

Actually now that I think of it, maybe it was me who started it. After dinner at “Sharks”, WS indulged my desire to walk along the wharf and bay front looking out toward the bridge and ocean beyond, when I said something about the shark being in the pond. Let’s just say it’s all been downhill from there, or uphill if you’re a “Jaws” fan as much as I am.

December 2 2004

Work is unbelievably screwed up, thanks to MrSmartButFakingIt not submitting our vacation requests from a month ago. But the Big-Ass Company isn’t helping either and has everyone scrambling to grab territory. Tell you what, why don’t you just skip listening to all the bitching and moaning and go right on to part two of our much needed vacation:

Written on November 30th:

We spent the second half of the day yesterday walking along the old waterfront taking pictures of the marina and all the California sea lions (not Stellar sea lions which I think are more handsome). We first heard the sea lions the night before after dinner while walking along the wharf but couldn’t really see them well enough to know what all their barking was about. If you’ve never heard sea lions barking, let me tell you that you’ll be able to hear them from blocks away. These guys are LOUD!

Today, I spent we spent about an hour watching them while WS froze half to death and tried to understand what all their noise was about. In this particular location, there seemed to only be so much room and if you don’t claim your space early, you’re just out of luck. While half of the nearly 500 pound giants sleep, the other half sun and dry themselves, and keep others from squeezing onto the dock. Clearly, there are several sea lions lying practically on top of one another but why they don’t let others squeeze in to, especially, since there really was a few open spots available, I don’t know. It must be a sea lion clique thing. Anyway, whenever one of the unfortunates who didn’t have a spot tried to climb up, the others would bark, growl, and snap at them. Honestly, can’t we all just get along? No worries, though. There was a huge rock jetty to sun on about 3oo hundred yards away. Apparently, this dock is THE place to see and be seen.

We also witnessed a few of the sea lions who didn’t have a spot swim by the docks on their sides with only one fin raised above the water. If you didn’t know better, you’d think maybe the side fin was actually a dorsal fin of something like a shark or a small Orca. We wondered if they were trying to fool the comfortable ones up on the sunny, dry dock into freaking out and giving up their spaces. No such luck.

Later it was back to our room before hitting the beach yet again. I can’t get enough of it. Today, the surf was a bit higher than it was the day before and the breeze colder still. But there were a few sun breaks here and there. A surfer was out trying his luck around the point in the five-six foot swells. Earlier in the week, someone had dug out some sand and created a cute sand castle village in one of the holes in the rock, just out of range of the tide. The highest tide of the year is December 13th and unfortunately, I think the village will be lost to the sea.

Finally, it was back up to the room. Tonight, there were no crabbing boats out, having set all the pots the night before. Good timing if you ask me. The rain and fog rolled in a couple of hours ago. We had hoped to catch a big Pacific storm while we were here but it looks like we’ll just be missing one. Maybe next time.

December 3 2004

It’s absolutely astounding how fast depression over my job can swoop in and beat me about the head and shoulders.

Okay, so it’s back to work time until December 21st, my last paid vacation (because I’m taking it in lieu of losing it). Yesterday, I spent an extremely stressful day trying to come up to speed on so many things that MrSmartButFakingIt has “forgotten” to share information about. My head is still spinning over that. Apparently, he has “written” off anyone who is being laid off and not sticking around to help his career. He won’t talk to them, won’t send emails to them (he keeps screwing up WS’s email address and sends allegedly important information to someone else in The Company), and will not show up to meetings that he is supposed to attend if we laid off people are attending too.

To make matters worse, Ego has stripped me of my last bare shred of dignity by grabbing my last project, the project that the Big-Ass corporation people publicly ASSIGNED TO ME. In a meeting yesterday, that Ego begged to attend and one that MrSmartButFakingIt never showed up at, Ego kept interrupting the Big-Ass corporation meeting host by asking all kinds of questions, some of them seemingly not on topic at all. In the meeting, the host assigned me the project and set me up on the network. Ego begged to be set up as well and the host obliged, not knowing that Ego has a habit of being a weasel. An hour later, Ego sent out company emails saying that they already did the work because they didn’t want to wait and anything that might be leftover, should take me minimal time to accomplish. Nice huh? I go from getting to accomplish one last thing to getting Ego’s leftovers, the stuff they didn’t want to do.

If I had true balls of steel, I’d rip Ego an email right this minute and tell them exactly what I think and call them a low-bellied snake. I mean really, Ego has a continued job with the Big-Ass corporation. Me? I have less than 40 days left. Would it have been so bad to have had to wait until I was gone and out of the picture before resorting to territory grabbing and empire building yet again, so soon after I got back to work? Yeah, you could say I’m mad enough to spit. As it was, I’m back to bawling my head off and went to bed at 7:30 last night. Would it have been too much to ask that I leave my job with a shred of dignity? I guess so. Welcome to the corporate “eat or be eaten” world of today. I so hate this job.

Late last night, MsNoManagementSkills sent out a company-wide sarcastic email saying she’d like to see an increase in productivity pronto. As WS best said it, “Yeah, go on, you fat cow. Let’s see some productivity for once out of YOU!” It’ll never happen. And don’t even get me started on how she, living right up the street here, has made friends with The Dimmers next door!

Today, I’m very fortunate to have WS working from home to help calm me down. I think it’s going to be a long month. Just seven more hours today. Just seven more hours. Just seven more hours.

December 4 2004

Boy that was the fastest Saturday ever. We got up early so it wasn’t like we slept the day away or anything. Today was the day we decided to decorate the house for that holiday, you know, Christmas. Last week, we assembled the tree in our bedroom and thought better of doing the same thing downstairs. With the addition of the new, young pets, Jaws (Maxx) and Stubbie (Seth) this past summer, I don’t need to be cleaning up broken ornaments left and right every morning. Naw, it’s going to be enough fun cleaning up from what we did decorate today: the mantel, the “boofay” table in the kitchen, and a few corners here and there. Those two pets have become best friends and it is absolutely delightful to have a couple of tussling kittens in the house again, but not around holiday ornaments, garland, ribbons, or bows.

Every fall, we order paperwhite narcissus bulbs to force indoors. Our first batch of a dozen is in full bloom in the kitchen in the corner window area behind the sink, and the scent is enough to fill both the kitchen and living room. We love the smell and realize that most people do not. Not that we have much to worry about anyone coming over and being turned off by them. Back when I used to work at a large insurance company, I once took in a large pot of paperwhites in bloom and by lunchtime, everyone made me throw them in the trash. They said it smelled like a dirty cat box.

Okay, we’ve got a cat box and yes, we are anal about cleaning it every day. But in no way do either of us think that the scent of paperwhite blooms smell like a cat box, even a dirty one. I remember telling everyone in that department that they had better get their noses checked out because something was wrong with them. That just pissed everyone off there even more so and a rule was quickly put into place that prevented anyone from bringing flowers into work again, or at least until Valentine’s Day. No worries now though. We’ve got enough bulbs to force to last us until March or April at least.
The rain has finally come in for the week. We were promised rain with the possibility of a few flakes of snow this morning around 10 a.m. but neither happened. Too bad ‘cause it was really cold here this morning. It’s relatively warm outside now and not a chance for snow now. That’s okay, it’s early in the season yet.

December 6 2004

Today would have been my mother’s 65th birthday if she was still alive. She died in 1986, on a Sunday, eleven years to the day after my father died. It was a sudden death of massive stroke, and although we kids were all shocked by it, it really wasn’t much of a surprise. My mother flat out refused to take care of herself as well as refused to believe she would die. In an age when overweight people were merely looked down upon for being fat instead of being concerned about health implications, she was very obese, drank, chain smoked, had unchecked high blood pressure and borderline diabetes, both of which she never took her medication for. She complained of a severe headache for two days then, laid down on her newly purchased couch in the front room to watch TV.

Sometime during the evening, she rolled off the couch and became wedged between it and a heavy glass table. She was wearing a short nylon nightgown and nothing else. Sixteen hours later, my grandmother, who sat in the same room knitting socks, told the police officers that she thought that was how my mother slept, on the floor with her face ground into the carpet and her bare ass exposed to the air.

It was later that day that we discovered that someone had gone through my mother’s room, looking for something. My grandmother was the only one living there with my mother at the time. No one, and I do mean, NO ONE went into my mother’s room. It simply was not allowed, and even though we had all moved out from her house by then, she still ruled our lives with an iron fist (one she still used with regularity even though we were supposed to all be adults). We knew what my grandmother was looking for because we found it wrapped, hidden in my mother’s bed sheets. A will.

To this day I believe the will was a big disappointment to my grandmother who believed that should anything happen to her daughter, the will would show that the house, the small, ranch-style home my mother and father bought in 1962, remodeled on and off from 1967 through 1977, and was within $1200 from being paid in full, would go to her. It didn’t. Not in the old will that my grandmother dug out from the boxes upon boxes of paperwork my mother collected and saved over the years, nor in the updated will that we found in a safety deposit box we didn’t even know she had but that a lawyer knew about.

Fourteen months later, we had to sell that house simply because none of us, my grandmother included, could afford to live there. None of us could afford the utilities alone, let alone the house payment and insurance on top of that, and since none of us got along with one other, grandmother included, to live there together, the house went on the market and was sold within three weeks.

According to the will, only we kids were to benefit from the sale of the house should it come to that. Because we felt we were being nice and because my grandmother was now out of a home, we all agreed to cut her in on the deal which wasn’t that much of a deal anyway. Just three months prior, the neighborhood had been deemed a HUD housing development and a freeway by-pass entrance/exit ramp was to be built five houses up the street. The day that was announced, the house value instantly dropped from $80K to $43K. We got just over $50 because my mother had put in a pool and patio the year before her death. Split six ways, the money didn’t go far but it was a windfall to all of us.

At the time, only my youngest brother and I were making a living. Everyone else was living off the system and stealing anything they got their hands on to supplement that, grandmother not included. At least, I don’t think she was.
I have often wondered what would make someone hate someone so much as to let them lie there unconscious for hours and never even check on them. The coroner told me and my youngest brother that my mother, while unable to move or speak, had most likely been aware of her surroundings for up to eleven hours after rolling off the couch. This thought alone is enough to haunt a person for life and it has.

I didn’t post this to try to release the demons of hatred I feel for members of my family and I’m sorry if this was not a pleasant journal entry to read. But there is a point to all of this. Please, anyone who is reading this, please do not let this become you. Take care of yourself and let your family know of your wishes should anything happen to you, but most importantly, love your family. Just love your family. All of them.

December 7 2004

Thanks for all your comments about my mother’s birthday entry yesterday. I’m okay and I truly hope every one of you are too.

Back to real life today. Work is, well, work. I can’t get too wrapped up in all the chaos that comes with releasing a new software version without ANY documentation because !) It happens too often at this Company and 2) I only have a week and a half left to work before going back on vacation until January something. It’s supposed to be my job to get some of this documentation together, but both Ego and MrSmartButFakingIt has made sure I couldn’t do that. Ego took over most of the project, then dropped it into a black hole without telling anyone. The part he didn’t do and left for me makes about as much sense as a wiener dog pushing a house off a foundation. Completely confusing text that sounds like it’s a Russian/English slang language. No, I’m not going to beat myself over the head in trying to straighten this mess out.

To make the matter worse, all the documentation is Windows XP related. MrSmartButFakingIt was SUPPOSED to send me the XP update for my work computer that is running Windows 2K back in September or so he said he would, and we have asked him twice since, and he still has yet to send anything. Word has it that because I’m only going to be around here for about another month, he’s not going to do anything.

So I guess that about wraps things up work-wise. A mess, as usual, but I’m not getting bent over it.

In the neighborhood, most houses have put up holiday lights. No flamingo lights across the street this year because of the new family living there. Next door over at SportsOrNothing, apparently a local high school has won a state sports title and so the SportsOrNothing family had huge professional vinyl banners made up and they are hanging from the front fences and across the garage door. All the way across the double-wide garage door. With two- and three-foot tall letters. And I have to ask, “Who the f*** cares? Really?” All of their SUVs have colored shoe polish printing all over the windows too which must make for a wonderful experience trying to look out through them when driving, especially since the rain here has caused most of the “GO BIG RED” writing to run. Oh, that’s right. I’ve seen these people drive. They don’t look out through the windows. Whatever is out THERE doesn’t matter seems to be their driving style.

Up the street, MsNoManagementSkills has set out holiday decorations in her yard. Too bad they haven’t mowed the grass in a month or more because you can barely see them. Oh, sorry. My bad. Those decorations aren’t supposed to be in the yard. Apparently, she’s not aware of how windy it gets here and with her house directly facing into the wind, those decorations were supposed to be grouped up by the front door. I’ll be willing to bet that she’ll pick them up once or twice but that they will end up buried in the tall grass until April or May, which is probably sooner than they’ll be taking down their half-burnt out (already!) Christmas lights.

Yeah, I remember back when this neighborhood had style AND class. A whole five years ago.

On the home front, we both attended a final NaNo local chapter meeting and were motivated somewhat again to write. Then I remembered I had still had a job to go back to. I just can’t get into the novel writing thing while working this job. It sucks all creativity out of me. I’ll wait until after January 14th, my last day at work.

Homemade pizza for dinner tonight. We’re sticking to a weekly menu to go with our strict budget and I know I’m excited.

December 8 2004

I need to make it a point, no, a highlight of my day today and tomorrow to remember that I just got back from a wonderful two day vacation on the coast. Yes, work really sucks right now and it’s not helped by people not willing to remember that I only have a few weeks left.

“But that’s where all the fun is starting to come in!” I’m telling myself. “Just think! In a couple of weeks, and you know it WILL happen, someone is going to dump a big project in your lap, probably because they don’t want to do it, and you will wait around for an hour or so because you can afford to do that now (for the first time ever), and then you can not so gently tell them, ‘Sorry, my last day is (fill in the blank). I won’t be able to get any of this done before then.’” And that’s the moment I’ll start laughing my ass off. Oh, I expect to laugh so hard that I’ll probably be crying and holding onto my sides, doubled over, and rolling on the floor. Because that’s when MsNoManagementSkills, MrSmartButFakingIt, and Ego will need not only to find someone else to do their shit work, but to TRAIN someone how to do their shit work. Yep, the Big-Ass Corporation is laying me off because I am “redundant” but in reality, there isn’t anyone there to do what I do, which isn’t really a redundant job.
HAHAHAHAHA…

Oh, and the best part? The Big-Ass Corporation wanted me, little old me, to transition all Company documentation over to their system. Then Ego took over the project. Then, The Company’s IT department ran into major problems setting up the network so things could be transitioned to the Big-Ass Corporation. The last word is that the network won’t be set up for, get this, three more weeks. Where will I be in three weeks? Back on vacation until early January. When I get back, I’ll have less than two weeks left and no one could do this much work in just two weeks. I think Ego just bit off more than he could chew.

Of course, I could be in for a big, fat surprise when I come back from vacation and have to work twelve hour days, but you know what? Who cares? They are laying me off anyway and in six months, nothing really would have changed. The planet isn’t going to melt down, world peace isn’t going to be accomplished, there will be just as much chaos going on at work. But I won’t be there. I’ll be here, posting journal entries as usual and trying to figure out how to make soup from rocks or something. LOL

December 9 2004

We’re making strides toward getting our financial house in order in preparation for the job losses in January. Yesterday, WS cancelled our cell phone and I couldn’t be happier. We owned that thing for a solid year before I even knew how to use it. You see, we hardly EVER talk on the phone. Who would we talk to? Neither one of us have any family and friends, well, we email friends back and forth and like this method much better. Honestly, we could live without a phone of any kind and just don’t understand how people can seem to have one permanently attached to the side of their head all the time. I think its just marketing hype that causes people to do that really.
So now we’re going through a refinancing of our house to pay off the credit cards. We’ve been trying to get this done since the end of October, I think, and people have been dragging their feet. Irritating. This is key to our survival after the lay-offs come January. After the refinancing wraps up, I’m going to refinance my car that should assure that we would keep it. I’m already wrapping my head around the thought of not doing anywhere near as many car shows next summer as I have been. The budget here will be very, very tight and I don’t need to be shelling out extra for gas and car show entry fees. It’s not like my car won’t be worth as much if I don’t drive it. The fewer miles I have on it will certainly pay off later. As it is, I have 12,000something miles on it now and I’m kind of disappointed in myself for having that many (of course, I just HAD to go to Canada, Idaho, Eugene, Portland, Seattle, and Anacortes over and over again!)

A few days ago, I dug out a story I thought I was going to write about nine years ago and I’d like to pick up writing on it again. But, boy oh boy, is this ever overwhelming. First, it’s so outdated with the information in it, it’s practically stone-age era now (it’s supposed to be a technology story). Second, I have so much info about the characters in it, it’s a major chore just to read through that, and then afterward, I’m too tired and burnt out to write anything. I’ve started to tell myself just to do what I did with that National Novel Writing Month story I hacked out in three weeks, but I’m just not mentally there yet. It’s the job. I need to get through that first, then read a bit more on writing, THEN start writing again.

On a completely unrelated avenue, I think I hate the daily estrogen-replacement pill I’m taking since my hysterectomy and tumor removal back in September (btw: I’ve healed well over that and doing just peachy!). About two weeks ago, my arms started itching horribly and this week I started having to put anti-zit medication on them to make the itching stop. I tried using Gold Bond anti-cream but it only made things worse. Yesterday I read the long documentation on the hormone replacement medication and right there it says itching could be a side effect, along with dizziness and lack of mental clarity. Just great. While I haven’t been dizzy, I have been feeling like I’m fighting through a fog along with my arm itchiness. Of course, it could also be a combination of dust and dryness in our bedroom ever night. Who knows? I’m just not happy about it right now is all I know. I so hate taking anything everyday if I don’t need to and I guess I just don’t understand yet why I have to take hormone replacement medication every day.

December 10 2004

It’s that time of year again. Christmas card time and I got a great one yesterday from Mary Lou over at Life after NEXCOM. She hand makes her cards which makes them the best on the planet. I, unfortunately, send the boring, run-of-the-mill kinds that one can find at any drugstore by the crate full. I just might try her method though next year. Hers have feeling to them. Mine are, well, from a drugstore.

This year, as in previous years, I don’t expect to get as many cards as the year before. Over the past year, most of our friends divorced and have gone their separate ways, dumping not only each other, but most if not all of their old friends as well. I’m still sending one to Drill Sergeant Dave and to both of the Competition Boys, but I don’t expect one back from any of them. To me, sending cards isn’t about getting cards back anyway. If I like someone, I’ll send a card around the holidays.

This coming Saturday night is a big Christmas party for the old car club we used to belong to. Oh, we aren’t going. Couldn’t drag us into that mess again. There isn’t any fun in watching people purposely drink and drive, but the party is being held about a mile or so away from our house at a golf country club. I’m half expecting Drill Sergeant Dave with his new wife (met her in an online chat room) to stop by afterward and so, just in case and just because we seem to look for reasons to be anal, we’ll have the house clean and lit up and the front door open. He called me the other day and is considering starting up his own car club. He beat about the bush in asking us to join. Yeah, uh, think about that first, Drill Sergeant Dave. Won’t matter anyway. As soon as he finds out that I can’t afford to do much next season with car show stuff, he’d drop me like a hot rock.

In the green space/farmland behind our development and every winter, Canada geese migrate in to spend the season. Today, hundreds of geese are flying in. Last yesterday evening, something spooked them and about a thousand, yes, a thousand easily flew up from the fields and circled around for a few minutes before settling back down. I can hear them from our office window here even over the sound of our fountain.

Every great once in a while, I’ll hear one very close by and see it flying overhead to join the mass. I still have a dream that someday I’ll wake up early in the morning and see one or two waddling around our tiny backyard, perhaps standing in the fountain. WS tells me I don’t want a duck or goose back there because they poop on everything and I do agree. But still, it would be neat-o skeet-o just once I think. It saddens me to think that in a few days, it will be goose hunting season here and every morning we’ll wake to the sound of gunshots in the fields instead of geese honking.

December 11 2004

To all you cat owners: Do you remember back when cats used to be afraid of the vacuum cleaner? Because I do and I kind of miss it.

I’ve was raised around cats (and dogs, but that’s another story) and every cat we ever had was scared to death of the vacuum cleaner. Every.Single.One. This really comes in handy when you are vacuuming a room, perhaps a guest room or the garage or some place that you don’t want your cats to get into. We have three such rooms in our house, two of which were built purposely as a sort of “clean room” where pets would not be invited or allowed. It wasn’t until I moved here from the desert that I found out I had asthma but by that time, we already had half a dozen pets. “Get rid of them all!” my new doctor exclaimed. “You’ll die if you keep them!”

Well, anyone who knows me knows I would literally rather cut off an arm than farm out the only children I’d ever have so I kept them. Every.Single.One. And you know what? I’m still here, alive, and my asthma? It’s still around but hardly anywhere near as bad as it was just a few years ago, before we built this house, more with pets in mind than humans.

First off, we didn’t want carpet. Turns out, I have a pretty serious allergy to formaldehyde and who wouldn’t? New carpet lets out tons of formaldehyde fumes as does some new drapes, furniture, and paint just to name a few. We’ve both always liked the look of hardwood floors and decided to have the fake wood floors, like Pergo, installed. While now I sometimes wish for a different color, for the most part, it’s been the best thing about our house, pet-wise. I don’t anyone who has had as many pets as we’ve had that hasn’t had one or two or more that weren’t barfers. You know what I mean. The pet who is the cutest thing since baby snuggle bunnies but who needs to barf at least once a day and then, it’s never just one barf pile but several.

If we had had carpet put in, we would have worn out at least a couple of those green Bissell clean machines by now. Let’s just say pet barf is a daily occurrence around here and by now, five and a half years after building this place, the carpet would surely have looked, and smelled, as attractive as a local garbage dump. The really cool thing about the kind of floor we choose was both that it had a fifteen year warranty against water damage, and that you could literally light it on fire and it wouldn’t burn, both of which comes in handy when you are talking about lots of liquid-y pet barf.

Uh, way off track here so to get back to it, we had two rooms built with glass French doors, the rooms we designated as our office and our bedroom. Technically and for the record, we originally swore no animals (or overly hairy men OR women) would ever cross their thresholds. That rule lasted about as long as it took our hearts to melt watching one of our more cute pets softly paw at the glass and look in with large, sad eyes. Like “Shrek’s Puss-In-Boots’s” eyes.
But we are pretty good at vacuuming the dickens out of the rooms every time we clean, which is at least two to three times a week (See? I told you we were anal-retentive.). Getting the vacuum out used to automatically mean all pets ran AWAY from the evil sucking sound and we could vacuum away to our heart’s content with the door to that particular room wide open, knowing that none of the pets would ever venture in.

Enter this past summer, when we brought two new pet members into our family. Both cats and both young. Seth, at a year and a half and Maxx, at nine months old. They must be making cats differently these days because they aren’t fazed by the vacuum in the least. In fact, Seth actually stalks me whenever I’m vacuuming upstairs, waiting for the very minute that I open the door to our bedroom to clean wherein he makes his move by pushing and bounding his way into the room. Most of the time, Maxx is right on his heels, both completely uncaring about some evil sucking thing with a long noisy hose. Any measures to try to use the vacuum to “chase” them out fails miserably and they look at it like “Uh, what? Am I supposed to be frightened by something here?”

Did I miss a CNN report on this or something? It just seems so odd that we would go for years with all our pets scared literally shitless of the vacuum and all of a sudden we get two pets, from completely different backgrounds and of completely different personalities that both could give a hoot towards it. Odd. Certainly, I had to have missed hearing about the “new technology” cats.

December 13 2004

It’s been incredibly windy here since late Saturday. Our highest wind gust has been 57 mph so far. Yesterday, we came very close to losing power several times. We’ve been checking for missing singles every few hours, daylight permitting. I love interesting weather although the air has an odd feel and sense to it.

This morning, I can see porch chairs scattered around the neighborhood. Roof shingles lay about. Icicle holiday lights are stuffed up into gutters or torn down completely along with some of those un-staked inflatable santas and snowmen. SportsOrNothing’s normally reasonable neat back yard has chairs and hot tub towels tossed around. Next door, The Dimmer’s front fence gate was completely blown out with wood slates smashed up against his truck. I think his dog is gone, having run off during the night. He doesn’t really care and I’d be willing to bet the fence will go months, if not years, before he fixes it. Great for us, who share the fence on that side. We’re supposed to get a house appraisal this week. It looks like a disaster zone next door.

In our yard, we prepared for the worst and this morning, a bit calmer, nothing is out of place. When we used to live in the rental house across town, a 63 mph wind gust during a windstorm lifted our metal garden shed nearly up and over the six-foot chain link fence dividing our yard from a neighbor. The shed was demolished. When we batten down the hatches now here, we really take it seriously.

The most odd thing about today is that the air smells exactly like freshly mowed summer grass. And there are no birds anywhere. Finally, one squirrel made it back to our feeder just an hour or so ago, no sign of any others yet. The sun has just come out and, here comes the shimmering rain we’ve been promised all weekend. You know what they say when the sun is shining and it’s raining… it means it’ll rain tomorrow too. Goodie!

Only one week of work left this month until our last two weeks in early January. We go back on vacation this coming Saturday. No, we’re not going anywhere and hopefully, not spending money on anything we don’t absolutely need. MsNoManagementSkills has done nothing but brag about spending all her Company stock money on this trinket and that and has nearly blown through all 100K since September when she married DorkMaster.

At work, no one is talking to us anymore. No one is answering our emails and as far as we know, no one is assigning work to either of us. It could be the upcoming holidays, but I don’t think so. It could be all the changes from The old Company to the Big-Ass Corporation, but I don’t think so. It could be our coworkers at Company headquarters scrambling to interview for new jobs in the Big-Ass Corporation in Sunnyvale and Santa Monica, but I don’t think this is it either. I think this is exactly how corporate workers treat coworkers who are soon to be laid off. It’s easier not to think about friends losing jobs when you have to worry about your own.

Amazingly, I’m perfectly okay with this now. Looking forward to it actually. There’s no going back. The Big-Ass Corporation doesn’t want us and I no longer want them either. Yeah, things will be very, very tight here financially but we’ll figure out a way to survive. And if that means I’ll have to go out to find another job in this bad economy with the nation’s worst job market right here in my state (and the neighboring state as well), well, I’ll just have to do that.
But in the meantime, after mentally recovering as much as I can considering MsNoManagementSkills lives just a few houses down the street (and has been seen recently standing in her window looking directly over here), I plan on getting back into writing and this time, writing for profit. WS is convinced I can do it. I’m not quite there yet. The thought of having to work at Taco Bell might just be enough to get me convinced.

Dang. Now I’m craving a chicken enchirito.

December 15 2004

Yesterday I found out the real reason the Big-Ass Corporation is laying us off and no, it didn’t make me get all upset again. In fact, I think it is hilarious because it spells nothing but trouble for the future of the Corporation.

The reason? I don’t look good on paper. However, coworkers who have sent out countless incorrect replies to the thousands of customer emails The Company receives every week DO look good on paper. It’s all about quantity of work put out, incorrect or not. It’s not about quality of the work.

If you ever received an email from The Company about software you couldn’t get to work correctly, and the email contained blatantly wrong information in it about how to fix the problem, we should all feel happy regardless, because the person who sent out the wrong information still has their job.

Did I mention that criminal records don’t make any difference? Apparently, a few of my coworkers have been running from the law for a while. The Big-Ass Corporation insisted on doing background checks on us all, yours truly included. Warrants for arrest were found but that makes no difference if the guilty parties have been chucking out emails at work left and right.

Oh, and to all us who actually cared about The Company’s customers and really wanted to help solve the problems, well, we took too long with all that caring and because we cared and The Corporation doesn’t want people who care, they want people who are just about the numbers, we’re being laid off. To all of us who didn’t have a choice but to take extra time in our customer replies because we had to clean up the messes and confusion caused by our coworkers who didn’t care if what they were sending out was right or not, too bad. We’re being laid off too.

You know, there was a time when all this would have really pissed me off. I truly don’t care now.

In fact, yesterday I had to sit through several conference call meetings and in all of them, I was supposed to be logged into some kind of secret internal web meeting and as of last Friday, I had access to it. But as of yesterday, I was shut out and all my accesses have been cut off. Hmm, do they know I’m supposed to still be working until mid-January? Why YES! They know this, but figured they would get a jump on it in case I became so frustrated and depressed, I decided to quit first or something. After all, the Big-Ass Corporation would save money that way by not having to pay my measly two thousand dollar severance. MrSmartButFakingIt tried to sound like he was all surprised about how many people the Big-Ass Corporation has done this to but the grapevine says he’s in on it. He has certainly done more than his fair share of making it the cluster-f**k it is now.

But again, doesn’t bother me in the least. One three more days this week then it’s back to vacation time until after the 1st.

December 16 2004

Only a day and a half left before our holiday vacation. I’ll keep telling myself this over and over today. It’s been a very long week for me. I haven’t sat here working for this long since before my surgery in late September and I can feel it. I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad if I were doing something I enjoyed but that’s not the case. Because Ego took over my last project, I don’t have anything to do at work but I still have to sit here in front of the monitor all the same for eight+ hours in the off chance that MsNoManagementSkills or MrSmartButFakingIt chats at me (as happened earlier in the week). If I happen to be off doing something else and don’t hear their chat call, or don’t answer it immediately, there will be hell to pay. But really, when you think of it, what are they going to do, fire me? They are already laying me off on January 14th! WS will remind me that if they fire me I’ll lose my miniscule severance pay.

Okay, so I’ll sit here for eight hours counting dimples in the drywall.

Update: LOL! The Big-Ass Corporation just sent me a request to attend a conference meeting and a meeting agenda. In the agenda, it states that they still expect me to work on that last project. Problem is because our IT department couldn’t get the network up and running in time due to people off on vacation, I’ll now be on my vacation when they want the project done. Too bad, guys. I sat here for two weeks waiting to do this work and you drug your feet claiming too many people were on vacation. Now it’s my turn. Oh wait. I’m sure Ego will take it over. Even the crap work this time. LOL

December 17 2004

Mt. St. Helens puffed quite a bit this afternoon (see volcano camera link over on the left) and that always makes me happy in thinking that as I sit here looking out my home office window, being paid, I’m watching a volcano go off. Some people get to look out their office windows and see the ocean with crashing waves. Others see nothing but other tall office buildings or don’t even have a glimpse of a window at all. I feel pretty lucky. I can lose my job to a lay off and all, but as long as I live here, they can’t take this view from me.

In between work today, WS and I have been cleaning. It’s one of the many annoying things about us. You know we like to keep things pretty clean around here but before we take time off from work, the last thing we want to do is spend that time off cleaning. So we try to do as much of it as we can the day before. Laundry, vacuuming, organizing, heck, we’re even cleaning mini-blinds. Yep, you can go ahead and say it: There’s something wrong with us.

No word yet on how that meeting I was supposed to attend is going because I had something else to do. A time conflict, as it were. Ego is still in the meeting and I plan on popping in with them in chat later. Late yesterday afternoon, I chatted with Ego briefly to let them know I wouldn’t be able to attend the meeting but that I figured they would be there since they were going to be taking over my job when I’m laid off in January.

Ego had no idea that I was taking time off starting later today OR that I was being let go in January. AND, they had no idea that they would be taking over my job. While I have no delusions that the Big-Ass Corporation is going to make their departure of me an easy one (they might have already stiffed me out of my October/November pay raise), I am starting to really enjoy seeing the inklings of things going not so smoothly. Another great thing to hear from Ego yesterday was how pissed they were over the complete and total lack of communication Company headquarters is going through now. “Oh, you’re just NOW experiencing that?” I wanted to say, having put up with that from MsNoManagementSkills, FatHead, BikerDude, and MrSmartButFakingIt since 1999. But what I did say was “Sorry to hear that. Hope things get better.”

Did I really mean it? You ought to know me better by now.

December 20 2004

So, have you got all your holiday shopping done? I hope so, just so you won’t have to wrestle with the other last minute holiday shoppers. I remember doing that once, and once was enough for me. I’m just glad we don’t do any of that anymore. It’s Christmas year around for us, not just reserved for December. Of course, I’m sure that feeling will change now that we’re losing a full half of our income. Next year at this time, I might be looking longingly at shopping ads and TV commercials and feeling the pinch of not being able to buy anything.

But I’m going to try hard to look back on this year with all the gifts I feel I already got and all I am thankful for: A great looking, award-winning car, the removal of Emil and Hubert, two new pets in the house and the good health of the others, WS who is even more loving and caring than ever before, and readers of my little journal here.

What a full weekend we had with just the two of us! Since we’re on vacation until after the 1st of the year, we decided to jump headfirst into the whole “let’s do this and that” kind of mode. That’s one tiring mode I can tell you!

Saturday was a gorgeous clear blue day and from our bathroom window, we could see Mt. St. Helens puffing away. I casually mentioned we should drive my car up there and take some more pictures. I didn’t expect WS to be so enthusiast about wanting to go but then again, he didn’t get to go when I first did back in October.

It was a really nice drive. I hadn’t taken my car out in over a month and it really needed to be taken out just so the battery stays charged and so things like the rear end, transmission, and various joints don’t dry out. We finally saw patches of dirty snow less than a mile from the Coldwater Ridge Observatory, which they have open now, but overall, the air temperature was warm, around 60 degrees F. with no wind at all. Unfortunately, the pictures all turned out awful because the sun was so bright. WS is going to play with them using Photoshop to see if he can salvage any. It’s not a big deal to me. I like the pictures I took last time a LOT better. What did make both of us happy was that WS got to see the mountain up close and she was puffing away for him too. Little joys!

Sunday, it rained here all day and we could care less. We didn’t do anything but watch TV, make cookies, plan out a grocery trip for either today or tomorrow and tried not to stress too much about work. The Big-Ass Corporation has indeed stiffed me out of the raise I got back in November. The good thing is that they will just owe me more money before I leave. The bad thing is we are having to deal with it now, while we are supposed to be on vacation. WS is handling this round with them. He is so much more diplomatic. I, on the other hand, have a hard time talking to anyone there without becoming annoyingly sarcastic or wanting to rip everyone’s head off. WS says we don’t have anything to worry about, so I’m going to believe him. I do think we aren’t going to get our entitled last two personal holidays off in January though. The Big-Ass Corporation has made sure we don’t have access to their time off forms to be able to apply for the days off with two weeks notice, unless we want to spend more of our vacation time trying to get that all resolved. Those days, because they are personal holidays and not normal vacation days, can only be paid for if they are taken. We can’t collect pay for them if we don’t take them and I so wanted to take them because I don’t relish the thought of working a full final two weeks when I go back on January 4th. Yes, you can call me spoiled.

December 21 2004

Absolutely nothing going on here today. I was going to wash my car to get rid of all the ash it collected on last Saturday’s drive but we woke up to rain today. It wasn’t supposed to rain today at all. In fact, the local weather people claim it isn’t raining at all but that the rain is evaporating before it hits the ground. Except where we live. It’s been pouring since before I woke up at 9 and hasn’t let up since.

It’s also very dark here today. Of course, it IS the shortest day of the year.
Winter solstice day and all. I kind of like dark days like this because we usually have to have some kind of light or lamp turned on and needed lights on during the day is kind of a magical thing for me. I can’t really explain it other than to say if my father were still alive, he’d bust out any light fixture he saw lit during daytime hours. Things like that irritated him to no end and there is no explanation for that kind of behavior. Oh what a time he would have had in today’s world that doesn’t put up with behavior like that. It’s hard to believe that in his day, people just used to shake their heads and laugh.

WS has been trying to get our job access fixed all day with people at Company headquarters but it’s a no-go. Things will not be fixed before we’re to be laid off in January so at this point, we’re just trying to get a hold of the right people to let them know we want our floating personal holiday days off after we come back from vacation (so we don’t lose them as would be the case if we didn’t take them off), but even MrSmartButFakingIt isn’t making that easy either.

After not telling anyone, he took vacation time of his own and is now gone until early January too. MsNoManagementSkills is throwing conniption fits left and right in his unexpected absence. What a hoot!

The Big-Ass Corporation is sending us a shipping label to send back my work computer in January. Oh well. At least I won’t have to worry about them taking compensation for it out of my last paycheck. And it will free up space both here in our office and from under our bed where I have been storing the original box.

After the lay off, we plan on exercising any work demons from this office and turn it into a comfortable space to read, watch TV, or goof around on the computer. I suspect lots of writing will be done from here too, away from the distractions of pets whom all want to be held and the laundry that seems to always call to us when we are writing in the library (which is located right next to the laundry room).

Well, I should probably go make banana bread out of our old, leftover bananas and prod WS into doing something else productive, like making no-bake cookies.

December 22 2004

I think I’ve finally figured out why it doesn’t feel like Christmas around here. No, it’s not that we didn’t put up the honking huge tree in the entryway (we put up the smaller one in our bedroom instead this year). No, it’s not that we’re mildly depressed over our layoffs. I think it’s because WS didn’t talk to Santa this year.

Huh?

Well, let me see if I can make this story short. Every year or so, we usually find ourselves in either a shopping mall or some store where, and I will swear on this with my last dying breath, we see THE Santa. I’m not talking about some lame-ass guy dressed like Santa with a fake beard and all. Nope, we have a guy who lives somewhere around here who looks 100 percent, absolutely without any question like the REAL Santa and I kid you not. And it’s not just the way this guy looks. It’s his whole attitude, the way he carries himself, and then he’ll say something to you, from across the room in a true Santa-like voice, and you just KNOW it’s the REAL Santa because you feel tingly and get goosebumps and that’s about the time I get all misty-eyed because he’s the real deal.

A couple of years ago, WS and I were watching “The Santa Clause” with Tim Allen in it and we thought, “Yeah, cute movie. Whatever.” And never thought much more about it. Later in the week, we had to pick up something at the local mall, something we dreaded doing because of the holiday crowds. As we were walking down the stairwell, the REAL Santa walked by, looked up and dead in the eye at WS, and said in the Santa voice, “How are you today, young man?” I think it startled WS as much as it did me and we mumbled something. I got all goosebumpy and knew in my heart that this was the REAL Santa.

About an hour later as we were heading out of the mall, we passed the decorated workshop area where the Santa was doing the “kids sit on knee” gig and in the middle of him talking to a little child sitting in his lap, the Santa stopped, looked up directly at WS and said, “You have a Merry Christmas!” from across the room. And then, the Santa twinkled his eye. TWINKLED HIS EYE, I say. I’ve never seen anyone twinkle their eyes in my entire life but sure as shit, this Santa could do it.

Since then, we’ve seen the REAL Santa several times, once during the summer, when we saw him driving an old green ford pickup with a half-camper shell on the back. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and his beard was trimmed up a bit, but it was definitely the guy. And every time we see him, he always says something to WS and winks or does his eye twinkling thing. They, WS and the REAL Santa, have a connection somehow.

It was as we were walking out of the mall that first time we saw him that it hit me. WS could be a budding Santa. He’s got all the makings of one if he could stop being so angry about everything in the world and just let it come out, I just know it. And I think the REAL Santa knows it too.

December 23 2004

It’s another low-key day around here today. Foggy outside and dark just the way I like my winter days with the faint glow of various neighbor’s holiday lights glowing in and out of the fog. It’s magical, I tell you.

Yesterday, we got up bright and early and hit both the post office which was amazingly empty for 9 am three days before Christmas, and the grocery store which also was fairly empty. I picked up a whole Cure 81 ham and had it thinly sliced over in the deli section. Tomorrow night, I’ll reassemble it into the semblance of a whole ham and tie it together with kitchen string, then slather it in melted apricot and quince jam and place pineapple rings and whole cherries (with a whole clove or two poked into them) around here and there with toothpicks to marinate all night. Around noon Christmas day, it’ll go into the oven for a few hours. Delish!

On the way back from the grocery store, we also received our Holiday Honk ™. Oh, just thinking about it makes me feel all festive! For those of you not in the know, the Holiday Honk ™ is the official irate honking of a car horn (done sometime within the month of December) of someone who is NOT in the correct holiday spirits, usually by someone who is either impatient in traffic, feels you have no right to be in front of them, or is just in a bad mood because they know they are getting a lump of coal in their stocking. Sometimes, the Holiday Honk ™ comes with a wave of the hand and more often than not, limited use of all fingers. Sadly, ours did not include a Holiday wave as I generally keep track of such things, but did come courtesy of a local utilities truck who didn’t like that we had a faster, more agile vehicle and that counts almost as good as the one-fingered wave. HA! I love Holiday Honks ™. WS, on the other hand and as you may suspect, doesn’t. To fully understand the displeasure of receiving a Holiday Honk ™, you have to be in the driver’s seat, he says. The passenger seat doesn’t count.

Today’s agenda included laundry (Oooo!), eating cookies (Aaaa!), vacuuming (Oh baby!), and filling the bird feeders. We’ve got a scrub jay visiting regularly who has one broken leg. Picking up peanuts is out of the question for him, but eating peanut bits from the top feeder seems to be helping to keep his strength up. As long as he can continue eating, drinking, and staying warm at night, he ought to survive okay.

It would also appear that we are feeding more than just the mouse exterminator around here. The mostly-negligented Howler Monkey’s cat has been coming over here regularly to eat the bit of food left over from the bit I give to Killer. And the other day, we saw the solid gray, stocky male cat that we first saw last spring nibbling away at the crumbs left over. Sure do hope they all make it through the winter okay, not to mention the traffic that seems to race ever faster down our street. All these cats seem to have a good sense about cars. I think they’ll be okay in that department. Because I’m a sucker for animals left outside year around, I put out a box with an old soft towel in it for anyone who wanders by and might need a sheltered spot to stay. The temps are getting well down into the freezing zone every night now.

December 24 2004

It’s the 50th season of NORAD’s tracking of Santa. Go visit to see where he’s at right this minute! Go on! I’ll wait…

Oh, and in Canada, the big man in red is getting a three fighter pilot escort. Welcome to the new world, Mr. Claus!

Here at the Blogeois compound, we’ll be participating in what’s becoming my own little Santa tradition. Around midnight, we turn off all the lights in the backyard and walk out there quietly in the dark with our huge bunch of sleigh bells and I ask WS to shout, “HO! HO! HO!” a couple of times before we sneak back into the house. Anyone who’s up at that time of night surely ought to hear it and maybe…wonder? Hey! I’ve got to train this man for his upcoming Santa position somehow, right?

To all my readers, friends and lurkers alike, have a very safe and a very Merry Christmas!

December 25 2004

Well, you knew it had to happen sooner or later. Santa’s being outsourced.
Hope you are all having a good holiday thus far. Over here, the ham is in the oven. A freshly baked homemade-out-of-the-can pumpkin pie is cooling on the counter. We’ve cleaned up our breakfast mess from omelets and mimosas (still can’t make hash browns to save our lives). Yet another Christmas movie is on TV because WS can’t get enough of them this year (I think it has something to do with my decision to not put up the big tree downstairs – he feels something is missing somehow). Dinner will be around 3:30 or 4 pm and I’ll be expecting some of you at my front door, empty plates in hand. Scalloped potatoes, steamed broccoli, veggies and dip, potato rolls, and all the cookies and candy you can stomach fill the bill along with a sweet California Lodi 2003 Viognier. Of course, there is still lots of orange juice and champagne left over from this morning.

WS says I should wear my tiara today, the one I received as a birthday present last summer. Maybe over dinner I think, just because I can. Although, should it start snowing here, (Not a chance in hell, they say now) someone remind me to take it off before running outside. Can’t have the neighbors thinking I’m even more odd than I really am.

It was supposed to start raining around 7 am this morning. No rain either. Dry as a bone out there. It’s more quiet than we thought it would be around here today. The new neighbors across the street are quietly playing with remote control cars in the middle of the street. Obviously, the cars are for him, the man who has a hard time walking. Their child is only about three years old. I doubt he’s too much into those cars yet.

What is frightening to think about is that DorkMaster,
MsNoManagementSkills husband who lives just down the street, also loves remote control cars (how 1990’s!) and if I don’t’ watch out, they’ll start spending all their time down here right across the street from us with the new neighbors. Nope, that ain’t gonna happen if I have anything to say about it. It enough that we have to listen to their dog bark on and on for hours, his kids screaming over this AND that, and the monthly temper tantrums MsNo has taken to throwing in the front yard (not pretty, I can assure you!)

Secretly, I was hoping someone would have bought them a house somewhere far, far away from our neighborhood, but that doesn’t look to be the case. For Christmas, he bought her a bicycle I hear which I am certain will sit unused in the garage because she just doesn’t “do anything physical” and she bought him a sausage attachment for a cheap Kitchen Aid mixer he wanted a month or so ago. You don’t want to know what he wanted the sausage attachment for, if neighborhood rumor holds true. Yes, they have been starting to integrate themselves into the neighborhood and talking regularly to some of my neighbors. I’m thinking this might prove to be even a better way to keep tabs on what’s going on over there, especially since I stop working with her in two weeks, while she continues on with The Company and Big-Ass Corporation until May. Already, neighbors are displeased at both the amount of noise coming from over there and the ever-increasing height of the grass in their lawn. Too bad their landlords couldn’t have given them an eviction notice for Christmas.

December 26 2004

Happy Boxing Day. Happy “Go back to the malls to buy more stuff in boxes” Day. Happy Pack-Holiday -Stuff-Back-Into-Their-Boxes Day. And my personal favorite: Happy “Think outside of the Box” Day!

I am sitting here in our library, in a comfy, cozy, high-back leather chair, with an orange cat insistently clawing pawing me on one side and my laptop sitting here in my lap. I am trying to get the motivation to write something today, other than this journal entry, and am failing miserably.

I slept poorly last night and finally flicked on the TV at 3:40. Around 4:30 am, I found an hour long documentary on the corporate world at Columbia House record club and it refueled my dislike of the corporate world. Later on, around noon, it replayed and I had WS watch it. While I don’t think he got the same feeling I took from it, I think it has led us both today to feeling somewhat melancholy and quiet.

A week ago, I started a new story I think I’d like to work on sooner or later. A scary story set along the coast. I got about four pages into it, with what think is a great beginning and then it just laid there, like a turd in the yard. The writing books I have been reading say that you don’t really have to know, point by point, where your story is going to go; that sometimes, it’ll show you just by flowing that way, but that you should probably have an inkling of the ending. I have an inkling, but it’s not flowing well at all in my mind and not showing me anything of it’s way just yet. I think I need a plunger to unclog things. And that clog just might be the last couple weeks of my job.
Of course, I could be fooling myself…but I don’t think so.

So I sit here, trying to convince the orange cat, whom dislikes trying to be convinced of anything, that it would behoove her immensely if she would go lie down on the special pet bed with the NASA foam padding that is much nicer than anything WS or I sleep on and start to get used to me sitting here every afternoon, trying to hack out the next great American novel. After all, I have to be able to keep these pets in the manner of which they have become accustomed and just because I have lost my job and chosen to become a real author, doesn’t mean that they should have to give up anything themselves.

I need to find the funding to put out a pet calendar…

December 27 2004

It’s Monday and what does that mean? It means it’s trash day and it’s going to be windy. Of course! It also means that unless someone drags themselves out of bed at the crack of dawn when the garbage men get here, our trash can will be in another zip code before we know it in this wind. It was so windy this morning, everyone’s trash and recycle-ables were everywhere except sitting smugly on the curb. I don’t know about your neighborhood but I do know it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that the paper recycle bin should NEVER go on top unless you don’t care if your neighbor’s house gets papered with all your bank statements, fast food bags, and empty cardboard egg cartons. One guess as to what I did this morning.

On to other things: In Stephen King’s book “On Writing” (which is very good and straight forward and not at all about how to write horror stories for those who might think it is) he suggests writing alone and not telling your significant other what you are writing until the first draft is done. If your first draft is 350,000 words long, you’re looking at a minimum of three month before you’ll let the cat out of the bag about your story.

WS and I have generally, up to this point, done nearly everything together. We share everything so when I read Mr. King’s words, I knew I couldn’t do it; keep it all to myself. But if things get any more frustrating, I’ll probably give it a shot. It seems like every conversation we’ve had about writing lately, which has been a lot on both sides, has been anything but clear and concise. Confusion, frustration, and annoyance are beginning to rule the roost. Call me silly, but I really thought we might have been able to write a story together. Yeah, right…

I’ve begun rowing and elliptical-ing again. Its way past time and something I should have been doing all along after I started feeling well enough after surgery. But I didn’t and I so enjoyed fitting into square, 36 inch by 36 inch levis again for a whole month. Now, I can put them on but couldn’t button them up to save my life. Back to the size 38’s for a while. No problem. Everyone will be starting a new diet in January and giving up on it by March. By the first week in January, we’ll be through all the holiday cookies and breads in the house and will have close to a week’s jump on exercise over everyone else.
I’m expecting to hear about the diet woes from MsNoManagementSkills when I go back to work on the 4th as usual. It’s her yearly ritual and her excuse to treat everyone extra rotten due to her “extreme hunger pains”. I’m glad I won’t have to listen to it long but just in case she decides to march her big ol’ butt over here and ask if I want to walk with her or something, I want to have a head start. Highly doubtful that she will, plus she did just get a bicycle for Christmas. I don’t expect her interest in that to wear off until the first or second week of spring weather. That is, unless their dog gets to it first. After getting it, she told everyone that she promptly parked it out in the back yard in the rain and mud. I think she was expecting something else entirely. Like something shiny and sparkly for a finger instead. Regardless, just like you can count on spring following winter, talk of starting a diet always comes out of her month every January.

And talking about food in a round-about way, we’re 2/3rd s the way through our ham and all other leftovers from Christmas dinner are gone. Yippee! No wasted food. Knowing that tight financial times are rapidly coming up for us means we learn to take extra care in making sure nothing gets “forgotten” in the fridge and ends up in the trash wasted. Another couple of days of ham sandwiches and salad ought to do it.

December 29 2004

Today was “get things done” day. Go get pet food, litter, the mail, groceries, etc. Except things didn’t go that way at all because we were surprised to find that WS’s car had a dead battery for some odd reason. His car should not be having any problems with the battery but for some reason, it picked today to do so. Two hours and one jumpstart later and we were off to do errands.

Later this afternoon, I finished up work on new colors for this journal here come January 1st. Normally I don’t like blue but I do like the shades I found thanks to a great color chart place over at this site.

I’m trying to get some loose ends tied up here before the New Year or at least before we head back to work on the 4th. Last night was that whole “Put-Away-Holiday-Décor” thing in every room except our bedroom and today was pre-spring cleaning we generally do at the same time.

Things weren’t helped at all when we found out late today that we’ve been scheduled for a home inspection and appraisal tomorrow morning in order to complete our refinancing. Over the phone this afternoon, the appraiser gave WS a hard time about the true value of our house and WS is pretty steamed about it still. You see, homes in our area have been selling for ridiculous prices, yet this appraiser says on paper, our house isn’t worth as much. Again with the “Looks good on paper” thing! What is it with people lately? We came to find out the guy has never even been here before and he’s just going off what someone jotted down back when we were under construction or something, probably before the house was finished being built and that was when we had most of the upgrades done. Most houses in our development weren’t built with any upgrades yet our house is worth as much as those? We’re talking houses with missing shingles, water damage, trashed yards, etc. WTF?

So this evening its been out with the drywall patch and paint for wall ding touchups, some tools to fix a sticky door and a couple of loose faucet handles, and pure elbow grease to scrub down appliances, floors, outdoor light fixtures, and anything else we can think of. I’ve dusted and cleaned and WS has vacuumed and straightened up things and I’ve de-cluttered everything else. As I type this, WS is cleaning the last room in the house, this office and still complaining about the travesty of it all. (“Across the street, sheets are still being tacked up in windows in place of any blinds or curtains, yet that house just sold for $250K!”, he spits out.)

Yeah, I’m thinking tomorrow’s gonna be fun…

December 30 2004

The appraisal guy thing went okay. We won’t find out the figure he says we’re worth until who knows when. Boy, for a process that started back in October, I’m thinking some people have some answering to do about why they’ve been dragging their feet for three months. God help them if after all this we get a crappy figure.

So, the new year is nearly upon us and we here at the Blogeois compound truly do care about this journal’s readers, both those we’ve come to know over the past year and anyone else that may have stumbled in intentionally or not. We were fortunate just the other day to stumble into a new Red Robin restaurant nearby the other day as one of our last restaurant visits before our layoffs next month. On our table was one of those “How can we improve” cards and I couldn’t help but think that this might be a good time to ask how Blogeois.com is doing. Because both WS and I care and care about improving your reading experience here, if you have the time, please leave a comment and answer any or all questions below.

As usual, none of your comments or information will be sold or given away, neither will I, Grand Poobah of Blogeois.com or WS, the slightly-less Grand Poobah of Blogeois.com, invite ourselves to your home to raid your refrigerator, take over your TV remote control, or take your car for a test drive if you choose to leave a comment.

1. Has anything you’ve read here in the past month bored you to tears or made you angry? Yes or No
2. Did you have fun? Yes, No, or Define “fun”
3. We care about our readers – Did it show? Yes or No
4. Did you get a good value for the click of your mouse button when visiting here? Yes or No
5. Do you feel the Blogeois.com website layout is attractive, okay, or too busy?
6. Would you like to see more photos? Yes or No
7. What prompted you to visit Blogeois.com? ___I’m a regular ___A friend told me ___Link from another site ___Just passing through ___Radio/TV ad ___Blogeois is paying me ___Other
8. Is this questionnaire annoying or what? Yes or No
9. What would you do differently here if you owned/maintained Blogeois.com?

Thank you for your time and comments. And Happy New Year. Please be safe!