The Constant Whiner

Chop Chop

2009-07-23T09:39:00.002-05:00

Turns out I misunderstood my boss on Monday when I thought he said people would be notified by the end of the week if they were being layed-off (or is it laid-off?). They were notified by the end of the DAY. Everything makes a lot more sense now. Really.

One guy on my team was "impacted" and another from my second-line area was also "impacted." In this context, "impacted" means kicked out on your butt after 15 years with the company. Oh, and all the work is still there to do. I assume all the extra work will be out-sourced to a group of eager gnomes and fairies who will come in the dark of night and take care of everything. Gotta remember to give my fairy godmother a call too. Maybe she and her wand can pitch in.

In other news, my officemate of seven years cleaned out his desk yesterday. We don't work in the same division anymore, so he was "impacted" three weeks ago. Friday is his last official day on the payroll. See, when you get notice that you've been "impacted," you have four more weeks on the payroll. You're supposed to spend that time transferring your knowledge to someone else who doesn't have time to think about it, and also looking for another job within the company. Of which there are none, so looking is pointless. Officemate actually has been showing the ropes to the guy who is taking over his work. I think that's really nice of him. He's definitely nicer than me.

And of course there's a cherry on top of this magnificent sundae. Two weeks ago today, another guy on my team was hit and killed by a drunk driver while riding his motorcycle. A bunch of us went to a memorial for him last Saturday. There was a huge crowd. He was a very friendly and well-liked guy. Ironically, at the event I also got to catch up with a few former coworkers who had been layed-off in recent months.

Plus...I know it's a really inappropriate thought and I would never say it to anyone except all of you out on the internets...I wondered if his accident would mean that someone else on the team would get to keep their job. Don't know if it did or not, and didn't ask.

Needless to say, it's been a very uplifting few weeks here at Mega-Corporation. Everything is so freaking quiet. Everyone is cranky and irritable (including self). We survivors are numbly slogging through the drifts of work that have continued to accumulate during all the drama, with no hope of getting it all under control anyway, so why bother. Sigh.

Now it's back to our regularly scheduled programming: chipping away at the rocks in the salt mine and doing our best to keep the crazy at bay.

P.S. Is it "laid-off or "layed-off." I really need to know.

A Little Shot of Adrenalin on a Monday Morning

2009-07-20T09:48:00.003-05:00

My boss (who resides in another city), called me this morning to tell me that Mega-Corporation is planning some "work force reductions" in our group which will be announced later this week..............but that I am not affected.

I proceeded to curse and physically threaten him for scaring the crap out me so early in the morning. Am such a lady.

Oh, and would I please not discuss this call with anyone? Apparently, someone higher up asked the first-line managers to reassure those who don't need to worry, probably so we'll keep working like busy little bees, and not updating our resumes and linking to each other on LinkedIn.com and standing around in the hallways speculating.

There may not be a good way to do this, but I'm not convinced that this is the least worse way. Technically, all we should have to do now is figure out who didn't get a "safe" call. But who has the nerve to ask someone else if they got a call? Not me.

I feel bad for my boss. He's a decent guy, stuck with a really crappy task. Sometimes being a manager sucks.

Of course, I feel really bad for those who are going to be unemployed by the end of the week, but don't know it yet. And I feel relieved and grateful and guilty that it's not going to be me this time. But I keep in mind that six months from now it may be me.

So now we wait to see where the axe falls.....

Crackbook

2009-07-04T12:01:00.006-05:00

I discovered this new thing recently. You may have heard of it. Facebook. Oh. My. Gawd. The thing is either a highly addictive drug or a time portal to another dimension. I log into it and the next thing I know it’s three hours later. I click on friends of friends of friends and before you know it, I’ve found the girl who lived down the street when I was a kid, who I haven’t seen since 1973.

I’ve got some questions though. Maybe someone out there can be of assistance. Firstly, I’m getting friend requests from people with whom I went to high school and college. <-- (Note the correct use of “whom” in a sentence. I’m feeling sooo clever today.) Some of the requestors I know (or knew) well enough to call friends. Other people, well, I can’t actually say that. Yeah, I hauled out the old annuals and, sure enough, there they are. But I didn’t actually know them then, you know, when we lived in the same town and went to the same school. Being my friend wasn’t a priority then. Why do they want to be my friends now that we live in different states? Is there some sort of competition that I’m not aware of? He who dies with the most friend connections on Facebook wins?

I got one friend request from a guy whose name I vaguely remember, but nothing else. He currently has over 1700 “friends.” Is it even possible to be friends with 1700 people? Has the word “friend” been redefined by Facebook to mean “someone I might have met once”? I’m confused. I’m not up on Facebook etiquette. I don’t want to be rude, but I have no desire to say I’m friends with a complete stranger. Maybe Miss Manners should write an article or something. It would really help.

Secondly, I want to know who all these old, chubby, wrinkled, bald, gray people are and why are they using the names of my classmates on Facebook? I’m shocked, just SHOCKED, at the way some of these people have let themselves go. Because obviously I still look 19, so it can’t be that hard to do a little moisturizing now and then. Ahem. Moving right along....

Thirdly, does everyone put as much effort into their profile picture as I did? Or, is anyone else willing to admit it? I swear I must have taken 30 or 40 pictures of myself. Almost all of them were rejected.

No, too blurry.
No, the lighting sucks and I don’t do Photoshop well enough to fix it.
No, my eyes look bugged out.
No, the jowls I inherited from my grandma are too obvious.
No, I look depressed.
No, you can sorta see the pile of laundry in the background.
No, my double chin is accented by that shadow.
No, my hair looks funny.

I finally settled on three candidates and asked for Slag’s advice. There was one that I thought looked the best, but Slag picked this one, saying it looked the most like me. That’s fine. I don’t want it to look like I’m trying too hard or anything. Heh.

P.S. Don't know if I'll ever get a picture of Slag's goatee posted. I casually mentioned it to him a couple of days ago and got "We'll talk about it." Definitely not promising.

Direct Hit

2009-06-18T18:19:00.006-05:00

OK, so I have not yet acquired a photo of Slag’s new goatee. But I’m working on it. I’m holding off because he got a REALLY bad (i.e. too short) haircut a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been waiting for it to grow out a little first. He currently looks like he has a hair piece sitting on top of a military buzz cut. Very unflattering. Definitely does not agree with his bone structure. Turns out that Slag has a cowlick that starts at his left temple and curves around to the back of his head, completely circumnavigating the left side of his skull. How could I have spent the last twelve years with the man and not know that?? I am so uninformed.

What else has been going on? Nothing worth writing at length about, so here are a few short vignettes.

- Slag’s back continues to improve. He’s doing physical therapy, tending his tomato plants. He even successfully performed the duties of groomsman in a recent wedding. The best thing is that he starting cooking again. We don’t have to live on Chinese take-out or scrambled eggs with a side of microwaved canned peas anymore. Hooray for us!

- It is so fricking HOT here, I want to die. It’s not even officially summer yet and we’re already hitting 100 degrees on a daily basis! I sustained 2nd degree burns just from touching the steering wheel in my car yesterday. I don’t have the genetics for this. I’m so tired of sweating.

- I’m STILL driving around with hail dents in my car. Since March. I was scheduled for body work around the end of May, but the shop called and asked if they could put me off until the end of June because they’re so busy with all the other hail-damaged cars. OK, fine. The car’s driveable. I’m not too good to drive around in a dented car for a little while. But then, last week, we got yet another hail storm. This time the hail wasn’t big enough to dent anything at our house, but at the body shop, it was big enough to dent all the cars on their lot. So now they have to fix all those cars again and could they please reschedule me for the last Monday in July? Agh. I know it’s not their fault, but crap. CRAP! I like their work enough to wait though, so it’s another month of waiting. At least.

- Pre-surgery, Slag and I were snugglers. (Or I should say, we liked to snuggle on the couch for a few minutes until I got too hot and demanded that he GET AWAY FROM ME before I died of heat stroke.) For the first month or so after surgery we didn’t even try. Everything was way too fragile. Since then, we’ve done a little test-snuggling. I try to be very careful manuvering around him. Can’t put too much weight there. No twisting. No sudden moves. That sort of thing. All was going well until last week, when I tried to snuggle him after ingesting a very large strawberry margarita. Somehow, and I’m not sure exactly how it happened so we can’t be sure it was totally my fault,…I knee’d him squarely in the nuts. It was a direct hit. Couldn’t have done any better if I were defending myself from a mugger/rapist.

So.

He went fetal on me, and I started freaking out a little, because the fetal position is not good for his back right now. “Omigod! What happened? Are you OK?? What can I do??” After about 5 minutes he started trying to talk through his clenched teeth, saying things like “It’s OK” and “Don’t worry. It’s not that bad” in between gasping breaths. And I wanted to believe him, but the fact remained that I could actually SEE him, and it was obvious he was fibbing when he said it wasn’t that bad. I sat and watched him for another ten minutes or so, hoping that he wouldn’t go into cardiac arrest or break a vertebra loose. He finally got up and hobbled to the bathroom, which I took as a good sign, but it turns out he only got up because he thought he was going to barf on the living room floor. I’d say it took another couple of hours before all the muscles in his face relaxed. He ultimately survived, but I was banished to the other side of the sofa for the rest of the evening. Totally unfair. It’s not like I did it on purpose or anything.

Progress

2009-05-10T12:24:00.004-05:00

Slag and I went to a restaurant yesterday and actually sat at a table and ate! We did not order take-out. I did not shovel down the second half of my meal as fast as possible while Slag waited out in the car with the seat fully reclined. Slag did not end the dining experience contorted into a bizarre-looking, semi-yoga-ish position on his side of the booth.

I'm really really trying not to count my chickens too soon. Slag is still heavily medicated. But things are looking pretty good over here. We may actually return to normal life some day. It could happen. Eating in restaurants, flying on planes, going to movies. Omigod, MOVIES! Seeing movies BEFORE they come out on video. The mind reels.

On a completely different subject, Slag has a very nice-looking, salt-and-pepper goatee going right now. I like it. It started after surgery with him not shaving for a week because he could barely stand up long enough to take a real shower. Shaving required vertical time that he just didn't have. Then he decided to let it grow a bit, to see how it would look. At that point I insisted that he at least shave his neck to keep it looking well-groomed and not like he suddenly became homeless and had no access to shaving toiletries.

But as the beard started to fill in, I started noticing something weird. Everytime I saw his face from a certain angle, he looked a lot like my ex. Or I should say, The Ex.

So yeah, let's be realistic. Any normal, average-ishly-attractive woman who starts dating at 17 and doesn't marry until 37 can be expected to have a certain number of exes. But this was the ex with the big "E". The one who dumped me after 5 years for someone else. The one who initiated the big Ugly Breakup with the big "U" and the big "B." Which led to the Humiliation with the big "H" and the Therapy with the the big "T." That one.

Oh, don't worry. I dealt with everything and moved on with my life long ago, before I even met Slag. I'm not bitter. Really. Nonetheless, it's still not a memory that I need shoved in my face every time I look at my husband.

So what was my point? Oh yeah, so every time I saw Slag from this certain angle, D. popped into my head. It was only fair to clue Slag in. I told him he could keep the whole beard if he wanted to, but I just felt that I had to at least let him know what was going on.

He decided it would be appropriate to modify the facial hair. I think he made the right decision.

The goatee is awesome. It gives him just a hint of that bad-boy look. Once he's completely recovered from the surgery, I'm thinking it will go really well with his hard hat and tool belt left over from his iron working years. Heh.

I'll do my best to get a decent picture of it. I'm hindered by the fact that he hates having his picture taken and also that he has a rule against his face appearing on the internets. So, if I do acquire and post a picture, I will be in trouble. But it's OK. If I slip him an extra pain pill, he may not even remember it. Plus I'm pretty sure I could take him down in his current state of decrepitude. I am not afraid.

Back Update (Finally)

2009-05-02T19:38:00.002-05:00

I know, I know. I should have updated everybody by now. Because I'm not feeling very energetic, here's the email play-by-play I sent out to friends and family. Not that all you fine people out in the internet aren't friends and just as interested as everyone else, but I don't know all your email addresses, and, well, that's all the excuses I can come up with. Note that there are plenty of excuses in the email below as well. (Apparently I'm good at excuses.) On to the details.....

Wednesday, 4/22, 4:27pm:

We just got back from the pre-surgery consultation with Slag's surgeon. We watched some patient education videos and gave them some money and signed some forms saying it's OK if the surgeon accidently amputates an ear or a leg. Everything is on for tomorrow morning. Slag is looking forward to the whole thing. I'm a little nervous, especially after hearing about all the possible, though "rare," complications, but it's OK because I'm really good at denial.

Slag is the first patient on the surgeon's agenda for tomorrow, which is probably a good thing. We want him to start the cutting before the fatigue sets in. (I am a little annoyed that we have to be at the hospital at 6am. I REALLY dislike getting up early. Is no one considering my needs??)

Thursday, April 23, 10:50 pm:

Just a note to let everyone know that the surgery went really well. The surgeon said it went exactly as planned and he was very pleased. Slag is in some pain, of course, but he has a morphine pump that keeps it under control. The morphine makes him a bit groggy, but he has been awake enough to crack jokes with the nurses, so I think the worst is behind him.

This afternoon a physical therapist came by and got him started with some exercises he can do while still in bed. In the morning they plan to get him up and walking. I'll send out more info as soon as we have specifics. Right now, the plan is to release him on Saturday if all goes well, which would mean we'd be coming back to Austin on Sunday or Monday, depending on how Slag is feeling. But of course, all this could change.

Sorry, I haven't had a chance to read or respond to all the notes you've been sending, but I'll try to tomorrow. I'm pooped and I'm going to get some shut-eye. Also feel free to forward this to anyone else who might be interested. There were several people I couldn't find email addresses for at the last minute.

Thanks everyone! Jill

Sunday, April 26, 5:56pm:

Hey everybody,

I got into the email list on Slag's laptop and snagged a bunch more email addresses. If you haven't heard from me before, it's because I didn't know your email address off the top of my head.

The update: Slag was released from the hospital this morning. It's a day later than he had hoped, but he was in too much pain after the morphine pump was removed on Friday to consider leaving yesterday. The pain has subsided enough now that the pain pills he has are controlling the pain enough for him to handle it. He's been up and walking short distances since Friday. Friday was definitely the worst.

Things have improved every day since then. While he's having pain from the incisions and from having the nerves in his spine stretched back into place where the disk was collapsed (which is causing some leg pain), he's said that the original pain in his back is much improved. Yay!

We're going to spend tonight here in Plano and plan to head for Austin late morning-ish tomorrow (Monday). The drive will take longer than usual because we'll need to stop every 45-60 minutes so he can get out of the car and walk a bit. I expect him to be really tired by the time we get home. Hopefully he'll have the energy to send out the next update, but if not, I'll try to keep you posted.

Toodles, Jill

P.S. I know I've missed some phone calls from various folks. My phone got really crappy reception at the hospital and it's not much better here at the hotel. Sorry.

Monday, April 27, 5:01pm:

Hi again! The latest news....

Slag had a small setback yesterday evening and was readmitted to the hospital overnight. I'll let him tell the whole story later if he wants to, but let's just say that large doses of narcotics can cause vital bodily functions to shut down completely, and leave it at that for now.

Anywho, he was released again this afternoon and is currently crashed on the couch in the hotel room. He appears to be healing well so far, and he still says that he feels very little of the original back pain. We're going to head for Austin tomorrow (Tuesday) morning.

Later, Jill

Tuesday, April 28, 7:45pm:

We're home. We're pooped, but everything is fine. Slag is getting around the house, slowly, but doesn't need a walker or crutches. Thanks for all the calls and emails. I'm sorry I haven't responded to anything. Things are just too frantic (for me) at the moment. :)

I'm sure Slag would love to share the story of his travails, because he's going to be pretty bored in the next few days.

We go back for his two week follow-up appointment on May 6.

OK, that's all I can think of now.

See ya, Jill

OK, that's it. You're all caught up. Slag continues to improve every day. Yesterday evening was bad, because he decided he was feeling better and both increased his physical activity and decreased his pain medication on the same day. Note to self: do not let him do that again. He's back on track today.

Nothing else very interesting to tell. I'll keep you posted....

Back Watch 2009 - It's On!

2009-04-15T16:31:00.002-05:00

First of all, Slag does indeed have osteoporosis in his back. I guess being sedentary for a couple of years will do that to a person. But all is not lost. According to his surgeon, brittle bones mean he's not a good candidate for disc replacement, and six months of bone-enhancing medication may or not improve the condition of his bones enough to make him a candidate later. But he is a candidate for 360 degree disc fusion RIGHT NOW. So that's what he's getting. They'll be taking out the offending disc completely and fusing the two adjoining vertebrae together, and voila, no more pain (fingers crossed).

He's giddy with anticipation. I know, who gets giddy at the thought of major surgery? Someone who's been in pain for two solid years, that's who. I was sitting in the examination room with him when he actually said, to the premier spinal surgeon in this part of the country,

"Man, it's OK with me if you come at me with a pair of post hole diggers."

The surgeon laughed. I'm taking it as a good sign that he at least has a sense of humor. And also that he doesn't actually use post hole diggers in the operating room.

Surgery is on 4/23. We're leaving for Plano on 4/21. Stay tuned....

Good and Bad

2009-04-13T13:41:00.002-05:00

Good:

Today is the day after Easter. And what does that mean?? All the Easter candy is half-price! Woo hoo!

On the way to work this morning I scored a bag of miniature peanut butter cups and a half pound bag of M&Ms for $2.44.

Bad:

At some unknown point during ensuing feeding frenzy, I managed to smear chocolate on the front of my cream-colored shirt. It looks like poo.

I have eaten almost the entire bag of peanut butter cups in the couple of hours I've been at work. My ass is getting bigger even as we speak. And I don't care.

Waiting Sucks and Why Does God Hate My Car? (A Post in Two Parts)

2009-04-07T11:06:00.001-05:00

First, an Update on Slag's back:

Last week we got him to Plano to the Texas Back Institute. These people are supposed to be the shit and we saw nothing that made us disagree with that rumor. They know what they are doing. They weren't surprised or perplexed or frightened by anything we told them or brought with us. They even have comfortable, ergonomic, "back friendly" chairs in their waiting room, which you don't see nearly as often as you would expect from doctors who treat back pain.

Unfortunately, by the time we got to the office at 3pm, Slag had spent 4 hours riding in a car and he was in too much pain to try out one of the ergonomic chairs (I enjoyed one though). Instead he asked the checkin lady if it would be OK if he laid down on the floor in the corner of the waiting room (which he has done before in waiting rooms with less-back-friendly chairs). She responded by finding a free examination room. Very considerate.

The good news is that the head honcho surgeon agreed to replace the offending disc in Slag's back. But there's always a catch, isn't there? Yes, there is.

The surgeon sent him for a bone density scan, to make sure the bones in his back are dense enough to handle the surgery. He got the scan late last week and, to our untrained eyes, the results sort of look like his bones aren't very dense. We're still waiting to hear from the surgeon after he reviews the scan results, but Slag won't be surprised if he has to go on this bone-strengthening medication for a few months before his spine is sturdy enough.

So we're waiting to hear if we have to wait some more. I'm sick of waiting. Slag is REALLY sick of waiting. The thought of Slag living for several more months in his current condition actually makes me a little nauseated. And so I'm not going to think about it anymore today.

Second, my car versus the Almighty:

Last week, just before our trip to Plano, I stood on the front porch and watched a hail storm pummel the crap out of my car. For the second time in three years. This time was worse because the front and back windows were also smashed, filling the passenger compartment with glass and rendering the car undriveable. Sigh.

I don't understand what I have done to deserve this. I love this car. I'm going to drive it until it dies, but the universe seems to be trying to kill it off before its time. I got it new in 2003. In the 6 six years since then, it's been rear-ended TWICE, beat all to hell with hail TWICE, and had a cantaloupe-sized rock gouge a trench out of its hood when said rock was thrown up in the air by the truck driving in front of me. So let's just say they know me at the body shop.

If somebody knows what I need to do to stop the carnage, please let me know. I'm thinking of sacrificing a goat.

Back Watch 2009 Update - Complete System Failure

2009-03-16T11:43:00.002-05:00

Total spinal failure has finally arrived. Slag can no longer stand or walk. Records are being gathered even as we speak. It's likely that we'll be heading off to the top spinal surgery center in Texas very soon. It's about a 3.5 hour drive from here, so getting him there is going to be a challenge.

Hell, getting him in the car is going to be a challenge, but in the car he will go, even if I have to strap him onto a dollie, a la Hannibal Lector, and roll him out to the driveway.

He's remarkably calm and good-tempered, even as he keeps his life in running order from a horizontal position on the couch in the living room, with only the occasional Vicodin to keep the pain to a tolerable level. He's got all three phones within easy reach and has been fielding work calls all morning. Not sure what he's telling his clients. I am hoping he's telling them something like "I can't walk right now, so no, I won't be able to inspect that house this afternoon. "

Thank Zeus I can do my job completely from home, as long as the internet connection stays functional, so I don't have to leave him stranded.

And I am calm because I have a valid prescription for the good pills.

"Drugs are bad, but the good pills are good, m'kay?"

Back Watch 2009, Episode 1

2009-03-03T15:53:00.001-06:00

I just brought Slag home from his most recent “procedure.” He got another needle shoved into his spine, but this one was in a slightly different place than the last one. They gave him a copy of the fluoroscope image, but looks just like the last one to me.

I wish I didn’t always come home from visits to the spine doctors feeling stupider than I was when I left. I just don’t get it. I don’t think I’m stupid, not when I’m really trying not to be. And I know the doctors are busy and don’t have time to cover Anatomy 101 with all their patients during every visit, but I wish someone could just point me to a web page or something. I would read it. I swear.

I never intended to be one of those wives who follows her husband to all his doctor’s appointments and keeps track of all his symptoms in a little notebook and generally hovers. Slag is a grownup. I don’t want to be his mother. He doesn’t want me to be his mother. But things are different with the spine and those who treat it. It’s complicated. Slag takes me along so there are at least two sets of ears listening and trying to remember, but the two of us together still have a hard time understanding what exactly is going on. We always debrief during the drive home while everything is fresh in our minds.

“OK, he said x. Is that what you heard?”

“Well, sort of. He implied x, but I don’t think he actually said those words. I wonder if he really meant y?”

“Hmm, yeah, I can see that. Maybe he meant first x, then y if x doesn’t work?”

“Is it possible to do y after you’ve tried x and it failed? Didn’t he say something about y being impossible after x because of scar tissue?”

And so on.

I started to ask a couple of questions during the consult today, and the doctor stopped me and handed me a pamphlet. “This is what we’re going to do today.” And then he handed me another pamphlet. “This is what we’ll do in a couple of weeks if today’s procedure results in a and b.” And then a third pamphlet. “This is what we’ll do later if the results of the two previous procedures indicate that he is a good candidate.” And then he disappeared.

OK, sounds good. We’ve got something in writing to work with. I can do that. Only I screwed up and didn’t number the pamphlets. By the time I got the book and the water bottle and Slag’s wallet and phone and all our copies of the consent forms shoved into my purse and made it back to the waiting room, I got the order of the pamphlets mixed up and I don’t remember which is which.

And even if I did get the pamphlet order correct, I still don’t understand. Two of the pamphlets essentially say the same thing. They even have the same diagram of cartoon needle poking a cartoon spine, only in one the point of the needle is about a millimeter away from the point of the needle in the other. I honestly can’t see any substantial difference, certainly nothing that would warrant a whole separate pamphlet.

And, to top it all off, all three of them basically say “We’re going to lay you out on a table, sedate you, and stick a needle into your spine. We’ll put medicine through the needle that will hopefully make your back stop hurting. You will need someone to drive you home.”

This is not helpful information. I think he gave them to me so I would shut up. And I wasn’t even being obnoxious or anything!

OK, enough whining for now. It’s time for the nagging part of my day to begin. I’ll work on filling in the background of the story later. Now I’ve gotta go make sure Slag doesn’t do anything he isn’t supposed to do. Toodles.

Spring Planting

2009-02-23T21:55:00.003-06:00

You might think that February would be too early to plant your tomatoes, but no. Turns out, if you live in a place where you have a 50/50 shot at running your air conditioner on Christmas Day, you can plant in February.

Slag's back is, of course, very delicate, so Skiver and I were drafted to serve as his crew. I had snuck out of work an hour early and thought I was going to spend the hour goofing off, but no. I was promptly snared. Skiver, being the smart one and also not the one who lives with Slag, was tardy and arrived after work started. The work started at 4:15pm. Which also happens to be the exact minute that I arrived at home from work today.

I tried the tilling before Skiver arrived, but....I suck at tilling. Skiver is surprisingly good at tilling. He said it was more fun than vacuuming.

A Happy V-Day

2009-02-15T14:24:00.008-06:00

Yesterday was my and Slag’s 13th Valentine’s Day together as a couple. We’ve finally settled into a place where nothing is required. There are no more worries about someone’s feelings getting hurt because they weren’t gifted or flowered or acknowledged properly. Most of the anxiety has been Slag’s. He was clearly traumatized sometime earlier in his life for not doing “the right thing” on Valentine’s Day. I don’t know what happened to him, but I’ve spent the years trying to undo it.

Don’t get me wrong, the first few years of our relationship, I was delighted by the bouquets of roses that appeared at home or at work on that special day. The ones delivered to work were the best, because then EVERYBODY got to see how much I was adored.

But it kept escalating. I finally put a stop to it the day I arrived home to find three dozen long stem red roses in multiple vases throughout the living room. Because they wouldn’t even fit into one vase. Do you know how much three dozen roses costs on Valentine’s Day?? Me neither, but I know it’s a lot. Too much. We could have used that money to add on to the house like we’ve talking about for a couple of years. Instead, because he so much wanted me to know how much he loves me and wanted me to be happy on Valentine’s Day, he invested huge quantities of cash in something that would be dead in a week, ten days tops. He was essentially burning money in my honor. And I love him for it. But it’s just not needed anymore. I know he loves me and I know I love him and we don’t need to “do” Valentine’s Day anymore to prove it to each other. And this is a very comfortable place to be. I like it.

This year we had an extremely fun V-Day hanging out with our bestest friend Skiver. Skiver and Slag got take-out wings from Hooter’s and I had take-out from my favorite Italian restaurant and then we watched Evil Dead II on DVD. And then we participated in the Valentine’s Day tradition that I still fully support: the over-the-top chocolate dessert. I found a recipe on the web and tweeked it to suit my preferences. (The recipe I saw suggested boxed mixes. Ha, as if. I’m not snobby about much of anything, but I do not “do” brownie and cookie mixes. And that’s all I have to say about that.)

Phase 1: Make the brownie batter of your choice (enough for a 13x9 inch pan) and spread it in a buttered baking dish.

Phase 2: Make the chocolate chip cookie dough of your choice and drop little spoonfuls of it into the brownie batter, mashing the dough flat with a spoon if needed.

Phase 3: Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes.

Phase 4: Make a ganache with by melting together 12oz of your favorite chocolate chips, 6 tablespoons of butter and ¾ cup of cream. Spread over the cooled brownie/cookie thing.

Phase 5: Gormandize.

Phase 6: The next morning, eat more for breakfast. Then throw the rest in the trash so you don’t finish off the entire pan and subsequently grow out of all your jeans over the course of a single weekend.

Yes, I have posted a picture of the inside of my trash can on the internet, the content of which looks remarkably like poo. My mother must be so proud right now.

A Little Something

2009-02-05T08:43:00.002-06:00

Slag bought me a present last week. Right out of the blue. There was no special occasion or anything. Just a little something, because he was thinking of me.

How cool is that? Every girl likes to be surprised with gifts from her man every now and then. It’s especially romantic when he presents the gift and then makes a sudden retreat to the other side of the room, where he cowers defensively with a pleading look in his eyes that silently begs “Please don’t hurt me or any of my stuff.”

He got me one of these:

So…..yeah.

What might be the appropriate response from moi, given that I need to keep my man respectful, but I also want to at least give the appearance of being sane?

On the one hand, this is really, really close to responding “yes” to the famous question: “Honey, do these pants make me look fat?” Which would naturally result in a nuclear-holocaust-type situation. For him.

On the other hand, the man is clearly desperate. He’s so frantic to escape my raspy, middle-aged, half-assed-runner’s calluses that he’s willing to risk my woman-wrath. I have been shoving my cold, callused feet up against the delicate skin behind his knees a lot recently…..OK, truthfully, I’m not that picky and I’ll stick my cold, callused feet any place that’s warm. Slag has lots of attractive warm spots. So I can see where he might be justified in suggesting a different grooming strategy for my feet.

What to do, what to do….

I’m shooting for sane this week, so I’ve decided to forgive him. The egg thing actually works pretty well. Plus he’s really adorable when he cowers.

Glitter

2009-01-29T20:15:00.003-06:00

This afternoon I headed to the ladies room for my normal, 3pm-ish, pee break, and found my favorite stall unoccupied. It’s the one furthest from the door. I don’t know why I always feel drawn to that one, but I do. And since the men outnumber the women 10 to 1 on my floor, that stall is usually available because there’s never anybody else even in the restroom. Long story short, I got my favorite stall. But today that stall had a different look. No, nothing alarming or disgusting, just weird. Today there was a bunch of glitter all over the floor. It wasn’t anywhere else in the restroom, just in that stall.

WTF?

I’ve been imagining possible scenarios in my head since then. How many ways could that happen? Glitter. On the floor. In the restroom. At work.

I think these are the best of what I came up with (keeping in mind that I am, right now, as I write, extremely drunk (I use lots of sentence fragments when I’m drunk. Probably drives Jocelyn crazy (She’s an English composition teacher))). They are:

1. They started making Barbie™ panties in adult sizes.

2. All the cool, hip people now decorate their hoo-hoo’s with glitter and I’m not hip enough to know about it.

3. MegaCorporation has out-sourced custodial duties to a group of fairies, and one of them, say, sneezed while she was cleaning that stall.

Anybody have a better idea?

He's gone!

2009-01-21T14:39:00.004-06:00

One of our friends hosted a little post-inauguration celebration last night. There was plenty of food and drinks and lively conversation. Skiver even brought a bottle of some very tasty champagne for toasting. Once all our glasses were filled, we stood around for a second, trying to decide what to toast to. I suggested “He’s gone!” Everyone agreed enthusiastically. Then we clinked glasses and downed the bubbly and continued on with the critiquing of the inaugural fashion, which is really the best part of the whole thing.

I was a bit disappointed when we first arrived at the festivities, because I forgot to bring the George Bush action figure that I got Slag for Christmas two or three years ago. I figured George would be a fun party toy, especially after a few bottles of wine.

The action figure normally resides on our mantel, bent over, with its pants pulled down, thusly:

For a long time the lady who cleans our house would pull up his pants and sit him upright as part of her “tidying of the living room” routine, but lately she’s taken to joining in the fun and doing something amusing with him. Most recently she’s been sitting him in the lap of my Princess Lea sock monkey. But that’s a story for another post.

Anywho, on election day Slag and I decided that we would retire George on inauguration day. The joke has run its course. Oh, we’ll keep him around for the sake of posterity, but the sight of Ken-doll-smooth flesh-colored plastic buttocks has grown a little tiresome. Also, we don't want to appear to be rabidly psychotic, like the people who still haven't recovered from Clinton's presidency. Plus George's butt doesn’t really go with the rest of the décor.

So long, George!

I've Gone Red(dish)

2009-01-17T12:19:00.002-06:00

Don’t worry, Bill O’Reilly! I swear I’m not a godless commie! I think I’m just having a mid-life crisis. And no, I haven’t traded Slag in for a couple of 25-year-olds. I still have a job. There are no sports cars in the driveway. No, none of that. Instead I’ve gone completely WILD and dyed my hair “medium auburn blond” (with a few blond highlights). How’s that for thrills and drama? Woohoo!!!!!

Somebody better shoot me with a tranquilizer dart before I go nuts and call in sick to work when I’m not really sick.

Photo courtesy of Slag

Floss

2009-01-10T10:02:00.000-06:00

While I am now a pretty dedicated flosser, it wasn’t always so. In my teens and twenties, my teeth saw floss only on the rare occasion that I got a piece of popcorn stuck between a couple of molars, and even then I only flossed the spot necessary to remove the offending bit of corn-hull. All the other teeth were ignored. I didn’t hear them complaining, so I assumed everything was fine. I had better things to do with my time.

So, as you might imagine, whenever I went to the dentist during those years and the dental hygienist asked me if I flossed, I’d squirm a little and mumble something about “every now and then” or “once in a while” or some other vague expression that really meant “No. No, I definitely do not floss, but I’m not going to admit it to you. Stop judging me!” Does anybody ever answer that question truthfully? Anyone? Ever? No, they don’t.

I don’t recall exactly what made me start thinking about flossing, and then actually doing it once in a while. I’m going to guess it was something like the memory of my grandmother sticking out her false teeth and making her eyes all crazy-looking and causing me and my cousins to shriek in terror and hide under furniture. I came to realize that no, I am not immortal and my body parts are going to start breaking down just like everyone else’s if I don’t take care of them. In short, I decided that I didn’t want to be the old lady with the freaky teeth who scared small children.

It was hard at first. It was just one more thing that was standing between me and vegging on the couch at the end of the day. I became an intermittent flosser, maybe averaging every other day or so. Still not on the straight and narrow according to The American Dental Association™ I’m sure, but definitely better than never. That slowly morphed into regular, every day, no-matter-what, can’t-relax-and-go-to-sleep-unless-I-have-flossed flossing Now if I don’t floss, I feel like I may as well go to bed with a mouth full of candy and invite the gingivitis to come and have a party in my mouth. I could wake up a toothless old hag! Instead of the toothed apprentice hag that I am now.

So, what was my point?

Oh yeah, well, now that I floss every day, I always expect the dental hygienist to ask me if I floss, so I can sanctimoniously declare “Yes! I floss every day! Aren’t my gums magnificent??” Only she never does. What is up with that? I always leave feeling cheated. I floss every day and I want some recognition for the effort, dammit. Is that too much to expect? She has her hands in my mouth for a good 20 minutes. Would it kill her to ask me one little question? It’s not like it would take any extra time. She could ask me while she’s putting the little drool towel around my neck or when she’s reloading the spinning rubber tool with nasty-tasting tooth polish or any number of other times when there’s a lull in the conversation.

So this week I decided to take matters into my own hands and ask why she doesn’t ask me the floss question, now that I actually do floss. And you know what she said? She said she could tell whether or not someone flosses just by looking, so she didn’t need to ask.

Excuse me….what? WHAT?? She can tell by looking?? Really? So all those times that she asked me about flossing, she ALREADY KNEW the answer? What kind of crap is that?? What, did she just want to listen to me lie, so she could feel superior? Is that how she amuses herself? By secretly mocking non-flossers?

Of course, this revelation has caused me to reevaluate our entire relationship. I thought it was based on trust and mutual respect and now I know that I was just being naïve. It’s true, I am just too trusting. I had no idea what was really going on. I feel so used, so manipulated. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to let my guard down and be vulnerable with another hygienist ever again. She stole my innocence and I can never forgive her for that.

And her? Well, she clearly has issues. I mean, you really have to wonder about someone who spends her entire day passive-aggressively manipulating non-flossers for her own amusement. The more I think about it, the more I’m really starting to worry a bit about the woman’s mental stability. She obviously needs a therapist and possibly medication. And it wouldn’t surprise me if someone organized an intervention in the near future. Otherwise things could get out of hand.

I Am Ready

2009-01-04T17:18:00.001-06:00

I go back to work tomorrow after being off for two solid weeks. Mega-Corporation closed down operations for two weeks around the holidays this year, instead of the usual one week. MC wants me to spend extra time with my family, to rest and rejuvenate. I know that because I got a little note from HR telling me so. Down at the very bottom of the note there was also some vague comment about “leveraging downtime to confine costs” or some such. Which costs being confined was never fully explained, but I can guess. cough*gettingallthatvacationtimeoffthebooks*cough. Whatever.

I don’t have a lot to show for all this time off. Instead, I have taken care of a million little things that no one would actually notice. I’ve replaced the water filter in the refrigerator and the air filter in the AC system. I replaced the bag in the vacuum cleaner and repotted all the plants in the house. The car is full of gas and its registration is up-to-date and its tires are fully inflated to the recommended pressure. The house is stocked with paper towels and toilet paper and laundry soap and all the other essentials. We aren’t almost out of anything. I have mopped and filed and ironed and organized. I made 2008 contributions to our IRAs. I have a new toothbrush. I even blogged.

So. Let it be known that right now my life is officially under control. It may never happen again, but for just these few hours, I am on top of everything. Bring it on, 2009! I am ready for you. (Here is where I deliver a couple of karate chops to the air around my head, Chuck Norris style, and everybody is really impressed.)

P.S. I expect everything will be back to the normal insanity by tomorrow around this time. Stay tuned.

I Am Not Dead (and Neither Is Slag)

2009-01-01T13:41:00.009-06:00

No really, it’s true. We are still here. Barely. The blogging suffered and there wasn’t a week that went by that I didn’t feel a little pang of guilt about it, but I just didn’t have the mental energy to do it. I hope the blogging gods will forgive me.

It’s been a stressful year for us. Last night Slag and I kissed at midnight, exchanged I-love-you’s, and pronounced a hearty “Good Riddance and Don’t Let the Door Hit You on the Ass on the Way Out” to 2008. 2009, you had better watch yourself, because I have had enough crap. Really.

Some things that happened this year:

1. Slag’s back has become nearly non-functional. I mean, it’s still there, connecting his shoulders to his legs, but the number of positions it allows Slag to take without causing extreme pain has decreased to around two. Those would be (a) Lying horizontally on the left side of the body and (b) Lying horizontally on the right side of the body. This makes it difficult for him to work (see number 2) and make pottery, the two things that keep him sane and agreeable, though I will say he has done a much better job of staying sane and agreeable than I would have.
He’s been through some horrendous tests, one culminating in an ambulance ride back to the hospital after the test. The test was called a discogram, and it wasn’t nearly as fun as the name might imply.

There’s a 95% chance that someone will be cutting him open in 2009. We haven’t yet decided who will be doing the cutting or what they will do once they have gained access to his spine. Stay tuned.

2. I know the mortgage industry meltdown affected lots of people out there. It particularly affected Slag because, well, he works in the mortgage industry. So his business has seen somewhat of a slow down. Plus, new, knee-jerk-reaction regulations created by those who don't really understand his job are making it almost impossible for him to do his job effectively. Which is nearly a moot point anyway (see number 1).

3. Wicked Step-Mother™ was diagnosed with breast cancer last spring. It was caught in the very earliest of stages. She went through surgery and radiation treatment and is now clear of cancer, and we’re hoping she stays that way. (2009, do not mess with me on this. I will kick your ass. I mean it.)

4. My Dad’s Parkinsons continues to progress. I don’t see him that often, so when I do see him, the changes are marked. Nothing else to say here, except a hearty, sarcastic Thanks! to The Decider for blocking stem cell research at every opportunity. Someday, I hope he or someone he loves comes down with Parkinsons or Alzheimers or diabetes or something else that would be eight years closer to a cure if he hadn’t been installed in office. Yes, I know that’s mean-spirited, and I don’t care.

5. My net worth has decreased by about 33% in the last 3 months. Not that we’re talking about an extreme amount of money anyway, but it’s very disheartening to see it all evaporate overnight.

6. Last spring the Mega-Corporation that I work for announced it was selling the building where my co-workers and I reside. MC was planning on cramming us all into a data center building out by the airport. A building that doesn’t even have enough restrooms to support the number people who were going to occupy it, let alone any amenities like a cafeteria. The closest restaurant is a titty bar called “The Landing Strip.” (<--I am not making that up.) There were rumors of a Subway in a nearby gas station, but I never saw it. And my commute would have tripled. MC offered move packages to anyone willing to move to another city about 3 hours from here. My boss and four of the people I work most closely with took the package. And then, after houses had been sold and moving trucks had departed, and those of us remaining had resigned ourselves to a work space more appropriate for veal calves, MC cancelled the whole thing. Yes, I’m still in my same office, as if it never even happened. Except all the people I work with now live in another city and that can make work a bit more difficult. It’s not so easy to find a wandering boss when you can’t just roam around the building until you hear his distinctive laugh. And just so you don’t think I’m a completely negative person, here are some good things that happened this year:

1. Slag still loves me and I still love him and we still make each other laugh every day in spite of the year we’ve had. We still have jobs and a house and some savings and don’t owe for anything and I know that’s a lot more than many people have right now.

2. MC did, in fact, cancel plans to move me to a part of town where a titty bar called The Landing Strip is the primary public dining facility.

3. MC still provides pretty decent health insurance and we are going to need it this year.

4. All my parents are relatively healthy and still enjoying life and I’m grateful for that.

5. My brother and sister and their families are healthy and growing like weeds.

6. We have wonderful friends who care and are there when we need them.

7. Obama was elected. I know some people voted for Obama because he is African-American, and I know others didn’t vote for him because he is African-American, but I believe that most people don’t give a rat’s ass what color he is. They just think he’s the best guy for the job, and that makes me so much more optimistic about the mentality and future of this country. The past eight years have been so destructive in so many ways and now it’s time to start rebuilding. I’m worried about the enormous mess he is inheriting from the previous administration and hope he won’t be blamed for things beyond his control, but someone has to try to fix it. Godspeed, Barak. Now, to end on a positive note, here are the quilts I made this year:

The only baby quilt I made this year. This one is for Blaine, the new son of friends Becky and Dave.

This is one I made for my Dad.

This is a quilt I made for my sister. It was my first attempt at a king-sized quilt.

A quilt I made for Slag. His color selection, my design.

This is the first baby quilt I made, for my nephew Levi, who will be 7 in April. I found it while going through my pictures. The quilt itself is simpler than those I make now, but it is hand-quilted. I haven’t hand-quilted one since, because it takes FOREVER.

I Got Carded! (Recently)

2008-01-26T11:24:00.000-06:00

Yes, it’s true! I got carded exactly two days ago. In a FULLY LIT grocery store, buying a bottle of cheap-ass champagne. Take THAT, Middle Age!

I was picking up a bottle of the cheap stuff because I want to try making this yummy champagne cocktail I had at a New Year’s Eve party, and I figure if I’m mixing it with cranberry juice, there’s no point in spending a lot of money on the good stuff. As if I would know the difference anyway. The recipe is one bottle of champagne, two cups of cranberry juice and a half cup of the orange liquor of your choice. I was looking confused in the cordials section of the liquor store when some guy who worked there recommended this orange liquor that Patron makes. He then went on about how he hates Patron tequila and thinks it’s overpriced, but he likes this stuff. I tasted it when I got home, and it is indeed sweet and orangey, which is exactly what I was looking for.

Anywho, did I mention that I got carded? In full daylight? I DID. The ironic thing is that when I pulled the bottle off the shelf, I remembered the last time I got carded. It was in a very dark bar about 4 years ago. I was thinking nostalgically about how that was probably the last time it would ever happen, short of some serious surgical intervention, and even then, the eyebrows in the center of the forehead and inability to blink are always a dead giveaway.

But no, it turns out that spending 45 minutes on the Nordic Track, sweating off all your eye-liner, and then just toweling off, pulling on your clothes (without bothering to shower) and going to the grocery store with your hair still a little wet is some sort of magical youth elixir.

The checkout clerk looked at me a little sideways and said “Are you over 21?” and then before I could answer she went on to “Can I see your ID please?” And I’m all like “Absolutely you can see my ID!” And I’m thinking, honey, you could cut my lifespan into two equal-sized pieces and each half would still be old enough to buy this bottle of cheap champagne.

So then I’m standing there expectantly, maybe even feeling a little smug, as she inspected my ID, waiting for some sort of recognition for being extremely “over 21” and not looking it. I kept waiting for her to look incredulously back and forth between my license and my face and then go on and on about how I couldn’t possibly be that old and someone should write an article about me for the Style section of the newspaper. But she didn’t. She just handed the ID back to me and went back to scanning canned goods. It was very anti-climactic.

The whole thing left me feeling a little indignant. Because, you know, if you’re going to make every middle-aged woman who comes through your checkout line go to all the trouble of digging out her driver’s license out of her purse, you should at least PRETEND to be surprised when one or two of them turns out to be a little over thirty. She could have thrown me a bone and at least raised her eyebrows. I took my license completely out of my wallet for her convenience and I got nothing.

Whatever. I know she was probably half blind or high or just screwing with me, but I’m still counting it, and I dare anyone to even snicker about it in my general direction.

My Nemesis

2008-01-16T20:55:00.001-06:00

Meet the rotary cutter. It is without a doubt the greatest advance in quilting technology since the needle and thread. It allows you to cut fabric with speed and accuracy that is unmatched by any other cutting tool available on the market today. It is also a sharp little bastard.

Last Tuesday, this particular cutter and I had, shall we say, a little “run in.” A disagreement, if you will. A small conflict, one might say. An altercation. It was over just who would occupy the same point in the space-time continuum in the dining room/quilt design studio.

I lost.

My right index finger took one for the team. Or, more accurately, my right index finger gave up a portion of itself so the rest of me could live. Well, “gave up” isn’t quite right. It was more like “was involuntarily separated from” a portion of itself. The finger didn’t make its sacrifice quietly though. No, it protested with great enthusiasm, bled profusely, hurt like a mother-f***er and generally caused quite a ruckus.

I’m really lucky that Slag was in the next room when the blood-letting started. He heard the weird noise I made, you know, the universal word for “I just cut off the end of my goddamn finger!” It sounds something like “Aahhaaahhhaaahhheeekkkkkk!!”

Slag handles emergencies better than anyone I know. My little screech sent him into full catastrophe-management mode. It took him all of about 30 seconds deduce what had happened, locate the chunk of finger among my quilting stuff, pack it on ice and then get me and the finger chunk in the car. I swear, we were at the hospital in less than three minutes.

For my part, I did manage to stay conscious until I was actually in the presence of trained medical personnel. Then I passed out cold, as I am wont to do. Slag caught me, naturally, while the medical personnel yelled for gurneys and whatnot. I woke up with a view of ceiling tiles going by really fast as I was rolled back into one of the emergency room “work bays.”

A couple things I didn’t know before last week:
1) If you show up at an emergency room covered in blood, you don’t have to wait.
2) Even if you are covered in blood, they still want you (or your husband, who is also covered in blood) to sign some form before they work on you.

Turns out we saved the finger chunk for nothing (though one of the nurses did praise Slag for packing it exactly the right way: not directly on ice, but in a bag on ice). The doctor said the risk of infection was greater than the benefit of reattaching the chunk, which wasn’t really that big. He measured the gaping wound on the end of my finger and pronounced it to be 1.5 cm by .75 cm, i.e. small enough that the skin should grow back over the wound on its own.

I didn’t lose any significant amount of bone. I sorta cut off a diagonal wedge starting just above the last knuckle and ending at about the center of the end of my fingernail. Everybody has said that I should end up with a finger that looks “pretty normal,” which I’m taking to mean that the sight of my finger probably won’t make small children cry for their mothers.

Slag has lots of experience dealing with wounded fingers, so he’s been handling the dressing changes. I couldn’t even think about it for the first couple of days without freaking out. I didn’t look at the finger until the weekend. I finally examined it at length Sunday night. I think it’s going to be OK. It may be a little pointier than it was before, but I think it will be functional. French manicures are probably out forever though.

So far, the biggest problem has been showering. It’s really hard to do with one hand. Try it sometime if you don’t believe me. And the hardest thing about showering is dealing the shampoo bottle. At first I just opened the bottle, held it over my head and squeezed until I felt something ooze on my hair. Unfortunately, by the time I felt something ooze, there was about half a cup of shampoo on my head. One-handed rinsing is pretty time consuming too, so that first shower took a LONG time. The last couple of days I’ve perfected the trick of pressing the shampoo bottle between my elbow and body and squeezing shampoo into my good hand. Sorta like what I imagine playing a bagpipe would be like. Skiver suggested I get Slag to help me, but I don’t think Slag would stay “on task” in the shower. In the end I think it’s more time-efficient for me to just do it myself.

Work hasn’t really suffered, since I can work at home as needed while completely smashed on pain killers. I don’t type very well with ten functional fingers, so there hasn’t been any big loss of productivity there. Plus, I think the pain killers have actually improved my attitude a bit.

The only work issue so far is my boss has taken to saying “We’re number one!” every time he sees me in the hall or in a meeting. I do have a really big, bandaged index finger, reminiscent of those big foam fingers you see at sporting events. So it was funny the first eight times he said it. But now it’s not funny anymore. Somebody make him stop.

Bad Fashion

2008-01-07T14:10:00.000-06:00

I'm usually not one to throw fashion stones, seeing as my fashion house is pretty glassy. Well, it's more of a mud hut really. One of these days, I'm going to splurge and get myself a nice straw mat for the floor, maybe wallpaper the walls with some old newspapers, really fix up the place. And now I think I've taken this metaphor as far as I want to go with it.

Anywho, can't you guess, now I'm going to throw a fashion stone. A really big one. Because sometimes a fashion mistake is so big, so egregious, so frightening that it can't be ignored, even by someone who dresses like me.

Okay, this is going to take some imagination on your part, but I know you can do it.

First, picture a grown woman. A taller than average woman of average build who is over the age of thirty. She's wearing an ordinary blouse. So from the waist up she's looking pretty normal.

Now here come the scary parts. In your mind's eye, add a relatively short, fairly voluminous... prairie skirt. If you were alive in 1978, you're probably not having a problem visualizing this. For those of you who weren't alive yet, prairie skirts were all the rage in the late 1970's, inspired by "Little House on the Prairie." They're big flouncy skirts with lots of ruffled tiers and usually made out of some sort of fabric with little flowers all over it. I had a couple myself, but I was in junior high at the time, so I'm not holding it against myself. I'm standing up now and saying (and I think Michael Kors and all the other judges on Project Runway would agree with me) that very few women over the age of 25 should wear prairie skirts, in 1978 or 2008 or in any year in between. They are typically not flattering to the adult female form. They generally make everything look...well, much bigger. Prairie skirts are for little girls and teenagers who haven’t yet “blossomed” into their adult metabolisms. They are not for the office.

Even as offensive as the prairie skirt was to my fashion sensibilities, it could not, by itself, have prompted this little rant. No, to understand what pushed me over the edge, you must now move your mind's eye down the legs (Shut up, Stucco. I know you're about to say something lascivious.) to the ankle/foot area. Here we find a lovely pair of black mary jane's with 4 inch heels, making a taller than average person appear to be MUCH taller than average.

So you’re probably thinking, “Hmmm, you don’t see shoes like that with prairie skirts very often, do you?”

But wait! There’s more! The shoes are paired with LACEY WHITE ANKLE SOCKS. Yes, you heard me, lacey ankle socks. I didn't even know that lacey white ankle socks were available in adult sizes after the mid 1980’s, let alone that I would encounter a pair at the office.

I swear, I turned the corner and saw the whole "Laura Ingalls meets Cyndi Lauper" ensemble coming towards me, and nearly choked. I was completely speechless. I physically shuddered. People, it takes a lot to make me even notice clothing. I have a very high tolerance for bad fashion, but this made me want to gouge out my own eyes. What was she thinking?? Did she really put that outfit together, check it out in the mirror and deem it office-worthy? Really?

I handled the situation in my usual passive-aggressive way: avoiding eye contact, walking by as fast as possible, and then ridiculing the outfit on my blog. I didn't feel comfortable mentioning my issues with the sock/skirt/shoes combination to her, but I hereby give the entire planet permission to tackle me if I should appear outside my front door wearing anything remotely similar.

Really, just knock me down and take my shoes and socks. Just take them.

Recap

2008-01-01T16:27:00.001-06:00

OK, so I've been gone for a while. But not to worry! I have a great excuse at the ready! Plus, it's true, so I don't have to worry about keeping my story straight later. Here it is: The hard drive on my computer died. For the second time. In six months. I was unhappy. :( <-- Note the frowny face added for extra emphasis.

Technically, the computer that died was Slag's computer. Except for the laptop I have from work, all the computers in the house belong to Slag. He has his primary business computer, his backup business computer, the backup for the backup business computer and a couple retired business computers that sit partially disassembled in the corner of his office until they collect enough dust to grow corn. There's probably another computer or two in the garage someplace, but I don't feel energetic enough to go down there and look, so you'll have to take my word for it. Since there's really no room in the house for another computer, I am allowed to use the backup for the backup business computer for my little non-work computer activities.

Anyway, after the computer died I didn't have much to do, so I spent some time every day lobbying for its repair. When I say I "lobbied," I mean that I sat in Slag's office, gazed forlornly from Slag to the nonfunctional computer and back again, and then sighed and moaned for extended periods. Then I would plod downstairs, flop on the couch, and watch reruns of Project Runway. I love it when Heidi Klum goes "You're out." and then gives the ejected contestant the European double kiss, the kind that says "I don't really know you, but I have good breeding."

Slag wasn't giving me and the deceased computer a lot of attention because he was busy fielding last minute demands from his clients who all wanted him to do stuff for them before the end of the year. I'm not sure exactly what stuff they wanted, but they do give him money for doing it, so they were getting top priority and the defunct computer and I were getting nothing.

My sighing eventually wore him down though, especially after I started doing it while dramatically sprawling myself across his lap and making it impossible for him to type or talk on the telephone or do any of the other things his clients pay him to do, because he finally got in his truck and drove to Fry's and bought a new hard disk. And he did it TWO DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS. Yes, he endured all the manic shoppers and insane checkout lines and insipid piped-in Christmas music that one would expect to experience at Fry's two days before Christmas, just to get that hard disk. That's how much he loves me. I am a lucky woman.

Now I'm back in business. Let me catch you up on my exciting life.

A chocolate voodoo doll that Skiver gave me. I'm eating him from the feet up to prolong his suffering, because I'm a bitch like that.

My new Pfaff Hobby 1200 GrandQuilter! Isn't it magnificent?? My Mom and Wicked Step-Mother™ and Slag went in together on it for my Christmas present. I'm expecting my quilting expertise to triple overnight.

A painting/mixed media piece that my best friend from high school sent me. Isn't it cool? Yes, she created it herself. I love it.

My latest quilt. It's for my new niece Sophie. She arrived almost a month early, but she's perfectly healthy, so all is well.

My second latest quilt. It's for Sophie's big sister Sage. When my sister was pregnant with Sage and found out she was having a girl, the first words out of her mouth were "I hate pink!" So, of course, I made Sage a quilt with no pink in it. Now Sage is almost three and has opinions of her own. She loves pink. LOVES it. So I made her a pink quilt. Sorry Sis.

A doll quilt that I made out of extra blocks I accidentally made for the above quilt, because I am apparently retarded and can no longer multiply correctly.

That's all the excitement for now. I hope all of you out there in the internet had a wonderful holiday season and may all have a happy and healthy new year.

Happiness

2007-11-27T16:45:00.000-06:00

Slag’s mom has been clearing out a lot of old stuff and she brought this T-shirt by, thinking he might like to have it.

Apparently, sometime in the mid 70’s when he was in high school, Slag was sent home because he wore this to school. Twice. On two consecutive days.

I’m told that he argued with the principal that it was just a picture of a cat in a bottle, but the oppressive Public School Industrial Complex didn’t see it his way and insisted that he wear something else. So he wore it again on the third consecutive day and got suspended.

Somehow, after living with the man for 8 years, I’m not surprised. Not a bit.

Note to Self

2007-11-26T08:48:00.000-06:00

Returning to work after being on vacation for a week is REALLY unsatisfying. Next time, bring extra large gourmet chocolate bar along to soften the blow.

Prada From Heaven

2007-11-06T14:21:00.000-06:00

Last Saturday I went for a run early in the evening. Well, it was actually one of those things that I call “a run,” but there’s lots of walking involved too. Which isn’t really relevant in this story, but I don’t want to imply that I’m fitter than I am. So let’s just say that I was propelling myself forward with my feet in such a manner that it caused me to sweat and breath hard.

Anywho, as I was approaching the street corner that denotes the end of mile 3 on my running route, I saw something in the road. It was almost dark, so I couldn’t tell exactly what it was. It looked like a short, squatty cylinder. Weird. It wasn’t there when I passed this corner early in the run. As I got closer, I could see that it was handbag, an upside-down handbag to be exact, just sitting in the road like someone tossed it out their car window. And then, when I was almost up to it, I saw the most exciting thing. It was a “Prada” label! (I could tell even though said label was upside-down. I can spot a right-side up Prada label at 50 yards.)

My first thought was “Look at this! Somebody threw away a perfectly good Prada handbag. Oh my god is this my lucky day or what! The universe has given me a Prada handbag!”

This thought lasted only about half a second, because just then the handbag came into complete focus. It was, or had been, a fully loaded handbag, complete with a wallet and a Blackberry and all the other normal handbag stuff, which was now scattered over about a square yard or so (that’s a square meter for my Canadian friends) around it. At that moment, I knew in my bones that somebody, somewhere, was totally freaking out and I felt great sympathy for her.

There aren’t many worse things that could happen to a woman besides losing her purse. Losing a purse is a million times worse than a man losing his wallet. A wallet is just a wallet, but the purse contains the wallet, the cell phone, the favorite tube of lipstick, the checkbook, business cards, breath mints, the keys, the emergency dose of Valium, the to-do list, etc., basically everything a woman needs to survive out in the world. It is a woman’s complete life, condensed down to the very essentials. It is important.

For another half second I thought about leaving it there, thinking that whoever lost it was certainly going to be looking for it soon. But what if she didn’t come back before somebody ran over it? Or what if some unscrupulous person came along and just took it. No, I had to save the Prada handbag for its rightful owner. Once I saw that there was probably enough info with it for me to figure out who it belonged to, I shoved the scattered contents back into the big center pocket, picked up the whole thing and headed for home.

I must say, it WAS the perfect accessory for my ensemble: running shoes, baggy gym shorts, a JogBra, and a Prada handbag. A little lip gloss and I’d be ready for a romantic anniversary dinner with Slag.

I ended up just walking the half mile back to the house. The only thing that would have looked weirder than someone walking down a suburban street in the aforementioned outfit would be someone running down a suburban street in the aforementioned outfit. Plus, I didn’t want to sweat on the leather.

During my walk home, I started trying to imagine all the possible scenarios that could have resulted in a Prada handbag lying in the road. Maybe someone was abducted off the street and she had whacked her attacker with the handbag before she was dragged off to godknowswhere. I started making mental notes of all the details of the surrounding area, checking out all the parked cars and telling myself to see what time it was when I got home so I could tell the police. Ooh, maybe I’d end up on the 10pm news. Maybe I’d end up on American Justice, telling my story about how I found this purse and this one clue led to the whole case being solved.

Hmmm, but then I started wondering how it would look if the owner of this purse drove by looking for it and saw me walking away with it? Would she think I was stealing it? Would she believe my story? I didn’t want to look like I was trying to hide the handbag, so I started swinging it a little whenever a car drove by, silently saying: “See see! I’m not stealing this handbag! I’m just holding it for its rightful owner. Are you its rightful owner?”

Or maybe I had blundered into some sort of sting operation. Maybe the FBI was dropping designer handbags in the road and waiting for people to come by and steal them so they could round up all the handbag thieves in the city. Maybe I was being recorded by a hidden camera and would end up on Dateline, just like those pedophiles! I would be all like “I wasn’t STEALING it. I was just going to take it home and figure out who it belonged to” as they were putting the handcuffs on me, and it would sound just as lame as those perverts on To Catch a Predator saying “I swear I was only going to take her to the movies.” And everybody else would be like “Oh right. Tell us another big fat lie.” So then I stopped swinging the handbag at passing cars and just tried to be discrete but without looking sneaky.

Thankfully, I made it home without being arrested. Once I got the handbag into full light, I could see that it wasn’t the warm brown that I thought it was. No, it was red, and since I’m not much into red accessories, giving it back to its owner wasn’t even going to be emotionally difficult. Cool.

I rummaged through the wallet and found a driver’s license with a name and an address. A quick reverse address lookup online and I had a phone number to a house not too far away. No one was home, but I left a long, rambling message like I do when I don’t know what to say and I know I’m being recorded. I told her who I was and how I was out running and I found this purse and what time it was and lots of other stuff and at the end I finally left my number. By the time she got to the end of the message she was probably yelling at the answering machine: “Will you spit it out already? Shut up and tell me where my purse is, you blabbermouth!”

About an hour later I got a phone call from someone who was totally freaking out, just as I had expected. This is a rough transcript from memory: “Thankyouthankyouthankyou oh my god I set my purse on the car when my husband and I were trying to get the dogs in the car and I forgot about it and drove off and we retraced our entire route and we found my TicTacs in the road but nothing else and I was so afraid someone had taken my purse oh my god I’m so relieved thankyouthankyou you’re so wonderful.” And then she offered me a reward, which I refused.

And then a few minutes later, when she came by to pick up the handbag: “Thankyouthankyou soo much I just started a new job and they gave me a Blackberry and I was afraid I was going to have to go into work on Monday and tell them I lost it thank you soooo much you’re so kind you’re wonderful there’s a place reserved in heaven for you.”

I’m not making that up. She actually said there’s a place reserved in heaven for me. So that’s good to know.

It did felt great to hear a total stranger to tell me how wonderful I am, and it was nice to be able to do something that made somebody else so happy, but I’m not sure my good deed was worthy of a guaranteed spot in heaven. I mean, it wasn’t a real inconvenience on my part to carry a designer handbag that I probably can’t afford for a few blocks and use it as an excuse not to finish my run. I didn’t save her child from a burning building or anything. Plus I totally missed getting her TicTacs out of the road, so I didn’t complete the rescue. But I think I'm going to take the place in heaven anyway. I think she would want that.

More Bookish Things

2007-10-31T17:06:00.000-05:00

I didn’t accomplish much last weekend, but I did clear out my one lonely bookcase. Yay for me! There’s one clean thing in my house, 378 things to go. I even dusted the bookcase AND the books (It’s amazing how much dust can accumulate over the space of a year). Then I examined the very top of the bookcase, a space I can’t see without some sort of height enhancement device, i.e. a chair. I haven’t looked up there in about three years. I discovered a landscape made entirely of dust. It was beautiful in its own way. There were mountain ranges and river valleys and low, sweeping plains. There was probably a wide variety of flora and fauna there too, but I didn’t look that closely before sucking it all up with the vacuum cleaner. I’m assuming that anything that could survive in the dust landscape will be just as happy in the vacuum cleaner bag.

During this cleaning I realized something that I’d never considered before. See, I have a shelf of “unread books” in my bookcase. In my mind, its contents are untouchable during the yearly purge. I mean, I’ve never even read them, right? No one can argue that I should get rid of any of them. But this year it occurred to me that there are some books that have been on the “unread” shelf for a long time. A looooong time. Some have been there for at least 5 years and I know a couple have been there about 8 years. Which led me to ask myself a couple of questions: a) Should I add an expiration date to my book purging algorithm? Should I assign each book a date by which it must be read or tossed? and b) Why have those books been unread for so long?

I’m undecided about a), but I think I have the answer to b). When I go to my shelf to find something new, I look for something that fits my mood at that particular moment. Sometimes I want “brain candy,” i.e. science fiction. Sometimes I want interesting non-fiction that shows me another way to look at the world, something like the Tipping Point. But usually I want a good story that keeps me turning the pages but isn’t too distressing. I seldom want a book that I think is going to piss me off or make me cry. And I’m pretty sure that’s the reason most of those books have been there for so long.

A large percentage of them are pre-2003 Oprah books, books that Oprah picked as her “book of the month” at one time or another. The rest of humanity then behaved like sheep and gobbled up the books without a second thought, because if Oprah says the book is good, then the book must be good. End of discussion. Baaaah.

Unfortunately, after finishing a few Oprah-selected books, I began to question her book-selecting credentials. What exactly were her qualifications anyway? Not that the books she chose were bad books. Some were extremely good. But they all seemed to have a rather gloomy undercurrent. Lots of really horrible things were always happening to the characters in these books. These characters were abused by the universe in every conceivable way. These stories left me with a metaphorical little gray cloud over my head. Sometimes they even made me cry.

I officially reached my limit in the middle of A Map of the World. I made it through the small child drowning, but by the time the main character was accused of molesting another child, I had reached my depressing literature quota for the year. I closed the book right then and there and dropped it, unfinished, on top of the donation pile. I don’t regret it. I’m sure it had an uplifting ending, but I didn’t have the emotional stamina to get there at the time. BTW, did anyone out there make it to the end? Did it have an uplifting ending?

Now suspicious, I reviewed the entire list of Oprah books. Every dreary, anxious, cheerless, heartbroken one of them. And when I was done I could only conclude that the Oprah Industrial Complex wanted me to cry and cry a lot. And then I got mad. I threw off my shackles and shook my fist in the air and announced to my television set thusly: “Let me tell you something Oprah, I don’t have the energy to cry about people who don’t really exist and I’m not going to do it! You will not control my emotional state! You will not!” And so that’s how I gave up Oprah books. The end.

Now I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. The thought of tossing anything unread causes me great pain, but I’m afraid that if I touch one of them, the melancholy will creep out onto my hand, crawl up my arm, tunnel into my ear and snuggle up against my pituitary gland for the winter. And we don’t want that, do we? No, we don’t.

So I’m putting it all on your shoulders, Internet. Does anyone out there have an opinion about any of these? Anyone feel comfortable assuring me that reading one of these books won’t make me want to slash my wrists? Anyone?

Songs in Ordinary Time

Breath Eyes Memory

We Were the Mulvaneys

Song of Solomon

Fall on Your Knees

A Lesson Before Dying

There are also a few other books on the unread shelf that are long past their expiration dates. They aren’t Oprah books, but I put them in the same category, because I know they’re sad. I just know it.

First Comes Love

Tuesdays With Morrie

The Notebook

The Five People You Meet in Heaven was on the shelf for a long time too, but in desperation I bought an audiobook version to listen to on one of my long drives to visit family. I had always had a feeling it was going to be “poignant.” I was right. Note: It is possible to sob hysterically and drive 75mph on an interstate highway, but I don’t recommend it.

My Life with Books

2007-10-27T10:40:00.000-05:00

For the first 35 years of my life I hoarded every book I had ever owned. He who dies with the most books wins, and I was planning on winning. I kept everything from college textbooks (you never know when you’ll need to solve a differential equation on the way to the grocery store) to self-help books to third-rate sci-fi. For a long time I even kept every copy of Omni magazine that I had ever owned. When I was an old lady and someone wanted to know what I accomplished in my life, I planned to sweep my hand along the edges of my endless bookshelves, finishing with a flourish like Vanna White, and then stand there with one hand on my hip and the other demurely indicating my vast library, the sheer bulk of the wood pulp speaking for itself. I would respond:

I have read all of these books. You may worship me now.

To accomplish this goal, I lived by some very important book rules. They were: 1) If I bought a book I had to read it, 2) If I started reading a book, I had to finish it and 3) If I read a book, I had to keep it. No exceptions. I couldn’t just buy a book and then not read all of it, and I certainly couldn’t throw a book away. That was just wasteful. I might as well stop recycling aluminum cans or water the yard in the rain. I might as well throw away chocolate. No, the books had to be stockpiled. Every single one of them.

Then Slag and I decided to cohabitate. Or really, Slag and I, plus all of Slag’s tools, decided to cohabitate. Storage space suddenly became a very valuable commodity in this house. Every item needed justification and negotiations were extended and heated. There were a lot of conversations like:

“No! This is my closet and you can’t put that box in here. This is my space and I might want to put something there later. I need all of it. All of it!”

“You already have the bigger closet in the bedroom AND the closet in the extra bedroom. I should be able to put this one little box here.”

“I need both closets because your office takes up the entire third bedroom and I have no place for my quilting supplies. You have an ENTIRE ROOM all to yourself.”

“But that’s for work. You can’t count space I need for work against me. Work space isn’t optional space.”

“You have FIVE computers in there and you’re only using two of them. There’s a lot of optional stuff in there.”

And so on.

Household tensions were high for several months while we both jockeyed to maintain possession of valuable space. Slag would sometimes break off negotiations and resort to surreptitious, guerrilla-like “closet space raids” while I was at work. Now and then I would open my craft closet and discover a dead printer or some boxes of office supplies in the back corner, semi-hidden behind a bundle of quilt batting or stacked on the very top shelf, the one that’s too high for me to reach without a chair. As if he thought I wouldn’t notice anything up that high. As if. Ha!

And then I’d work myself up into a self-righteous lather and start indignantly shoving the offending items out of MY closet and out into the hallway and then I’d just leave them there for somebody to trip over and break their neck, silently saying “I don’t care WHERE you put these, but you’re not putting them in HERE. This space in here is MINE and YOU CAN’T HAVE IT.” I showed him.

Eventually though, we both tired of the trench warfare. We realized that passive-aggressive nit-picking could not solve our space problems. It came to pass that we both had to reexamine some of the stuff we had been carting around for years. I clearly needed to reconsider my book rules.

It was really really scary. These were my BOOKS. What if I got rid of a book and then I WANTED IT LATER? What if that happened? Surely the earth would spin off its axis and we would all die and it would be all my fault. All MY fault, for getting rid of that book.

So I started out slowly, if only to maintain my fragile hold on sanity. At first I just went through all the old sci-fi paperbacks and tossed the ones that were really old and/or really crappy, planning to ease into the harder stuff later. I made several passes through the collection over the course of a few months, gradually working deeper and deeper into the sensitive meat of the hoard, the things I was really attached to.

I made up intermediate rules for myself along the way, things like Today unload all the self-help books that were pitched by their authors on the Phil Donahue Show or Get rid of anything you bought because you thought it made you look smart and so The Cinderella Complex and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare were ejected.

I finally settled on three guidelines. I could keep a book if one of the following were true:

There was a reasonable chance that I might want to refer to the book again in my lifetime. And it had to be a reasonable chance; a remote chance was not enough.
I liked the book enough to recommend it to others AND I was willing to lend or give it to someone else.
I had not yet read the book and there was a remote chance that I might want to read it someday.

With these three rules, I whittled the books down to what would fit in a single 6 foot, 30 inch wide bookcase. The rules have worked well for the last several years. I have been able to live within my book space allotment as long as I screw up the courage to do a mini-culling once a year or so. The next culling is scheduled for this afternoon. Wish me luck!

Home

2007-10-24T22:33:00.000-05:00

Slag and I have just returned from our semi-annual trip to Hoosier-land. Here is some photographic evidence.

It’s a small town. A very small town. The edge of my parent’s yard is the city limit. And this is the road to get to their place, so almost everything in the picture is in the city limits. Though somehow it seems wrong to use the phrase “city limit.”

The trees were just starting to turn, so we didn’t get to see them at their most colorful, but it was still very nice. Here’s the view from the back deck at my parent’s house. It's the most peaceful place I know.

We did a little sight-seeing in the next town over while we were there. An old hotel there has recently been restored to its former grandeur. The building housed a junior college when I was a kid. I remember taking tap and ballet classes there. It was an old musty place then, and we liked to run around in the enormous domed atrium. Until the Astrodome was built in the 1960’s, it was the largest unsupported dome in the world. Now it’s all high-brow, and there are no small children running through it and yelling to hear to their own voices echo. You can read all about its history here, and there are tons of pictures of it here.

I’ll only add the following.

Gorgeous marble tiled floors inside the dome atrium:

Seating area in the ladies room: (Yes, I took a picture of the fancy ladies room. I am a bumpkin.):

Slag on the steps up to the “veranda.” Amazingly, he did not make that stupid face that always makes me want to smack him for this picture.

But he did make it for this one. I didn’t smack him because I already had one good shot and I was feeling kind.

The domed hotel has been restored largely because the owners acquired official permission to build a casino on the property next door to it. Naturally, we had to check the slot machines, just to see if they worked properly. I didn’t know you’re not supposed to take pictures in a casino. So I took this one (I don’t know the guy in the foreground; he walked into my shot uninvited.):

Almost immediately, a kindly old gentleman in a casino uniform appeared at my elbow and informed me that he would take my camera away from me if I took any more pictures. But he did it in such a friendly way that I didn’t give him any attitude or flip him off behind his back or anything. I guess posting the contraband here will be my only little act of rebellion.

P.S. The title of this post is the same as the name of a really creepy X-Files episode, which is what the word “home” always makes me think of, but my hometown isn’t like that. Really

Mall Memos

2007-10-13T21:12:00.000-05:00

Dear 14-Year-Old-Boys Cruising the Mall on Saturday Night,

You don’t live in “the hood.” That outfit does not make you look “scarey,” or even “grown-up.” I know full well that your mom will be here in the minivan in a couple of hours to pick you up, so pull up your pants. You look ridiculous.

Dear Fashion Industry,

I present you with the following relevant data points:

I am a 42-year-old, pear-shaped woman.
I have plenty of money to spend on clothes.
I do not want to dress like a hooker.
Additional axiom: If I had an 11-year-old daughter, I would not let her dress like a hooker either.

See if you can deduce something from these, m’kay?

P.S. A tube top does not stop being a tube top just because you added a skirt to the bottom of it. You aren’t fooling anybody.

Thank you for your attention.

Well Crap

2007-10-03T10:57:00.000-05:00

And here I thought I was being all witty and creative and original with the last post's title.

But no, I'm way behind.

Wii-tarded

2007-10-01T20:09:00.000-05:00

I am uncoordinated. Clumsy. Physically inept, if you will. It’s always been that way. As a kid I threw softballs into the ground two yards from my feet. I flailed at volleyballs and hit them into the ground too, as I turned my head and closed my eyes. I could never catch on to those jump rope games, where you jump in and then jump out as the rope turns. I always got tangled up in the rope somehow. I could only manage a bounce or two on a pogo stick before I crashed into the driveway. I can’t whistle. I can’t make a yo-yo work. Hula hoops sadly spiral down my torso and end up on the ground while I franticly gyrate. When Slag asks me to throw him the car keys, I’m equally likely to throw them five feet over his head or hit him squarely in the eye. He doesn't ask so much anymore.

And so it has always been with video games too. When I was a kid, video games were a public thing. The games themselves were refrigerator-sized, flashing, blinking, clanging boxes with screens that displayed the progress of the game to any who cared to look and, in my case, laugh. Little kids snickered as I tried to eat ghosts that WEREN’T blue and gave my Pac-Men concussions by repeatedly ramming them into virtual walls. I just never quite got the hang of the joystick. The public humiliation meant I didn’t do much practicing in the 80’s, when everyone else on the planet was learning video game fundamentals. I just never got the fundamentals.

So now it’s 20 years later and for a time I thought technology had overcome my ineptness. That’s right, I encountered a gaming product that didn’t even HAVE a joystick (at least not with the base model): a Wii! Finally, there was hope for me.

After an especially entertaining evening of Wii bowling at a friend’s place, I actually initiated an electronics purchase. (I know, Slag was shocked too.) A Google search, a couple of mouse clicks, and voila: a Wii and assorted accessories arrive on our doorstep. I love the internet.

For the first couple of weeks, I was totally into it. I wasn’t very good, but for the first time ever, I was as good as everyone else! Everybody we knew sucked at video bowling and tennis just as much as I did. Isn’t that fabulous?? And so we were all entertained for several evenings, spent drinking and ridiculing each other’s suckiness and generally having a great time.

But then…everybody got better. Everybody but me. Naturally. I should have known that it was inevitable, but I was holding onto that last bit of hope. The last tiny little bit. Now it’s gone too.

Now everybody else can throw three strikes in a row and I’m still throwing gutter balls. Everybody else is returning blistering serves and line drives with no problem while my Mii flaps its racket wildly and falls down. And then we get to see it all again during the slo-mo replay after every point. I just LOVE the slo-mo replay.

I’ve taken to practicing in private while Slag is out in his pottery studio. I keep thinking that all I need is a little focused practice without the pressure of somebody watching. But even that isn’t helping. I spent an hour yesterday afternoon swearing and flipping off the TV before giving up and announcing to no one in particular that I am a grown woman and I certainly have more important things to do than spending valuable Sunday afternoon time shooting at stupid dancing bunnies. Because I do, you know. I definitely do.

I'm Baffled

2007-09-20T21:12:00.000-05:00

I have seen something that I can’t explain. No, it’s not a ghost or a UFO or large, hairy man-beast that lives in the forest. It’s a true enigma.

Spied on the shelves of a discount store in small-town Mississippi last weekend:

It’s a pink, “Hello Kitty,” 6-cup coffee maker. A pink coffee maker. With a kitty on it. A kitty. ON the coffee maker.

And it's not even a kiddie-sized, "EZBake Oven"-style coffee maker that comes with little packets of instant coffee that you mix up in a miniature plastic cup and stick under a light bulb to heat. No, it's the real thing, a full-sized model suitable for a whole family (or one caffeine addict).

I can’t come up with a reasonable explanation for the existence of such a thing. Is it for the six-year-old who has everything? For that busy, on-the-go 4th grader who just can’t start the day without a cup of Joe? For the freaky cat-lady down the street with the pink kitchen? Who?

Somebody, please, explain this to me. Please.

Fun with Online Translators

2007-09-15T08:20:00.000-05:00

My favorite retort, in all the languages of the world (that don't have funny alphabets). I am so sophisticated.

Bite me.
Mordez-moi.
Muerdame.
Bieben Sie mich.
Bijt me.
Mordalo.
Morda-me.
Bita-mig.

Wednesday Notes

2007-09-06T11:21:00.000-05:00

A few tidbits from my brain....

1. Work has been a little nuts lately. This week we went through our semi-annual, "shake the box"-style reorganization. This reorganization has left my team with half the people we had last week, but with the same amount of work to do. It's not clear how this is going to work. The management team has been doing a lot of tap dancing and hand waving, but has failed to come up with anything even remotely logical. This leaves me to assume that we'll all be "Working Smarter, not Harder" again. Sigh. I HATE "Working Smarter." While I do like to think that my coworkers and I are reasonably smart people, I think there's a limit on how smart any given group of people can be. Especially given that we've already been "Working Smarter" since the last reorganization six months ago that stripped away about a third of team population and vital work was already starting to fall through the cracks. Personally, I'm past the point of worrying and now I just spin in my chair and giggle a lot. And even when we're not spinning and giggling, the whole team (or what's left of it) is doing a whole lot of goofing off. For example, right now I am posting when I should be working.

Unfortunately, it seems that we're all smart enough to know that:

(Infinite amount of work) - (Anything we might accomplish today) = (Infinite amount of work)

Damn those algebra classes. Sometimes being smart actually reduces productivity. Go figure.

2. Sadly, it appears that I'll need to reexamine my retirement strategy. The tip jar is not as lucrative as I had hoped it would be. The total to date has stalled at $1 and 5 pence. I don't know how much a pence is, but I don't think 5 of them are enough to buy me a condo at the Shady Rest Retirement Community.

3. It's the first week of September, so you know what that means. That's right! It's the start of the Christmas shopping season! While shopping for my tip jar last week, I noticed that Santa's minions were busy busy busy stocking the store shelves with all manner of Yuletide decorational-type accessories, including, but not limited to, fake trees, tinsel, lights, assorted tree baubles, and a 9-foot inflatable Santa in desert combat fatigues holding a big sign that said "Support Our Troops." I don't have the mental capacity to go off on this right now, so I'll save it for later. Right now I have to get back to some very important chair-spinning.

A Challenge Answered

2007-08-29T20:54:00.000-05:00

Ian dared me, so of course I had to do it.

That's right, that's right. You didn't think I would do it, but I DID. I went and got myself a tip jar for my desk at work. See! I am not to be trifled with! Take that, Ian!

I popped out over lunch to the largest local purveyor of crapware in town, and picked up this little beauty. It was marked $2.50, but when I got the checkout counter, it was 60% off! I got it for a cool $1 (plus tax). All I needed was a Sharpie and a little tape and PRESTO: Momma's Little Money-Maker.

I also strategically placed Darth Tater to stand guard over the location of my future booty, lest any thieves try to rip me off. You just can't be too careful these days.

I'm now eagerly awaiting the impending financial windfall.

Tipped Off

2007-08-26T11:37:00.000-05:00

I’ve always tried to tip well. I try not to think of it as paying someone to be nice to me, but in the end, that’s what it really is, I guess. Waitpersons have to really be bad to get below 15%. Great service will often get better than 25%, especially if the meal is cheap and/or the server is especially funny and entertaining. Plus I REALLY want everybody to like me.

Nice hotels cause me a bit of anxiety, probably because I don’t stay in them often enough to get the hang of the protocol. I know you tip the guy who takes your luggage up to your room, but what if one guy takes your luggage out of the car and hands it off to another guy to take it inside, do you tip both of them? If you tip one, will he share with the other? If you don’t have any luggage, but one of the bellhop people holds the door open for you, do you tip him for that? Does one door-holding warrant a tip? What if somebody just smiles and points you to the restroom in the lobby, do you give them a buck or two for that? And jeez, how many ones and fives can a person be expected to keep handy? If you run out of small change are you expected to start handing out twenties, or is it OK to ask for change? I just don’t know, and therein lies the anxiety.

Mostly I just hate the thought of being seen as cheap or rude or uncivilized. I have an irrational fear of walking around with a metaphorical sign hovering over my head, with a big arrow pointing at my forehead that says in glowing, neon letters:

“Please forgive her, she’s a hillbilly. They don’t have bellmen in Hooterville.”

Or just “Ignoramus coming through!”

The absolute worst was once when Slag and I were swarmed as we drove up to a really nice hotel in Hawaii during our wedding trip. They were on us like ants on a piece of cake, if ants could say “Aloha” in a very welcoming manner. There were people opening each of our car doors. There were people grabbing the luggage. Somebody else held the door and then a lady brought us cool, damp, amaretto-scented towels on a decorative platter. And on top of everything, they were all dressed EXACTLY the same, making it impossible to keep track of who was who. I just about freaked. In my head I was silently screaming “Back off! Get in line! I’M LOSING TRACK OF WHO NEEDS TO BE TIPPED!!” They were all greeting us with friendly smiles and I responded by having a little anxiety attack right there in the lobby. I don’t think that was the intended effect.

For the most part, though, I can handle the day-to-day stuff. I know you tip your waiter/waitress. You tip the valet parking guy and the bartender. You tip the manicure lady and the person who cuts your hair, but only if they just work at the shop and don’t actually own it. If a different person washes your hair before the haircut, I know you tip that person separately. I’ve got the basics down.

Then there are the tip jars that have appeared everywhere. Some of them are fine. The tip jar next to the band at a club is fine. I know they don’t get paid much. I can handle tipping the guy at Thundercloud Subs who makes me a sandwich. No problem there. Tipping the girl behind the counter at the coffee shop who puts a muffin on a plate for me is pushing it, but OK, I’m not complaining yet.

But now a tip jar has appeared at our favorite local pizza joint, where you order at the counter and find a table on your own. OK, I guess I don’t mind tipping someone for taking my order. Especially since the cashier rings a bell and all the pizza cooks cheer whenever somebody puts money in the jar. That’s satisfying for me. A little recognition is always nice. At least I’m getting something out of it too.

But then a while back, I reached my limit. I saw something that left me completely flabbergasted. Three little girls had set up a table outside the local drug store and were selling Girl Scout cookies. And, on the table, next to the piles of cookie boxes, they had…. a tip jar. A TIP JAR. What the hell?? I’m supposed to tip somebody for selling me overpriced cookies, just because said person is a little kid??

They lie in wait for you to leave the store and then sing out, in their sweet, little girl voices, “Would you like to buy some cookies?” And of course you look like a total creep if you decline, because who wouldn’t support little kids who are trying to raise money for a good cause. So you hand over your $4 for a box containing exactly 12 Thin Mint cookies, and then you’re supposed to TIP them for taking your donation?? (Oh, I know I get cookies, but I could get cookies just as good for a third the price just inside that very store, so don’t try to tell me it’s not a donation.) People, this is out of control.

I think I’m going to put a tip jar on my desk at work. Next time somebody wants me to do something for them, I’ll glance expectantly at my jar. A really generous tip and whatever they need will be my top priority. A paltry tip and I’ll do it before the end of the day. No tip at all and I’ll take the tactics of a third-world government: I’ll tell them to come back tomorrow. It may take everybody a couple of days to catch on, but I think it’s only fair. I’ve personally handed out a boatload in tips over the years and I think it’s time to complete the circle, so to speak.

A New Career

2007-08-18T08:45:00.000-05:00

I want a job naming nail polish shades. I could totally do it, because, as far as I can tell, the name doesn’t really have to relate to the actual color of the polish. I was looking through the selection at the local Walgreens a couple of nights ago, and I ran across Las Vegas (copper-colored frost), Sex Symbol (bright red) and Vixen (really dark purple).

And that was even before I got to the OPI section. The OPI people must be smoking something. They have shades named things like It’s Sheer Luck and Windy City Pretty and It’s All Greek to Me. They have shades called Belize It or Not and You’re a Pisa Work. People, those are freaking PUNS! They actually have a shade called, get this, I’m Not Really a Waitress. Can you imagine being paid to come up with stuff like this??

That has got to be the most perfect job in the world. I could work drunk! Heck, I would probably do a better job drunk.

I’m going to update my resume right now, and I think I’ll include a sample of my work at the bottom just to clinch the deal. I think OPI needs a shade called Turd Blossom. What do you think, I’ve got the job already, right?

Good Wife

2007-08-09T19:18:00.000-05:00

I am a good wife. And it’s not because I make sure Slag’s socks are clean or the bed sheets are ironed or have a hot dinner on the table when he gets home from work. Because I don’t do any of those things.

I’m a good wife because I regularly consent to eat at Hooters whenever Slag and Skiver have a craving for hot wings. That’s right, I willingly eat dinner surrounded by pert, firm, twenty-year-old, size 4 asses. It’s a real joy. The asses are barely covered in orange nylon shorts that are two-sizes-too-small and are accompanied by a pair of tits that are just barely contained in a matching, two-sizes-too-small tank top. And, of course, there’s the obligatory dumpy, 40-ish, lecherous, manager guy who’s giddy with power. Girls like these never gave him the time of day when he was their age, and he’s all goose-pimply over the fact that now they have to be nice to him and do what he says. He doesn’t even try to hide his leering.

Skiver and Slag both swear that Hooters wings are the best wings that can be had. I’m skeptical, but I don’t eat hot wings, so I can't say for sure. I can’t think of any other reason Skiver would want to go there though. It’s not for the tits and asses, and I know it’s not the “beer light” décor either. And, while I know Slag appreciates a firm butt as much as the next guy, either he’s telling the truth about the hot wings or is very sneaky, because I’ve never caught him so much as giving a twenty-year-old ass a sideways glance. The hot wings have his complete attention at all times.

I can tolerate the dining experience because the guys I'm with don't give the girls a whole lot of attention and also because the girls do give me the tiniest bit of distance and respect, i.e. they don’t seem to waggle their boobies in the faces of my male dinner companions nearly as much as they waggle them at the men-only tables. They don’t sit down at our table and laugh too much and flip their hair. I guess I should be grateful that they can see that, yes, I'm also female. An older, larger, more wrinkled female, but a female nonetheless. Or maybe they don't want to annoy me out of fear that I'll grab one of them and sit on her and break her tiny little bird-like bones.

BTW, if you ever visit a Hooters, don’t get the Cobb salad. It sucks.

The Perfect Man

2007-08-07T12:25:00.001-05:00

Slag called me at work this morning. He was measuring a house and the dog next door was going ape-shit barking, as dogs often do when there's a stranger in their territory. Only this dog ended every bark with a perfect imitation of the classic Curly "Woo Woo" noise. It totally destroyed any trepidation that said barking might have generated.

Slag called me, just to hold up the phone so I could hear it too.

I ask you, is this not the perfect man for me?? I'm pretty sure he is.

Star Trek: Enterprise (theme song)

2007-08-01T20:28:00.001-05:00

Trekiness

2007-08-01T19:47:00.001-05:00

I have always been a huge Star Trek fan. It all started when I was in elementary school. My dad and I watched reruns of the original series every Sunday morning in the early 1970’s. We only got two channels in those days, but luckily, one of them made a little room for the far reaches of outer space in between their Sunday morning offerings of TV evangelists. It became a weekly ritual for us, sort of like church but without the nice clothes.

As I matured, I made every effort to stay up with all the latest in the Star Trek universe. I gobbled up the Saturday morning animated series episodes as quickly as they came out. I spent my allowance on cheesy books like The Entropy Effect and Yesterday's Son. I waited with unrestrained excitement for the first movie and was thrilled to sit through the 10 minute sequence that consisted of nothing but a panoramic views of the Enterprise while dramatic music played in the background. I’ve been loyal over the years, extremely loyal. I tolerated Troi’s “space cheerleader” outfit and smarmy “Gratitude and joy and joy and gratitude” dialog from TNG series pilot without complaint. I watched the abomination known as The Final Frontier from beginning to end, for crying out loud. Let no one question my Trekiness.

OK, I will admit, I’ve slacked off a bit as I’ve aged. I didn’t see Nemesis until it came out on DVD. My Deep Space Nine viewing waned a bit after season 3. I watched the odd Voyager episode here and there, enough to know who all the characters were, but not enough to keep up with all the plot lines. But I was there for all of them, in spirit, if not in body.

Except for one thing.

In all those years, there has only been one failure. It’s my Waterloo, my siege of Leningrad, if you will. It is: Enterprise. I’ve never watched a single episode. Not one. I simply cannot make it past the nauseating, insipid, god-awful THEME MUSIC. I can’t do it. It makes me want to grab the nearest Phillips head screw driver and gouge out my eardrums. Who came up with that drivel? Oh, it might be fine music for a Michael Bolton album, or as background music for a Julia Roberts chick flick, but as theme music for a Star Trek series?? You’ve got to be kidding me. I still can’t believe it. I want to know which doofus heard those first few vile notes and thought “That’s it! This is the song we’ve been looking for!” He should be flogged! I’d rather be forced listen to a Muzak version of Captain and Tennille’s Greatest Hits over and over until my eyeballs bleed.

I challenge you to listen to it yourself without gagging. Go ahead. Try. I conveniently posted the video right above this post for your listening pleasure. (I can't seem to figure out how to actually get the video in the middle of this post, and I'm about to put my fist through the monitor, so we'll just settle for a separate post, and everything will be fine, won't it? Yes it will.)

So anyway, I avoided the theme music and the rest of the show sorta got thrown out with the bathwater, in baby-like fashion. Even Scott Bakula’s hunkiness wasn’t enough to get me past that theme music, and I had the hots for him back when he was only Murphy Brown’s boyfriend, long before he donned the uniform and became Captain of the Enterprise.

But things are different now. Now I have TiVo. TiVo changed everything. TiVo is my friend. TiVo would never make me listen to that theme music, would it? No, it wouldn’t. No, instead it will let me skip over the offensive theme music. And, EVEN BETTER, TiVo will go out onto the wires and find the episodes that I want to watch. I don’t have burrow around on the internet or possibly resort to buying a TV Guide™ to find the shows. TiVo will find them for me. While I sit and do NOTHING. Is that not the coolest thing you’ve ever heard??

So I’m off to do a TiVo search to find the next showing of the first few episodes of season one. It may take a little time, but TiVo will find them for me. I have faith.

May the Force be with me! (Tee hee, just a little sci-fi humor)

Absence and Accolades

2007-07-28T11:26:00.000-05:00

So I haven’t been posting for a while. I’d like to say I’ve been off traveling the world or organizing a corporate take-over or something. But no, I’m just uninspired. I do my best work when I’m really pissed, or at least a little annoyed or excited or SOMETHING, but it just isn’t happening. If I were 7 years old, I’d be whining to my mother: “I’m booooored. There’s nothing to doooooo.” And then she would respond with: “I’ll find you something to do. Go wash the dishes.”

And that’s essentially what I’ve told myself. “You’re bored? Mow the yard. Do some laundry. Clean out the garage. Shave your legs.” I’ve been listening to myself too. When something interesting does finally come along, I’ll have all my chores done and will be ready to party.

Woohoo.

So anyway, here’s a brief update on a few mildly interesting things that have happened recently.

- Jazz gave me a Schmooze award! I’m feeling a little guilty for getting a “blogging community involvement” award and then disappearing for a month. But I feel really special that somebody noticed I was gone. Thanks Jazz! P.S. No buttering up is required. We'd love to meet you.

- I know it’s boring to talk about the weather, but the weather is freaking me out. I haven’t seen anything like this in the almost 20 years that I’ve lived in Texas. I don’t think it’s been above 90 degrees once this year. And it’s raining every afternoon. Every single afternoon. The lawn isn’t requiring weekly transfusions of water in order to keep it barely alive until the heat breaks in October. If I didn’t know better, I would swear central Texas has been packed up and shipped off to Florida for the summer. There is water everywhere. People, this is WEIRD.

- My sister has a bun in the oven, due in December. Which means I’m pregnant with a baby quilt. I was all set to get started on it this week, but the little rascal was feeling shy and wouldn’t show his/her naughty bits during the ultrasound last week, so I don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl yet. Which means my fabric selection is on hold. Which means the quilt is on hold. Fabric selection is the key to my creative process. On the plus side, this means Sis will be calling the papoose “Whodat” for another month, which totally cracks me up.

- I’ve discovered that I can shop for shoes on the internet. At work. When I should be, you know, working. The grownup part of me knows this is a bad thing, but the rest of me thinks it’s fabulous!

Resurrection

2007-07-09T20:20:00.000-05:00

I turned my iPod on this morning, just as I was about to start some boring, mindless task at work. Tunes are the only way I can make through such things without my eyeballs melting.

This is what I saw on the iPod screen:

Hmmm, I said to myself. I've never seen such a thing before. What could it mean? It looks like a little frowny iPod. With X's where its eyes should be. If iPods had eyes.

Don't X's for eyes usually indicate death in the cartoon world? (Ominous music plays in the background.)

So I did a little googling. Turns out I was correct. X-eyes does mean death in the iPod world. This icon is the "sad iPod" icon. Sad because it means your iPod is nonfunctional. Deceased. Dead as a doornail. Apple’s website says they will cheerfully fix my iPod for $249 (plus shipping). Which is exactly what they’re selling the new Nanos for.

And so, I was not happy this morning at work. I had to do a tedious, mind-numbing task without tunes of any kind, plus I needed to fork over another few hundred bucks to the Apple-industrial complex if I ever wanted to hear my music again. My music was being held hostage. Bastards.

But all was not lost. I hadn’t given up completely yet. I kept on googling until I found this page:

How to Fix an iPod with the Sad iPod Icon

The article recommends banging the iPod, charging socket side down, on a hard surface to reset this little cable thingy that comes loose sometimes. What the heck. I had nothing to lose. I took my iPod out of its little protective case and gave it one good whack on the table.

I have to say that this particular repair strategy is very emotionally satisfying. Plus it worked. My iPod came back to life without so much as losing track of a single playlist. There were all my play counts, just as I had left them.

I still can’t believe it. One whack saved me $249 (plus shipping). I love the internet.

Advice from Auntie Jill

2007-07-05T21:00:00.000-05:00

If you should ever get the bright idea to pick up the keyboard you have used daily for the last three years, turn it upside down and shake it out, just to see if there might be anything in there, don't shake it over your lap.

I am an idiot.

A Redneck Joke

2007-07-01T21:58:00.000-05:00

Somebody call Jeff Foxworthy. I’ve got a new one.

If you play your Wii while drinking beer and sitting in a lawn chair in your neighbor’s driveway with the Wii screen projected on the garage door, you might be a redneck.

It was the culmination of a successful pre-July 4th cookout. A good time was had by all. Slag was narrowly beaten, but he made a good show of it. The only casualties were a couple of beers that got knocked over during a heated bowling match.

I kept thinking what an odd sight it must have been to passersby: a crowd of people sitting in lawn chairs in a driveway, with the random person flinging his/her arm up in the air for no apparent reason.

Maybe you had to be there….

The Missing Cool

2007-06-19T20:08:00.000-05:00

I caught a bit of an old movie on cable last weekend. It was a movie near and dear to my heart:

Saturday Night Fever

This movie came out when I was in junior high. I think it was one of the first R-rated movies I was allowed to see. Wicked Stepmother™, being the best step-mother ever, took me to see it, and we had a little girl’s night out with John and his hair. We had to drive to the next town over, because there wasn’t a real movie theater in the town where we lived, only a drive-in theater. I was excited for a solid week before our target showing and would quietly squeal to myself every time I remembered we were going.

And it was everything I had hoped it would be! The dancing, the hair, John in the white suit! OH MY GOD! It was the most exciting thing I’d ever experienced. Like EVER. It was the coolest thing on the planet in 1977.

And then I asked for (and got) the movie soundtrack for my 13th birthday, and OH MY GOD! I listened to that record over and over and over until the grooves in the album were almost worn out. I danced around in my room, imagining that the carpet was really a discotheque dance floor with the blinking lights actually embedded in the floor and John twirled me on the dance floor while my stunning polyester outfit swirled around me and the mirrored disco ball turned slowly over our heads. Could a thirteen year old girl imagine anything more perfect?? I don’t think so.

So. I caught a glimpse of the movie while I was channel surfing Saturday afternoon, and I knew exactly what it was after only a couple of seconds. I mean, after all, it was John with the swoopy hair. What else could it be? So, I just had to stop for a few minutes on that channel and have a look. I needed to see how the movie that spawned my childhood fantasies had held up over the last 30 years, maybe experience a little nostalgia for the “good ol’ days,” you know? My expectations weren’t high. I expected it to be a little dated. I mean, come on, it’s 30 years old. It’s not going to be up with all the latest cool hair and clothes and music.

But I didn’t quite expect the reaction that I had.

I giggled.

And it wasn’t the good kind of giggling. Not the Oh, I have such fond memories of those days kind of giggling. No, it was more like the AGH! Would you check out that outfit?! Is that not the most ridiculous thing you have ever seen?? kind of giggling. I was laughing AT the movie, not with it, if you know what I mean. Because it was freaking hilarious! It was a real, live cliché, playing itself out on the TV screen in front of me. It was completely absurd.

And then John danced in his white suit and did the whole finger-pointing thing and an enormous belly-laugh emerged from my person. And then I yelled for Slag to come and watch it and laugh with me. And then we both laughed our asses off for the rest of the movie.

So now I just have one question: Where did all the cool go?

Because that movie was so full of cool in 1977 that it couldn’t hold another drop. It was fully saturated. Trust me people, it was the definition of cool. It WAS cool. It WAS. Shut up.

And then suddenly it wasn’t. In the blink of an eye, a random bit of Saturday afternoon TV changed everything. The cool was gone. Vanished. Evaporated. Instead I sat there laughing at John. LAUGHING at him. And his luxurious, swoopy hair. And his white suit. Even the dancing was completely dorky.

Sweet Jesus, even the dancing? The dancing??

Nothing is ever going to be the same again. I think I need some alone time now. And a glass of wine. Maybe two glasses.

A Short Post in Which I Bitch About Work and Use Too Many Sentence Fragments and LOTS OF CAPITAL LETTERS

2007-06-15T22:06:00.000-05:00

By about 2:30pm this afternoon I had reached a point where if one more person called me and made me take off my headphones or walked into my office and made me take off my headphones or stopped me in the hallway while I was on my way to the bathroom to pee or interrupted what I was trying to accomplish in any other way, I was going to freaking lose it. LOSE. IT.

See, there is this project that we’re all working on. It’s one of those software death marches that all of us who work in software development have experienced. It usually starts when people with business degrees refuse to believe the engineers when said engineers opine that it is not physically possible to create the desired product in the amount of time between now and the magical marketing release date, whenever that should be. No, the management types clearly believe that the engineers are secretly spending their days eating Cheetos™ and playing video games and if said engineers would just TRY A LITTLE HARDER, they could do it.

I’ve been through this about a thousand times over the years, and nowadays it’s really hard to get me all worked up into a frenzy because of some ludicrous release date pulled out of the air by someone who wouldn’t know an internet if it bit him on the butt. Oh, I admit, in my youth, I was just as enthusiastic as the next person. I attended those pep-rally-ish all-hands meetings designed to motivate the “troops.” I joined hands in the huddle and vowed to work 80 hour weeks until the project was done.

“GO TEAM!”

I really was convinced that if we all killed ourselves, neglected our families and sacrificed our physical and mental health, we could get that product released on time. In short, I was an idiot.

Now I am just cynical. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll do my part. I’ll work late or on a Saturday every now and then to get something out the door if it has a snowball’s chance. But don’t bug me with the pipe dreams. I’m not going to get worked into a lather over somebody’s pet pipe dream. I’ve come to learn that software products of a certain size and complexity just take a certain amount of time to create. Everybody working 14 hour days only causes people to start making silly mistakes and then everything just takes even longer. The one thing I’m confused about is why my management hasn’t come to learn that. They’re older than I am. And surely they’ve gone through this process more times than I have. And even dogs learn from experience after a while.

So anyway, back to today. Some test person submitted a bug against this pipe dream software (that was supposed to release LAST month), but the bug report had very little information in it, something along the lines of “It doesn’t work.” And so some other genius decided it must be a build problem. And then somebody else decided it would be a good idea to assign the bug to me. Me. The build coordinator. The one person on the team who has never even logged into the new bug tracking system. This would be like grabbing the guy who’s replacing your car’s transmission and handing him the electrical diagrams for the house you’re building and telling him that you need your house wired IMMEDIATELY. IF NOT SOONER. I think we can all agree that this would be a stupid thing to do. Not only would your house not end up wired IMMEDIATELY, your car wouldn’t end up running either. And that’s a lose/lose situation.

And then the people who sent the bug to me started calling about the bug. Over and over and over and over again. They wanted to know when I was going to fix their bug, but I didn't know how to fix their bug, so they told me all the reasons why they REALLY needed the bug fixed immediately, which didn't change the fact that I didn't know how to fix the bug because there was no evidence that there actually was a build problem which is the only kind of problem I could fix for them. I was sure that somebody just made up the part about it being a build problem because they didn’t know what else it could be. By this time, the red warning light in the middle of my forehead was signaling DEFCON 2, and I came THIS close to reaching through the phone and murdering someone and then spending the rest of my life in prison wearing an unattractive prison uniform with Paris.

After a half day of me being interrupted every ten minutes about this extremely urgent bug, two things were finally decided: 1) This bug wasn’t as serious as originally thought. It was not, in fact, blocking the test team from making any progress, and 2) It wasn’t a build problem. Which is EXACTLY what I had been saying every ten minutes for the last SIX HOURS. While I was trying to get some of my real work done. In between the interruptions TOO NUMEROUS TO COUNT.

Unfortunately, my attitude continued to decline even after all the phone calls stopped, so I decided to give myself a couple of hours off and went home early to drink wine and do nothing and recover from all the bullshit.

But on the way home, Slag called to tell me that the upstairs air-conditioner had stopped working and it was now a balmy 90 degrees in our bedroom and his office. Perfect. We’ve since applied for a second mortgage in the hopes of raising enough money to pay a repairman to come to the house after 5pm on a Friday. So it’s been a fabulous week, and I am ready for the weekend.

The Dance

2007-06-09T11:47:00.000-05:00

It’s that time of year again. The TiVo box is all aquiver with anticipation as I park myself in front of the TV with a glass of wine, ready to cheer on my favorites. That’s right! The new season of So You Think You Can Dance has begun and I can barely contain my excitement!

I should say that I’ve never been that into reality shows. Oh, I did watch one of the Survivor’s, the one in Australia I think. There was that brief interest in Big Brother that faded quickly. I’ve never watched a single episode of American Idol or Real Life or The Apprentice or god forbid, Fear Factor. But there’s just something about SYTYCD that pulls me in. Oh, I know I’m totally being manipulated with skillful editing and background music. I’m sure they could take footage of my grandmother and make her look like a raving bitch. And of course they decide the order in advance that they’re going to tell dancers if they made it or not, so it’s down to 2 guys that everybody likes and one of them has to go home and it’s so suspenseful and sad and exciting. I know all that and yet I don’t care. I’ve got to have that sweet sweet emotional rollercoaster every week, that thrilling euphoria when my favorite survives another week and the crushing disappointment when one of the really good ones is sent home in tears. Dare I admit it, yes, I even call in votes for my favorites on this show. Repeatedly. Sometimes I vote online too. At work. I am addicted.

As soon as Slag saw the ads last month for the new upcoming season he announced, in a very determined voice, that I was not going to get him “sucked in” to that show again this summer. He would not be scheduling his Wednesday nights around that show. He would not get pissed off when Nigel was mean and made one of the girls cry. He would not rant about the injustice of one of the better dancers being kicked off the show as if he were complaining about a bad call in a football game. He would not tell me who I should vote for. He would not “woohoo” and high five me when the best one was picked as the winner. No he would not.

I didn’t argue with him, but deep down inside I just chuckled knowingly to myself. Because I knew the power of the dance. He thought he could escape its insidious grasp, its captivating powers, its siren song of scantily–clad, astonishly flexible bodies. Silly man. So I just minded my own business, TiVo’ing the episodes for myself, planning to watch them by myself. I didn’t mention it to him again. But as soon as the first few notes of the theme music reverberated out of the TV he couldn’t help himself. He stood behind the sofa for a couple of minutes, trying to resist the show’s allure and make himself go upstairs and do something else. But pretty soon, just as I expected, he was right there next to me, getting comfortable and demanding the remote. And then we watched the season opener together. And it was good.

Naturally I had to rub it in afterwards, just a little. I did a tasteful and understated victory dance as the first episode credits ran and taunted him. “Ha! You thought you weren’t going to watch, but you are, you aaaare, you aaaare. You couldn’t escape!” Which he tolerated for a short time before subduing me in some sort of wrestling hold and demanding that I shut the hell up. Sorry baby! Too bad there’s no wrestling hold that restrains the mouth!

Now it’s two weeks into the season and we’re both completely enthralled and eagerly awaiting the next episode. It’s going to be a fabulous. I can tell already.

Monday Gripe

2007-06-04T17:48:00.000-05:00

Being the bleeding-heart liberal that I am, I sometimes send money to random do-gooder type organizations that are watching out for the environment and animals and under-privileged children and our civil rights and other powerless things that aren’t usually a big concern for those with all the power.

There are a couple of groups that I support on a monthly basis. Then sometimes, when I’m feeling especially guilty for being a middle-class white person who unintentionally uses way more than her fair share of the world’s natural resources just by going about her day, I’ll send a one-time donation to one or more additional organizations. These are the “second tier” groups, if you will. I always make it clear that it’s a DONATION. I’m not joining anything. I don’t want a membership card. I don’t need a monthly newsletter. It’s more like: Here’s some money. Don’t bug me.

But it never works. As soon as I put that check in the mail, the floodgates open, and they spend the next two years (and probably every cent that I gave them) trying to extract more money from me. They send me “membership renewal notices” and newsletters with updates on the latest issues and free address labels. And then cool, hip-sounding people start calling and asking me how I’m doing today before trying to guilt me into sending extra money for some crisis. And then they tell all their friends’ organizations about me, so those organizations can start asking me for money too.

It drives me freaking nuts. For crying out loud, can’t they let me feel like a semi-virtuous person for five minutes after I drop a check in the mail? Just five minutes? Before raining more guilt down on my head? I’ve already got all the guilt I need. Really.

I don’t want any more mail with pictures of starving children and baby seals that are about to be clubbed to death. I don’t need any more vivid descriptions of all the horrible stuff that’s going on in the world. I can’t fix everything, and them constantly reminding me of it all is only going to make me loony.

And it won’t get them any more of my money either. I may be loony, but I’m still a tight-wad.

P.S. Want to really feel like a self-absorbed ingrate? Write a blog post about how much people who are trying to do some good in the world annoy you. It works every time, I swear.

Touch-Ups

2007-05-30T19:30:00.000-05:00

I’m trapped in a “project management” class this week. That means that I get to sit in class all day and then do my regular work in the evenings. It’s also cutting into my customary lunch time blog surfing, and I’m not happy about that either. I just know everyone is missing my witty comments. Is that wailing I hear??

The class is interesting, but only in a hypothetical kind of way. In my experience, the topics we are studying will only be applicable in some imaginary world where no one does any work until after they are presented with a “project charter” and a “statement of work.” Out here in the real world, we sling code first and ask questions later. And we always create the project schedule after all the work is done. That way we don’t have to keep revising the schedule when everything is late. It’s way more efficient that way.

Anywho, on another class-related topic, I’ve got some advice for all you project management course instructors out there in the world: It’s important for you to always remember that your chosen profession requires that a room full of people gaze at you all day long and attempt to absorb the information that you’re spewing. If you happen to be a middle-aged man who is going gray, and you can’t face it and are dying your hair back to the dark blond you had twenty years ago, please get your roots touched up before each new class begins. Otherwise, your students will be so distracted by your hair that they won’t be able to concentrate on what’s coming out of your mouth. And that’s just a waste of everyone’s time, isn’t it? Thank you.

Disillusionment

2007-05-25T08:40:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned earlier, Slag and I have been coping as best we can with real life of late. It’s not really accurate to say that real life hasn’t been going our way. That implies a sort of unlucky randomness to the bad things that are happening. No, this feels more planned and deliberate. It feels like real life has been giving us a big ol’ finger.

(Before I get started I should say that I know that there are far worse things that could be happening to us right now. Far worse things are happening to other people even as we speak. I know this. No one has died or been seriously injured here. We aren’t about to divorce (that I know of). Contrary to my earlier predictions, our house hasn’t burned down. But I need to bitch, so humor me, will ya?)

So anyway, lots of crap has been going wrong. Ergo, we are grumpy.

Since most of these things fall into categories of things that Slag feels more responsibility for (e.g. home maintenance, auto repair, his own body), he is grumpier than I am. I’m not complaining about the grumpiness. He would be entitled to be grumpy if any one of these things happened. Having all of them happen at once, along with having a back that makes it impossible for him to sit in a chair for more than five minutes gives him carte blanche to be grumpy for the next year as far as I’m concerned. I’ve taken to trying to soothe him with foot massages and tequila, with minimal success.

As for me, I’m mostly feeling guilty.

The majority of the stress is related to the piss-poor customer support and appallingly bad repair facilities of the company that manufactured and sold the computer that Slag bought a couple of months ago. He’s spent hours and hours on the phone talking with people on the other side of the globe. He’s been lied to, stood up, put on hold and hung up on, transferred and hung up on, and generally subjected to lines of bullshit so preposterous that I couldn’t believe my own ears. I’m talking bad customer support on an epic scale. Complete incompetence. BALD FACE LYING.

After said computer returned to us from the repair shop for the THIRD time, it would not boot. As in, nothing happened when you pressed the power button. WOULD. NOT. BOOT. And the case was bent. And there was a ball bearing rolling around loose inside the case (which may explain why it wouldn’t boot). After much cajoling, the company graciously agreed to take back the steaming pile of crap they sold him and sent him back 85% of the price he paid for the computer, not including the tax of course. The net result is we’re out a little less than $500 and have……nothing. Not one thing to show for it. Except some serious resentment.

So why would I feel guilty about any of this? Why, because I am an EMPLOYEE of the company that sold him this defective computer. That’s right. I work for them. I am a cog in the big corporate machine that has made our lives miserable for the last two months. Dear lord, I am not part of the solution. I must be part of the problem! FUCK.

Turns out all that corporate crap they feed us about quality and customers being our top priority is just that, crap. Not one person we dealt with in all this was interested in whether or not we were happy or had been treated fairly or had a computer that worked. Not one. Not even the special “customer advocate” who was assigned to Slag’s case after I submitted a customer case on an exclusive, “unavailable to the outside world” website for employees only. No, on the rare occasions that we could actually get this “customer advocate” on the phone, all we got from her was attitude and long explanations about why our problems were not that serious.

I’m appalled, dumb-founded. I’m humiliated. I’m having a hard time wrapping my mind around the last couple of months. And it isn’t lost on me that this company pays my freaking mortgage. And, even more, it really pisses me off that I’m feeling apprehensive about even posting this, because this company does, after all, give me a paycheck every two weeks. But, hey, the truth is the truth. Plus, I think I’m still anonymous enough that no one would be able to identify me, even if they wanted to. (Yeah, I’m naïve like that.)

So Slag is in the process of buying another computer from my employer’s biggest competitor. And I am looking for a hole to crawl into and hide, where I plan to spend most of my time sucking my thumb while I rock back and forth in the fetal position.

The New Tree

2007-05-20T08:35:00.001-05:00

The new tree is finally here.

(Sorry Cheesy, I didn’t get any “before” shots. Just picture three enormous "cedar" trees (OK, so they're not really cedar trees, but everybody calls them that here) instead of this one little tree. )

The new tree was installed yesterday and is everything we had hoped it would be, i.e. alive. I’d like to say that it was installed without incident, but that wouldn’t be the real world, would it? No, there were plenty of incidents.

The tree was originally scheduled to be installed on Friday. We made the appointment two weeks in advance and made sure to have all the old trees removed before Friday. We paid the extra $200 for the air hammer that would be needed to dig a hole big enough to plant the new tree. We paid the $50 delivery surcharge for fuel. We told them repeatedly that there was stump in the exact spot where we wanted the tree planted. They repeatedly said “No problem, we’ll have an air hammer.” We did everything we were supposed to do, but that wasn’t enough. It never is, is it?

The tree people called on Thursday afternoon to tell us that the air hammer was broken and could we reschedule the planting? After some negotiating (i.e. Slag telling them to take our $200 and go rent a freaking air hammer and them calling back on Friday morning to say that the delivery truck was now broken down as well and there was no way they could bring the tree that day), they agreed to install the tree on Saturday morning.

They actually did show up on Saturday morning. I was stunned. The doorbell rang about 10am and Slag went out to supervise the installation. I stayed in the house and piddled around with this and that, not paying much attention to what was going on outside. I was enjoying that giddy feeling brought on by someone, ANYONE actually showing up when promised and doing what they said they would do. We haven’t seen much of that around here lately and I wanted to savor it. I heard some chopping sounds now and then, but, strangely, nothing that sounded like an air hammer.

So when I finally mustered the interest to actually look out the window, what did I see? I saw my husband. You know, the one with the bulging disk in his back? The one who is two injections into a series of three steroid injections into his SPINE? That one? Why, I saw him whacking at the stump with his axe, the stump which was supposed to be removed with an air hammer. Then I saw him use his small electric chainsaw to cut at the roots of the stump. Then he showed one of the guys who came to plant the tree how to use the 75 pound digging bar that he pulled out of his shop.

Instead of the tree company sending the power equipment we paid extra for, my husband had raided his tool shed for anything that might be useful and was helping them remove the stump and miscellaneous boulders from the spot where the tree was going to go. Yes, I watched my husband equip and assist the people who work for the company which had charged us $625 to deliver and plant one tree. And that’s not including the cost of the tree itself.

I found out later that the tree company, the one that specializes in selling and planting trees here in central Texas where there is frequently less than a foot of rocky soil on top of solid limestone bedrock, the one that we gave an extra $200 for the use of the rumored air hammer, the one that called and cancelled earlier because that same air hammer was broken, THAT company sent two guys to our house to plant a 16ft. tall tree with the following tools: two shovels. TWO. SHOVELS. One for each of them. At least they didn’t have to share. That would have been REALLY inefficient.

So I checked back periodically, getting little mental snapshots of the saga. There was progress, but it was slow. After about an hour and a half, the stump had been extracted from the ground, but the hole was still way too small for the tree’s root ball. Another half hour of digging and the hole was bigger and the tree was lying on the ground next to the hole. There were several rocks bigger than my head littering the ground around the hole. Another 20 minutes and the tree was upright in the hole and they were wheel barrowing in loads of dirt to spread in the hole around the tree. Fifteen more minutes and the tree was mulched and staked and watered.

Amazingly, the tree was eventually planted right where we wanted it, with the whole process only taking about three times longer than expected. I just knew Slag was going to be in a pissy mood after whole ordeal, but that afternoon he was in the best mood I’ve seen in weeks. He said it felt really good to actually do some physical work instead of taking it easy because of his back. He also got to practice his Spanish, because neither of the tree guys spoke much English. And they taught him some new words in Spanish, like the words for “stump” and “trunk” and “root.” Apparently these are very useful words to have in your repertoire.

Plus, after all that, he claims his back is fine. Color me surprised. If removing a cedar stump with hand tools while learning some Spanish gardening words is all it takes to make my man happy, who am I to stand in the way? Maybe next weekend I’ll drive him into orgasmic fits of ecstasy by demanding that he dig the trenches for that sprinkler system we’ve been talking about with a butter knife and a spatula. I don’t speak Spanish, but I don’t mind reading to him from a Spanish/English dictionary while he digs. See? Nobody can accuse me of not being a team player.

Three Weird Things

2007-05-19T10:23:00.000-05:00

I encountered some weird things on my morning walk through the neighborhood today. Here they are, in order of increasing weirdness (to me).

- All the newspapers I saw lying in driveways this morning had single-serving sized boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios™ tucked into their little plastic bags.

- All the fireplugs I saw were covered in large plastic bags secured with generous amounts of duct tape. All of them. For the life of me, I cannot think of any logical reason for the plastic bags. Does it mean they’re out-of-order? What if there’s a fire?? If anyone else can provide an explanation, please let me know. It will take a great weight off my mind to know.

- I passed a house where a long row of little knee-high shrubs had been planted between the sidewalk and the curb. Two (apparently) able-bodied men were removing said shrubs by attaching one end of an industrial-sized chain to a shrub, attaching the other end to a hitch on the back of an SUV and driving the SUV far enough down the street to pull the shrub out the ground. I’ll agree it was clever, but the whole process seemed a little over-engineered to me.

Trees

2007-05-11T19:26:00.000-05:00

Slag and I have bought ourselves a tree. We didn’t start out planning to buy a tree. No, initially, we only wanted to remove the one dead peach tree. The peach tree finally went belly-up after suffering through alternating seasons of total neglect and over-enthusiastic pruning. Last year there were still a few signs of life on the very ends of the recently pruned branches. It looked sort of like a “Dr. Seuss” tree: long, skinny, bare branches with little fluffy balls of green foliage on the ends. This year there’s nothing, not one green leaf, not a single blossom. It’s dead as a doornail. Whatever. We’re strictly Darwinian horticulturists around here. There are no hand-holding, pampering, attentive ministerings in our yard. If it can’t survive on its own, it’s going to die. End of story. (Except for Slag’s tomatoes, of course. If he could bring them in the house on stormy nights and tuck them into bed with little blankets to keep them warm, I know he would.)

So the dead tree needs to be removed. It’s pretty ugly. Plus if we allow it to stay, it will only become a home for insects, and the insects have enough homes around here as it is. But then we thought we should be efficient and practical. If we’re going to have somebody out here cutting down a tree, we may as well have them take out that one cedar tree too. The one that’s hanging too far over the studio and is one good thunderstorm away from falling on the roof. And while we’re at it, why don’t we just get rid of all the cedar trees? We don’t like them anyway, and we’ve talked about getting rid of them before. We may as well kill all the birds with one stone, so to speak. Why not?? Let’s just denude the entire back yard! What an excellent idea! We are smart! Yay for us!

The “yard denuding” is scheduled for next week. We checked with the homeowners association and the city, making sure it was OK for us to cut down all those trees. Nobody has a problem with it. They’re cedar trees after all, and nobody worries about preserving them. They’re everywhere. But we have one neighbor who’s going to totally freak. I just know it. He doesn’t believe in cutting anything, ever. He prefers that his house be surrounded by as much plant life as possible. OK, he does cut the grass. Twice a year. Whether it needs it or not.

I usually trim the shrubs on one side of his house when they grow so large and so far into our yard that WE can’t get past them. Everything else just goes wild. That plus the fact that this same neighbor doesn’t believe in window treatments gives his house that “abandoned” look. A pizza delivery guy once asked me if anyone lived there. Trust me, dude, it’s occupied. If nobody lived there, I would mow the yard myself, just so I wouldn’t have to look at it anymore.

So anyway, to get back to my original point, we have bought one hardwood tree to replace all the cedar trees we’re taking out, a Monterrey oak. It’s scheduled to be delivered and installed a couple of days after the other trees are removed. We shopped around and found a great-looking, semi-large tree from a place that specializes in trees. Selling and installing trees is all they do, so I have high hopes that they know what they’re doing. Their trees also come with a “one year guarantee.” If the tree dies within one year, they will replace it for free! Perfect. How can we go wrong?

But then, after we got home, I took a closer look at the sales receipt, and noticed a whole list of exceptions to the guarantee. Exceptions that were, of course, not mentioned by the salesman. The guarantee doesn’t cover any of the following:

- Failure to water adequately
- Insect infestation
- Damage caused by any animal
- Damage caused by any weather event, including but not limited to lightning, high winds, hail, or flooding.
- Any type of accident

So what exactly is being guaranteed here? I can’t really think of much else that would cause a tree to die. Are they guaranteeing that the tree won’t commit suicide? Is a meteorite considered an accident or a weather event? Gunshot wounds? What about Armageddon, the Second Coming, or the Rapture? They don’t mention poisoning, so I guess they’ll replace the tree if I accidentally dump a gallon of Round-Up on it. No wait, that would be an accident. OK, if I intentionally dump a gallon of Round-Up on it, then they’ll replace the tree?

I’m not sure that anything is covered, but I’m definitely calling them if that tree starts looking depressed.

I'm Baaaaaaaack

2007-05-07T22:25:00.000-05:00

In my new old office. That's right. Part of me didn't believe it would happen, but I'm back in my old office with the lovely view of the air conditioning units. To prove it, here's an unauthorized photo of my view:

To celebrate, I bought a couple off new office toys. Here we have Pink Panther. He's bendy like a Gumbie, only cooler. And pinker.

And here's an obnoxious squeezable "stress reliever":

And here's a shot of me relieving stress:

Boy, do I feel better now.

Ill Fortune

2007-05-01T18:30:00.000-05:00

So Slag and I been away from the net for a few days. We've been busy dealing with real life. Real life has not been going our way.

Major appliances have malfunctioned. Trees are dying. Computer hardware has failed. Various customer support representatives have lied to us, stood us up and hung up on us. Automotive clear coat finishes have been scratched. Slag’s spine has been injected with steroids again. I have been presented with a prescription for bifocals by my opthamologist. I fully expect a meteorite to land on our house tonight, just to put a cherry on top of our week.

If you see a fireball on the horizon in the direction of Texas, that would be us being reduced to our constituent elements by a flaming extraterrestrial object. It might be an improvement.

Strawberry Picking

2007-04-22T13:49:00.000-05:00

Slag and I made our annual strawberry picking trip. Aren't they lovely? They're just loaded with luscious strawberry essence. The berries are a lot smaller this year, but they taste better. I know because the eating started while we were washing them. Then I had an enormous celebratory bowl of berries with whipped cream. Now I'm almost too full to stay vertical. I want to lie on the couch and digest, but there are hundreds of berries left to be processed. Each berry must be individually examined to determine which category it goes into:

- Some sit out another day or two to ripen a little more.
- Some get eaten immediately.
- Some get refrigerated to be eaten over the next week and then frozen if we can't eat them all before they start getting old.
- Some get frozen immediately.

It's a very rigorous protocol and the subtle differences among the categories can be hard to master. Slag participates in the picking and washing, but he wisely leaves the classification step to me. He doesn't quite have the nuances among the categories down and puts berries in the wrong pile, which messes up everything.

(Don't worry. Slag will be in charge of the peaches when we pick those in July. I defer to him on peach categories, so it all evens out.)

It's a perfect excuse to make real pink lemonade. I just learned a few months ago that real pink lemonade is not lemonade with red food coloring in it. It's lemonade made with some kind of red berry.

It's really easy. Boil 2 cups of water, 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of chopped strawberries (fresh or frozen) just until the sugar is dissolved and the fruit is soft and loses its bright color. Strain the fruit out of the mixture and let it cool. Then add 1 cup of fresh squeezed lemon juice and 2 cups of cold water.

In light of the current strawberry abundance, I used more berries than the recipe calls for in this batch, so the lemonade came out a lot pinker than normal. I haven't tried it yet, but I think it would be really good with vodka. Yum.

I Am a Hypocrite

2007-04-17T22:34:00.000-05:00

I dedicate this post to kara. Her comment on my previous post has made me aware of yet another flaw in my character. Thanks (I think).

I know I said in my last post that I think books shouldn't be banned. That's true. I do believe that. In principle.

In principle, I believe that anyone should be allowed to write and publish anything he/she wants and that anyone else should be allowed to buy it and read it.

But, in reality, there are books in the world that....well...it wouldn't bother me if those books were banned. In fact, if I were queen, I would single-handedly ban entire categories of books:

- Diet books. We don't need any more diet books. We don't need the ones we have. Let me summarize them here and save all that paper: "Eat less. Exercise more." I also call for a double-strength ban on celebrity diet books.

- Books by a politicians or ex-politicians or aspiring politicians. We got enough of your hot air while you were running for and/or serving in office. We don't need you to tell us what you believe or share your struggles with us all over again in a book. Examples:
It Takes a Village
Rediscovering God in America: Reflections on the Role of Faith in Our Nation's History
No Retreat, No Surrender: One American's Fight
Standing Firm: A Vice-Presidential Memoir
The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis

I could list more, but I'm starting to gag. Oh, and if you must publish such things, please, for the love of god, don't use a title so long that it needs a ":" in it.

- Books "written" by people who are famous for something besides writing books. Examples:
TekWar by William Shatner
Gettysburg by Newt Gingrich.
The Truth About Diamonds: A Novel by Nicole Richie

Just because people recognize your name doesn't mean you're a novelist. And it doesn't mean you're fooling us when you pay someone else to write a book so you can put your name on it and call yourself an author either.

- Books that tell you how to get rich. Here's how you get rich: You write a book telling gullible people how to get rich. Then you sell workbooks that explain what your book really said. Then you hold seminars on your book and charge admission to people so you can tell them what your book says in person. Then you sell DVDs of yourself presenting a seminar on your book.

- Anything by Ann Coulter. She deserves a category all her own. (Yeah, I totally stole this from kara's list. Sue me.)

I'm sorry. I know this makes me a hypocrite, but I can live with it. Feel free to add to the list if you'd like.

So It Goes

2007-04-14T11:09:00.000-05:00

We lost Kurt Vonnegut this week. He lived to the ripe old age of 84 and his sharp wit was with him until almost the end. I saw him on The Daily Show a year or so ago, swapping quips with Jon Stewart. His trademark "Einstein" hair had turned completely white and he was a little feeble, but the mind was still there.

I first discovered Vonnegut's writings during the summer before my senior year in high school. I first picked up one of his books because a guy I had a crush on really liked Vonnegut, and what better excuse to talk to a guy than to fake an interest in something he's interested in too? But after the first few pages of the first book, I liked Vonnegut for himself and not just because of some skinny teenaged boy whose name I can't even remember thought his books were cool. The first book I read (strictly by chance) was Breakfast of Champions. I knew I had found someone I could relate to when I saw Vonnegut's drawing of an asshole right there on the page in black and white. This was clearly a guy who had a sense of humor and did not take himself too seriously. (Does anybody besides me remember his cameo in Back to School?)

Vonnegut's most famous book is probably Slaughterhouse-Five. The novel is partially set during WWII in Dresden, during the Allied fire-bombing of the city. It is part sci-fi and part history, but the Dresden pieces are based on fact. Vonnegut was actually in Dresden during the fire-bombing and its aftermath. He was an American POW held by Germany. He, his fellow prisoners and their guards survived the bombing and resulting firestorm in an underground meat-packing cellar, hence the title of the book. After the destroyed city had cooled enough for them to come out of the cellar, the German guards put the American prisoners to work pulling corpses from the rubble. I'm sure he saw far worse things during that time than any of us can imagine.

Slaughterhouse-Five has been a frequently banned book in the years since it was published. Various groups of concerned citizens have tried to remove the book from library shelves and class curriculum for decades. Self-appointed do-gooders dislike the book for being "rife with profanity and explicit sex" and "vulgar and offensive" and for "depictions of torture, ethnic slurs, and negative portrayals of women." They don't think the book should be available for just anyone who wants to read it. They're sure that if it weren't for all those vile books, we could go on pretending that nothing "vulgar and offensive" exists, as the good lord intended us to do. They can't sit by and allow those depraved writers to corrupt the minds of American youth by telling them that there is more to the world than the street they live on or the church they attend. And they certainly can't have anyone hearing things that they don't agree with, or, god forbid, encouraging children to THINK. Civilization would surely crumble down around us.

In the couple of interviews I've heard with Vonnegut, he never seemed to be concerned about the book-banners. After all, Slaughterhouse-Five has probably received more press for being banned than it would have if the do-gooders had just ignored it. Sometimes do-gooders aren't very smart.

So long Mr. Vonnegut, and thanks for writing all that "vulgar and offensive" stuff. We'll miss you.

P.S. Read a banned book every chance you get. A little thinking never hurt anybody.

Due Credit

2007-04-10T14:41:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid, my immediate family wasn’t particularly religious. We weren’t particularly unreligious either, more like religiously neutral. Except for the yearly encounter with that one aunt who was certain that we were all going straight to hell and felt it was her responsibility to verbally pummel us until we saw the error of our ways, it wasn’t much of an issue at all.

But then, after I left home, it seems like everybody got religion. OK, not everybody, but many of the key players did. And when I say “religion,” I don’t mean Buddhism or Judaism or Zoroastrianism. I mean that old-time Protestant religion, complete with old-fashioned choirs and full-emersion baptisms.

I don’t have a problem with that. I really don’t. I’m pretty much a live and let live person. As long as you’re not using your religion as an excuse to hurt other people, whatever you believe is fine with me. I’ll happily participate in any rituals where my presence is wanted. I’ll pray and sing and read along in any Holy book. Without straying too far from the point of this post, I’ll just say that I think we’re all trying to connect with the same thing and however you want to do that is OK with me.

But this shift in my family culture sort of left me feeling confused and out of place sometimes. Suddenly there were a new procedures. Like saying grace before eating dinner. I wasn’t trained to say grace as a child and it just doesn’t occur to me that it should be said. When Slag and I go visit my family and sit down to dinner, he and I have already finished our first helping of potatoes and are reaching for another roll when mom asks step-dad if he wants to say the blessing. Slag and I both drop our forks, swallow what’s in our mouths and look around guiltily while the blessing gets said, hoping we haven’t offended anyone by eating food that hasn’t been properly blessed. Then Slag gives me his sideways incredulous look, which silently says “Why didn’t you tell me?? It’s your responsibility to inform me of the proper procedures when we’re visiting your family!”

And then I look back at him apologetically, as if to say “Crap! I keep forgetting….”

It happens every single time we visit. If anyone has any suggestions about how I can remember that we have to say grace before we eat in certain places, please let me know. I’ll be eternally grateful.

The other thing that I don’t yet fully grasp is how the devil now gets credit for anything bad that happens and Jesus gets credit for the good stuff. It leaves me a little bewildered sometimes, but I’ve only had a problem with it once.

At my sister’s wedding reception, a family friend gave her handful of cash as a wedding gift. The gift was wonderful, but the wisdom of handing a large amount of cash to a woman who is wearing a strapless floor-length gown, with no obvious pockets of any kind, is questionable. She handed the cash off to my step-father who stuffed it in his pocket. Well, somewhere between the reception and arriving home, the cash disappeared. We all thought it probably fell out of his pocket in the large grassy parking lot when he pulled out his car keys.

The next day my mom and I had to go back out to the reception site to pick up a few final things and mom thought we should at least look around in the parking lot. I was sure it was a lost cause and didn’t want to waste the time, but after just a few seconds of driving around near the spot where their car had been parked, I spotted the wad of money.

“Stop! I see it!” I jumped out of the car and grabbed the money.

Woohoo! I was a hero! I was so proud of myself. I pranced into the house when we got home, waving the money over my head and obnoxiously singing “I-found-the-MO-ney-I found-the-MO-ney” and everybody was happy and relieved.

But then my mom piped up in the middle of my victory dance and said “Well, I said a little prayer to myself and I guess somebody was listening.”

Which left me standing there, all indignant, with my hands on my hips. WTF??

So that’s how things work now? Jesus gets credit for MY accomplishments?? *I* found the money, with my own two sharp eyes and she’s giving all the credit to somebody else?

That wasn’t right at all. I wanted the appreciation, the acclaim, the recognition. I spotted the cash, dammit, and I wanted ALL the credit for it. I was not interesting in sharing credit with Jesus for finding that money.

I made my displeasure known to everyone, as humorously as possible, and we all laughed. But I don’t think mom ever retracted the money-finding acclaim that she gave Jesus and bestowed it on me instead, as she should have. Nonetheless, Jesus and I both know who really found that money. It was me.

That’s the only major issue Jesus and I have had to date. As long as He is OK with not getting credit for my accomplishments and me sometimes eating unblessed food, I guess we’ll be able to co-exist peacefully in the family. But I was here first.

Hope and Pipe Dreams

2007-04-05T08:55:00.000-05:00

It doesn't matter how large my closet is, I will expand to fill every spare cubic centimeter. I am not a fashionista. I don't live for shoes and hats and purses and belts. Yet my closet is full of stuff. Completely full. There isn't room for another item. My current closet is the size of a very small room, and it is packed.

The reason? I never get rid of anything. I've still got most of my wardrobe from the 90's, including those two funky hats from my single years that everyone said I looked just adorable in. So what if they're covered in a half-inch of dust? I might want to wear them again someday. It could happen. It could.

And the jeans. Oh god, the jeans. In sheer weight, denim is by far the most abundant substance in my closet. I bet there are three hundred pounds of jeans in there, enough to smother an intruder to death if he were stupid enough to go into my closet unescorted.

I can get rid of the occasional T-shirt or pair of shoes that have holes in the toes. Just last month I tossed at least 5 belts from the late-80's. One of them even had odd bits of metal randomly embedded in the leather. It was clearly a remnant of my "Madonna" phase, and I think I was very brave for letting it go.

But the jeans are different. The jeans are my life-blood, my impetus, my identity. I must keep them all.

Currently, they fall into these four categories:

A. The jeans that I wear daily. They fit comfortably. Nothing else to say.

B. The jeans that I can still get on if I lay down on the bed and suck in to zip them. These are only suitable for social occasions where there will be no sitting of any kind required. And I must be transported to the social event while lying flat in the back seat of a car or in the bed of a pick-up truck or in a livestock trailer that has been hosed out and no longer reeks of manure. There is horizontal and there is vertical and there is nothing in between with these jeans.

C. The jeans that I would fit into if I lost 10 or more pounds. These are the "hope" jeans. I hope that someday I will again fit into them again, but I know the odds aren't good. Only focused dieting or severe emotional trauma will ever render me small enough to fit into these jeans. I'm not good at dieting. Plus there's the whole "not wanting to" thing. That leaves severe emotional trauma. Maybe if Slag took a mistress, I might be able to wear them again, but I don't think it would be worth it. I've been emotionally stable for too long. It's all Slag's fault.

D. The "pipe dream" jeans. These jeans are at least ten years old and are so out of style that Goodwill probably wouldn't want them. They look like Barbie clothes to me now. I'm holding onto them in case I ever catch malaria, dengue fever, or some other disease so exotic that it takes the doctors weeks to figure out what I have. Before I finally get a diagnosis, I'll probably waste away to nothing and I'll need something wear. I can't be running around the hospital near death in baggy jeans. And I certainly won't have the strength to shop.

So there you have it. It's obvious. I have to keep them, if only to be prepared for life's uncertainies.

Me and My Mountain Laurel

2007-03-28T19:13:00.000-05:00

Spring is officially here. I know because my mountain laurel is abloom. The flowers smell so sweet that it's almost overwhelming. It's totally covered in bees and butterflies this time of year. When you get close to it, you hear this weird humming. It freaked me out at first, but the bees are only interested in the flowers. I haven't been stung yet.

I planted it about 12 years ago. It came in one of those 1-gallon containers and was about a foot tall. Mountain laurels are supposedly slow growing, but this one seems to really like the sweltering heat that radiates off the pavement in August and has taken over that corner of the yard.

Good Things

2007-03-22T21:32:00.000-05:00

Things are looking up around here.

- Snot production has slowed somewhat after peaking last weekend in the midst of a sinus infection. The antibiotics are doing their thing and I’m no longer taking a roll of toilet paper with me to work in my backpack so I can blow my nose 120 times a day. The office toilet paper is substandard and not suitable for bringing near one’s face. If I had any refinement, I would buy a box of “facial tissues” to keep at my desk, but I don’t, so there you are. Now I’m only blowing my nose 10 times a day.

- Office reassignments have been handed out since the cubeification cancellation fiasco. I’m going back into my old office WITH my old officemate! That’s very cool, because he and I get along really well, and also because he works at home about 80% of the time. So that means I have a window office to myself for most of the day. We could have asked for an office with a better view than the air-conditioning units, but we didn’t want to be greedy. No definite move date has been announced. We're being told the move will be "April-ish."

- My team released a new version of our software this week, and I managed to make it through the entire software release process WITHOUT crying at any time, including before, during, or after work.

But this is the best thing of all:

Wicked Stepmother™ surprised me with THREE bottles of my favorite cheap red wine from a winery in southern Indiana. I did my signature Happy Dance™ with the optional hand clap as soon as I saw the box, because I KNEW what it was. Isn’t she wonderful?? I’m slurping a glass of it even as I type. Life is good.

The Record

2007-03-16T10:21:00.000-05:00

For the past week, I’ve been suffering from an allergy attack of catastrophic proportions. The oak trees are copulating and the mold spores are traveling and they're all kicking my ass.

I don’t know how much snot one human body is capable of producing in a 24-hour period, but I’m pretty sure that I’m getting close to the record. Somebody call the Guinness Book of World Records people. I could be famous.

Yeah, I know I’m being gross. I don’t care. I feel like crap. Snot snot snot.

I finally gave in and saw my doctor yesterday. She prescribed an arsenal of antihistamines and decongestants. Today I can breath through my nose a little, and I sound a little less like Barry White. It’s progress.

Cubeification Cancellation

2007-03-10T13:45:00.000-06:00

Brought to you by the good folks at http://www.despair.com. I love these guys. They’ve got a plethora of similar witty and hilarious cards, calendars, etc. that parody those uplifting, team building, motivational posters that cover the walls of corporate America. We’ve got them sprinkled through the hallways and conference rooms where I work. The parody version above, however, is more appropriate for our topic today, specifically, how dumb people are in groups.

First, the background. Remember a few months back, in this post, how I was whining about being moved out of the window office I had occupied for 16.5 years? My fellow window office dwellers and I were all moved downstairs into a rabbit warren/cave-like area, completely bereft of any natural light. (And, yes, I do think I’m developing a case of rickets, thankyouverymuch.) Anyway, since that time, the office space that we vacated has remained untouched, unrazed, unmodified in any way whatsoever. We were all thinking this was a little odd, since there had been such a rush to get us out of there. Hurry, hurry, out of the sunlight, into your caves! The cubes are coming! The cubes are coming!

Turns out we were right to be suspicious. An explanation came down this week to those of us at the peon™ level. The cubification is CANCELLED! That’s right. There will be no cubes! None, zip, nada. And guess what? We’re all moving back upstairs into the space that was vacated last fall.

I know what you’re thinking. I’m thinking it too. Whaaa?

Apparently, nobody got around to adding up all the numbers until after my coworkers and I had been moved. But then somebody did add up all the numbers and figured out that moving us out of existing offices, and then spending thousands of dollars to tear out all the walls and buy cube walls with built-in modular furniture and rewire the entire freaking building WASN’T GOING TO SAVE ANY MONEY. I mean, of course, it certainly seemed like spending all that money for no obvious reason would have saved the company money in the long term, but it actually doesn’t. (slap self on forehead) How could that be??

Don’t get me wrong. I couldn’t be happier that we’re not getting cubes and we get to move back into a space with some sunlight. But it seems to me that maybe someone should have looked at the big picture before any of this started. Did nobody think of this? Am I the only one who likes to have all the data before making a decision?? Hmm, maybe I could be a consultant.

Now the jockeying for space has begun. We’re not just moving back into the offices that we had. No, we’re making lemonade out of the pointless office moving. This is an excellent opportunity to “co-locate” teams. People who work on the same team will now have offices right next to each other instead of down the hall from each other. Just think of all the time that will save us. When I pick up my phone to call someone, the connection will happen at least a nanosecond or two faster on account of the shorter wires. Same goes for the email I send to everyone. And , oh how wonderful, I get to listen that one loudmouth all day every day instead of just in staff meetings. Boy, everything is going to be a lot better once we’re “co-located.”

So, nobody knows exactly which office anyone is getting. I imagine that all sorts of deals are being cut and bribes are changing hands, even as we speak. There’s no guarantee that I’ll even get a window office, but I’m hoping that my seniority plus my reputation for belligerence and occasional crying will sway whoever is making the decision and give me an edge.

And there’s one more little issue. Some genius decided to go ahead and sell all the office furniture in the vacated office space. Just before we moved, a memo was emailed around, telling us that we couldn’t take any of our furniture with us and there would be temporary furniture for us in our new space. It also said that that we should use the move as an “opportunity” to reduce the amount of stuff that we had.

I was skeptical of the “opportunity.” Plus, the phrase “temporary furniture” just doesn’t evoke the mental image of a comfortable work space.

I decided to raise a fuss and was allowed to keep my terminal table and office chair, so I’m OK. My desk is a bit rickety, but I only use it to store stacks of paper, so it’s not a big problem. Others, however, have a complete complement of the aforementioned “temporary” office furniture. The stuff is literally on the verge of collapse. See, they sold all the good furniture (that they could get something for), and kept the crappy furniture (that they couldn’t get anything for), in the belief that we would soon not need any of it. Which would have made sense if we were actually going to move into cubes. But since we’re not moving into cubes, selling all the furniture was, like, the second stupidest thing ever, right behind moving us out of offices and then moving us back into the same offices, which, I think you’ll agree, is the winner of the “stupidest thing ever” contest.

Now we’re all wondering if we have to keep the crappy furniture. Maybe they’ll issue everyone a roll of duct tape to keep the desks and chairs and shelves from falling apart? No, we’ll have to share the rolls, one for each team. I’m sure of it. Sigh.

On one positive note, I did get a 24-inch LCD monitor out of the whole cube fiasco. Nearly every CRT monitor in the building was replaced with a flat LCD monitor because of reduced space in the cubes. I’m putting that third on the “stupidest thing ever” list, but I’ll happily keep the monitor.

Those Shoes Redux

2007-03-04T17:43:00.000-06:00

As suggested by em, I am posting a picture of the shoes. Guess which is which. Go ahead. Guess.

Those Shoes

2007-03-04T14:52:00.000-06:00

I spent last weekend in Naples, Florida, visiting one half of my four parents. They had a condo for a couple of weeks and invited me down to spend the weekend.

I didn’t know it, but Naples is apparently a retirement mecca. I’m pretty sure I was the youngest person within a fifty mile radius of the city. There was tanned, wrinkled flesh as far as the eye could see, and everybody seemed to be from New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut. I’ve never been to a place where all the handicapped parking spots are always filled. Always! We went to a well-known restaurant in the city one evening, and, in a little pocket on the front of each menu, there was a little plastic MAGNIFYING GLASS! I am not making that up.

On Saturday, my Wicked Stepmother™ took me shopping on Fifth Avenue, which I guess is the shopping to end all shopping in that part of Florida. So I did what I’ve discovered works. I popped a Vicoden, put on my most comfy shoes, and we headed out.

It was fun. There were lots of sales, which makes things even more fun. Somehow it doesn’t hurt so much to pay $100 for a T-shirt if it was originally $250. No, I didn’t really pay $100 for a T-shirt, but I thought about it. It was 60% off! How could I pass up a bargain like that??

So about two thirds of the way down the street we walked into this little shop that was full of clear plastic shoes festooned with rhinestones and pink furry purses with beaded fringe and leather jackets adorned with sequined flamingos on the back and earrings that weighed five pounds. I started looking around and then some shop employee-type girl walks right up to me and says “You canNOT walk around on Fifth Avenue in Naples in THOSE shoes.”

And I just stared at her for a couple of seconds, blinking.

And then I burst out laughing. And then she laughed. And then my Wicked Stepmother™ laughed. And then all the other shop-girls laughed. Yes, we all had a good laugh at the expense of my shoes. Ha ha ha. Apparently, there was some sort of Fifth Avenue "shopping dress code" of which I was unaware. Maybe they should post it next to the street signs or something, so the riff-raff like me won’t be walking around looking unattractive and ruining the view for everyone else.

OK, so my shoes weren’t the most stylish shoes ever made. They were Tevas, similar to these:

Tevas were created, I think, by a river rafting guide. They’re very comfortable. They have Velcro straps, so you can adjust the sizing to fit your foot, and it’s perfectly OK to get them wet and dirty, because you can toss them in the washing mashine or give them a good scrubbing by hand and they’re good to go. There isn’t a finer, more practical, more versatile piece of footwear available on the market today. I love them.

I actually have three pairs. The oldest pair is usually reserved for anything that will get the shoes wet and/or dirty. Tevas are very durable, but they don’t look their best after two or three good scrubbings. So I like to keep a couple of newer pairs presentable enough to wear to work. I like to make sure those two are in different colors, one in blue or green, and the other in some neutral earth tone, so I can coordinate with whatever T-shirt I’m wearing to work that day.

I was wearing my newest pair on our shopping jaunt! The ones that haven’t been submerged in river water or encrusted with mud yet. The ones that still smell faintly of new rubber. The newest, nicest pair! And I was still insulted by a girl who sells shoes decorated with sequins and feathers.

I’m still marveling at her nerve. How did she know I wouldn’t take offense and smack her? Maybe she figured that anyone who would walk around in those shoes to begin with wouldn’t care what she thought. Maybe L. (aka Skiver) called ahead and had me ambushed. I know he hates to be seen in public with me wearing those shoes. Maybe he even paid her……hmmm.

Anyway, after all the initial laughter at my shoes, I mentioned that I was wearing the Tevas because they were so comfortable. The shop girl informed me that she could find me something comfortable that looked better than what I had on, and followed up her comment with an eye roll. And then everybody laughed again. Ha ha ha.

So, yeah, she sold me a pair of shoes that were indeed semi-comfortable. And, yeah, I wore them out of the store, at everyone’s insistence. But then I stopped at a bench about half a block down from the shop, put my Tevas back on, and proceeded to ruin the view on Fifth Avenue for the rest of the day.

So I guess I showed her.

Home and Cranky

2007-02-28T18:03:00.000-06:00

I finally made it home from Florida. The trip was lovely. The flight home was not. I'm too tired to work myself up into a lather with a proper bitching, but here's a brief summary:

Time I was scheduled to arrive home: 4:30pm, Monday, February 26

Time I actually arrived home: 11:45pm, Tuesday, February 27

No, it wasn't weather related. Mechanical problems only. Needless to say, American Airlines is on my shit list for the foreseeable future. They suck.

Public Service Announcement

2007-02-22T16:01:00.000-06:00

godiva.com is having their after-Valentine's Day sale!

P.S. I'm off to Florida for the weekend. Slag will likely spend the weekend pining for me and crying himself to sleep every night. Stop by and console him if you have a chance. Toodles!

And a Pestilence Rained Down Upon the Land

2007-02-19T09:04:00.000-06:00

My schedule yesterday:

7:30am: Arise. Pull on yesterday’s jeans. Subdue bed-head hair in a ponytail.

7:45am: Eat bowl of cereal.

8am: Leave for grocery store in the hopes of arriving before the thundering hordes of Sunday shoppers.

9am: Return from grocery store. Unload groceries.

9:15am: Plan day. Mentally schedule a run for later in the afternoon.

9:20am: Notice a slight queasy feeling in stomach.

9:30am: Listen to stomach rumble. Hear husband point out that I look a little pale.

10am to 12pm: Barf up every molecule of food that I’ve swallowed in the last six months. Lie on bathroom floor and feel the delightful coolness of the floor tiles. Receive attentive and adoring, yet ineffective, ministering of devoted husband. Sweat. Shiver. Pray for own death.

12:05pm: Cancel previously scheduled run.

12:10pm: Swallow anti-nausea medication and Gatorade provided by aforementioned devoted husband.

12:15pm: Puke up aforementioned anti-nausea medication and Gatorade.

12:20pm: Consider writing letter to Santa Claus, asking for own death, since the Almighty isn’t coming through for me.

12:30pm to 6pm: Lie on couch, sip Gatorade, and watch 7 TiVo’d episodes of the 2005 season of Project Runway.

6pm: Shower.

6:20pm: Return to couch. Try not to take offense as husband seals TiVo remote in Ziploc bag so he can use it without touching it and possibly infecting himself with the plague.

6:30pm: Demand that devoted husband provide chocolate milkshake.

6:35pm: Allow devoted husband to talk me out of milkshake idea.

6:40pm: Resign self to drinking more Gatorade, which has become extremely unappealing.

6:45pm to 10pm: Lie on couch. Watch backlog of TiVo’d Daily Shows and Colbert Reports with devoted husband. Sip more Gatorade. Doze.

10pm: Retire for the evening.

Sweet Nothings

2007-02-14T12:10:00.000-06:00

There’s just nothing that says “I love you” like an enormous 4ft. heart-shaped Mylar balloon that says “Be mine” on one side and has a picture of a rose on the other, is there? Somebody must think so, because the local grocery store is filled with them. It’s like a tacky haunted Mylar forest in there. I was afraid flying monkeys were going to swoop down and carry me off to the witch’s castle or something.

Who buys those things? Probably the same people who buy lighted heart-shaped lawn ornaments and heart-shaped rose wreaths and kissing balls. And what the hell is a kissing ball? The mind reels at the possibilities….

Whoever invented the Valentine tree probably has a house full of those Mylar Valentine balloons. I bet the Christmas people are going to be mighty pissed when they find out that yet other holiday is trying to move in on their tree decorating action. First there were Easter trees and Halloween trees, and now Valentine trees? Next year I’ll make a Groundhog Day tree. I’ll drape it with groundhogs and groundhog accessories. Let me know if you know what groundhogs use for accessories. I promise to give you credit.

Slag and I agreed we weren’t going to be exploited by the Valentine Industrial Complex this year, but then I came home yesterday to find a big beautiful bouquet of roses in one of his latest pots. Isn’t he a sweetie? No Mylar balloons though, so he wasn’t completely beguiled with all the available merchandise.

I love you, Sweetie, roses or not.

Weird Meme

2007-02-11T08:39:00.000-06:00

Holy crap! I just got tagged for my first meme by em! I sooo feel like Steve Martin in “The Jerk,” when he found his name in the phonebook. I’m SOMEBODY!

(And if you’re never seen that movie, you must go watch it right now.)

So, six weird things about me? This will have to be just a sampling.

- I hate flying, but not because I’m afraid of it. I hate not being in control of my own schedule.

- I grew up in a place so rural that we only got two of the three major television networks, NBC and CBS, until the mid-70’s. So, there’s a whole group of ABC shows from early 1970’s popular culture that I never knew anything about until they went into syndication: “The Partridge Family,” “The Brady Bunch,” “The Mod Squad,” “Love, American Style,” etc.

- I don’t do my husband’s laundry and he doesn’t do mine. We were both single too long and set in our ways, I guess. On the rare occasion that one of us finishes up a load of the other’s clothes, something always ends up in the dryer that shouldn’t have, and then we both resolve never to do that favor again.

- When I’m alone in the house, I frequently turn on really loud music and dance like a lunatic, a la Tom Cruise in “Risky Business.” I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever reach an age when I don’t feel like doing it anymore. I hope not.

- I didn’t kiss a guy for the first time until I was almost 18. But the first guy I kissed was also the first guy I slept with, albeit a few months after the first kiss. (I forget who reads this blog. Apologies if you’re getting more information that you wanted.)

- When I get a bag of M&Ms, I dump the whole bag out and line them up in rows by color, in the order of the spectrum, with brown at the end. Then I eat the extras until all the rows have the same number of M&Ms. Then I eat all the brown ones. After that it varies, but I always eat the blue and green ones last, in pairs, because I think they’re the prettiest together. Oh, and I absolutely hate it when I get a bag with only one or two of a particular color. It totally ruins phase 2 (eating the extras until all the rows are even).

Running

2007-02-07T12:11:00.000-06:00

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a talented runner. I am a persistent runner. I am a determined runner. But I am not a good runner, nor even an average runner. I wasn’t a runner at all until my 20’s when I fell in with a group of friends who exercised, get this, for FUN. It’s true. Even on vacation, they would get up early in the morning and run, because they wanted to. They liked exercising. I was totally baffled. And uninterested.

Then I got back the results of my first ever cholesterol test.

368.

Yeah, not good, especially considering that I was 26 years old and 35 pounds lighter than I am now. OK, so my diet was bad. It's still bad. But it wasn't bad enough to generate that kind of number. Medication was promptly prescribed, which got the number down to the low 200’s. Still not optimal. In between bites of Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies, I started wondering about the possibility of keeling over from a heart attack at the age of 45. So I considered the whole exercise thing. And then I talked about it with my health-conscious, running friends, who had cholesterol numbers around 150.

If I were ever going to exercise, running met the main requirements:

a. It didn’t require any skill or coordination. I can usually handle the whole left-foot-right-foot-left-foot thing, with a couple of amusing exceptions that we don’t have to go into right now.

b. It didn’t require me to go anywhere except out my front door. I didn’t have to join a gym or a team or wear a uniform.

c. It didn’t require me to interact with other people except for an occasional eyebrow waggle at other pedestrians I might pass on the street.

And so I bought my first pair of running shoes.

It was freaking hilarious. At first, just wiggling my knees for a few seconds caused me to gasp and sputter. I ran slower than most people could walk. Hell, I ran slower than *I* could walk. It would have been pathetic if it weren't so funny. I kept at it mostly because my friends were so encouraging. And peer pressure, of course. There’s nothing like peer pressure to motivate.

Things got a little better eventually. I remember the first time I ran a mile without stopping to walk. The next day I pranced into my friend’s office and announced it as if I had just won an Olympic medal or cured cancer. She, who has run several marathons and ran her first mile when she was 6 years old, praised me lavishly for running that mile. Obviously, she was a very kind person. She was a good friend too.

I’ve been running ever since. Still slowly. Very slowly. Glacially even.

For example, there is a half-marathon (13.1 mile) race in town every year. I’ve finished it four times. That sounds mighty impressive until I tell you my times, which I’m not going to do because it’s embarrassing. Let’s just say that in the first one I did, a power walker beat me. Specifically, a chubby male power walker, clad in purple lycra running pants. He stayed just about 100 feet ahead of me for the entire race. I got to watch his fat rolls undulate under the purple lycra for at least 10 miles. But I finished that stupid race without passing out or throwing up and that was my definition of success.

Eventually, I reached a level of fitness where I could run and fall into that state of mind where you forget that you’re running. It’s a great feeling, part relaxation, part exhilaration. I’ve done some of my best thinking during those runs. The fourth and final time I ran the half-marathon, in 2000 I think, I actually enjoyed it. I was still extremely slow, but I finished with people who were actually running, well ahead of the power walkers wearing purple lycra. Plus, at no point during the race did I feel that I was about to go into cardiac arrest. It was fun, and I’d love to do it again.

But alas, it’s been a really really long time since I’ve felt like that while running. Lately my runs end with me sprawled on the living room floor, yelling “I SUCK!” at the ceiling. If I yell loud enough, Slag will come downstairs to see if the house is being burgled or I'm being assaulted. That's kind of fun, but not enough to make up for the blow to my self-esteem that each bad run brings. I don’t remember the last time I ran a mile without stopping to walk and catch my breath. My knees hurt. Those extra 20 pounds probably aren’t helping either. I’m sick of this. It’s pissing me off. I want to enjoy running again, and I’m starting to think I never will. Getting old sucks.

So why do I keep trying to do it? At the moment, I have no idea. Just felt like whining about it. Thank you. That is all.

Self Abuse

2007-02-01T09:04:00.000-06:00

Is there such a thing as a chocolate hangover? Yesterday I accidentally ate the bottom layer of a Godiva 36-piece Gold Ballotin for lunch. Today I feel like crap. Could there be a connection?

In my defense, I didn’t mean to eat it all. But now I have nothing. :(

It was the remainder of my windfall from the post-Christmas half-price sale at godiva.com. I had been slowly eating away at the box, a piece or two at a time, for the previous week. I can eat chocolate with moderation if I keep it in some relatively inaccessible place that’s out of sight. That way, I don’t see it and grab a piece (or three) every time I walk by.

My usual, preferred, out-of-sight location is the freezer, but I just couldn’t do that to the lovely golden box of Godiva chocolates, with each piece nestled down into an individually sized and shaped cup. The freezer environment was too hostile. Godiva chocolates have to be kept at room temperature, so as not to bruise the ganache.

This box stayed upstairs in the extra bedroom with the door shut, rendering it extremely out of sight. It worked! I could eat just a couple of pieces a day with no problem. And I got a little exclamation point of ecstasy in my day every time I remembered the box was up there. It was a repetitive bonanza, if you will.

So then I got cocky and brought the box to work. I thought I could continue the strategy, if I only put the box out of sight in a desk drawer. Ha! Double Ha! I am dumb. The box was completely empty within three hours. I started eating as soon as I got to work, so I guess it wasn’t technically lunch. It was more of a breakfast dessert brunch that extended into lunch. But the result was the same. It was all gone by 12pm.

When will I learn that I cannot be trusted with chocolate while at my desk?? I should know myself better after 41 years. The chocolate must be out of sight AND out of reach for this strategy to work and there’s no place in my office that is sufficiently out of reach. And I’m including the top of the dropped ceiling tiles.

This also might explain why my run yesterday afternoon sucked with the force of a thousand vacuum cleaners. That’s a lot.

A Little History

2007-01-27T13:47:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I was doing some cleaning up in my saved email archive, and I ran across something that just has to be shared with the internet. It’s the thing that convinced me that Slag had to have a blog to share his stories with the rest of the world. Or at least a small group of other bloggers with excellent taste. You know who you are.

Before we started our blogs, Slag and I used to email our funny stories to a group of friends. Many of my early posts were based on those stories, because I’m lazy like that. I had been thinking about blogging for a while and also mentioning it to Slag whenever he produced something especially amusing, but what follows is what set me into full-blown nagging. That’s right. I’m taking credit for the creation of Alchemy Anyone.

Slag declined to post this on his blog, so I’m doing it here. It must be shared, and I’m allowed to do that because Texas is a community property state.

But first some background. To get the context, you must first read my Ethical Dilemma post. That post was based on an email I had sent to our “funny story” friends.

Did you read it? I hope you did, because otherwise, the rest won’t make any sense.

This was Slag’s response:

I had a spiritual talk with the bird this morning. I let him know that I totally understood his dilemma, i.e. no chirpee, no feather burger. But, surely he must know that chirping for any reason between roost and daybreak is a total waste of resources considering that all the animals in the animal kingdom that give a sh*t one way or another are UNCONSCIOUS!

So I've been waiting for this law of nature to finally sink in to his little bird brain, but I know from previous experience that there's no reasoning with a retard. I've tried making his life unpleasant by chunking dirt clods and shaking his tree. But, the motherf*cker gets all up in my grill with his flapping and squawking and I'm going “HEY D*CKHOLE, GET THE F#CK OUT OF MY TREE,” and he's giving me the middle feather and making me look like his bitch in front of his homebirds.

So I whip it out and shake it at him and I'm telling him, “Yeah motherf*cker, this is what your little hens are looking for, you pencil-dick rooster wannabe.” I tell him, “Uh huh, that's why you are up all night squawking like an egg laying yardbird. You're trying to make up for your little smoky by playing the *sshole.”

So he's all cocky and he tells me, “Yeah, your lady likes my little smoky fried up hot with her scrambled eggs every morning.”

I tell him, “Come on motherf*cker.”

So, the *sshole pulls a beak on me and I'm ok with that. I strap on the shank spurs from my chicken fighting days and I say, "Let the games begin, dude!"

He comes at me full-on with some kind of rookie wingflap-beak-to-the-eye move and BAM! Down he goes. He's on the ground looking around to see if the hens were watching. Yeah, they saw it all. They are all looking at me like "Yeah baby, you're my daddy now," and he knows it's all over.

Adios amigo. It's just like I said, it's my damn tree.

And then the next day, a follow-up arrives, in response to a question about the first story:

Unfortunately, I don't have time to answer that question. I am packing at the moment and I will be leaving xxx Cove for a while. Mr. Hotnuts bird brain came back this afternoon with a couple of his friends. I thought I could take them, and I was doing OK until the grackle caught me with a kidney punch, and I really don't know what happened after that except I've apparently lost the right to mate with Jill.

Everything is all right though. I found a nice hackberry tree in the projects at the end of xxxx Road that doesn't seem be within the territorial boundaries of the any of the birds in the neighborhood. I count myself lucky considering it is really close to a family thatnever puts the lid on their garbage can.

Jill, be brave and try not to antagonize your new alpha male. As soon as I heal up, I'll start expanding my territory, tree by tree, until xxxx Cove is restored once again to my dominion. That cannot happen soon enough considering the hens in this area are alittle feather worn, if you know what I mean.

And the rest is history.

The Search for Steak

2007-01-24T12:58:00.000-06:00

There's this Texas-ish restaurant down the road from us that serves steaks and seafood. By "Texas-ish" I mean there are dead animal heads on the wall, and the place is normally full of coach-type people wearing sans-a-belt polyester coach shorts, laughing too loud and slapping each other on the back while smoking fat cigars and talking about football. The women with them sip martinis and wear big hair and too much make-up. The restaurant even has a separate smoking room, decorated with enormous leather furniture and more dead animal heads, where important customers can rent their own humidors. It is an extremely pretentious place, but in a very stereotypically Texas sort of way.

We walked in on a weeknight a while back (after the Truluck's fiasco), still looking for a good steak. We were greeted by three or so anorexic teenage girls in little black dresses, clustered around the hostess podium.

"Do you have a reservation?"

We looked past them into the cavernous, nearly empty dining room.

"No. Do we need one?" said with raised eyebrows and the tiniest smirk.

Apparently not, because they consented to seat us, but only after getting our names and recording them in their book. They didn’t want any other information, just the names. Weird. If I had only been thinking faster, we could have been “Thor” and “Wonder Woman,” but I missed my chance.

They didn’t make us wait, but they seated us, in a nearly empty restaurant, right next to the bus boy/drink station. It was lovely. We got to listen to ice being shoveled into pitchers and dirty dishes being stacked throughout our meal. I suppose we were being punished for showing up without a reservation AND without sans-a-belt pants or big hair. Whatever. Just bring us one of your sucky steaks, so we can decide we're never coming back here again.

Slag ordered the 26oz Porter House steak. It was fabulous. He ate all of it. Every bit. I know he wanted to pick up the bone and gnaw on it, but he didn’t on account of it being such a classy place. He said it was the best steak he'd ever had. Ever. I tasted it too. It was very good. Tender. Perfectly seasoned. Cooked exactly as requested.

Woohoo!! We found a place to get good steaks! Halleluiah!

But “boo! hiss!” because we have to endure dead animal heads and snobby staff to acquire said good steaks.

Slag wanted to make sure the good steak wasn't a fluke though, so we called up L. and made plans to go back again. This time it would be a Saturday night, so Slag made a reservation, with the hope that it alone would be enough to get us a table away from the drink station. None of us were interested in taking the extra step of donning sans-a-belt pants or sporting big hair to improve our image in the eyes of the staff.

Slag didn't so much make the reservations for us though, as for his alter-ego. He called up the restaurant and said, in his best New England accent, that he would like to make reservations for Saturday night. The name? Clayton Endicott III. That's E-N-D-I-C-O-T-T the THIIIIIIIRD. A phone number? Certainly. He gave them his cell phone number. He then informed the hostess, in the snobbiest tone I’ve ever heard come out of his mouth, that the number he had just given her was his driver's number. If they should need to call the number, they should please speak very plainly, because his driver is a “little dim.” The hostess responded with some nervous laughter.

I was working on the computer in the same room while the reservation was being made. By the time it was complete, I had put my head down on the desk and was cradling my face in the crook of my elbow, about to die from a combination of mortification and laughter. I wasn’t so sure I wanted to go anymore. Fortunately, that's where the dramatic part of the story ends. We arrived on Saturday night, posing, I guess, as Mr. Endicott III and his party. L. and I hung back as Slag approached the hostess stand to let them know we were there. I don’t know what he said to them, and I don’t want to know. All I know is that we got a great table and very little attitude from the hostess stand. And, we all agreed that the steaks were still fabulous.

Slag had tried to get L. to wear his tuxedo to the restaurant and play the part of Mr. Endicott III. Slag planned on playing the part of the dim driver himself and amusing himself at the restaurant staff’s expense. Thankfully, L. wouldn't cooperate. The staff at the restaurant would be grateful if they only knew what they had been saved from.

Ice Ice Baby

2007-01-18T19:09:00.000-06:00

I swear this is my last ice-related post. The ice started melting around noon today, and it’s mostly gone now. Plus I’m totally tapped out of catchy ice-related post subjects.

Yesterday was another “ice day,” spent sequestered in the house. We got even more sleet and freezing rain the previous night. To prove it, here’s another picture of my car with even bigger icicles hanging from it.

By yesterday afternoon I’d had enough of being stuck in the house and decided to go for a run, if only to breath some air that hadn’t cycled through the heating system 12 times. I know it sounds nuts, but as long as you bundle up, the cold isn’t bad when there’s no wind. I much prefer it to the heat in August. The asphalt roads were pretty much ice free, though the sidewalks, bridges, and everything else were still covered. I stayed in the road and had no problems except for almost losing it once crossing one of the little bridges on my running route. I don’t think anybody saw me do the whole “Frankenstein-helicopter-arms” thing, so no problem there.

While I was out, I must have passed at least ten people in their driveways, attempting to remove the ice from their vehicles. The ice was a good inch thick for most of them. They were employing all sorts of ice scrapers, brooms, buckets of water, ice picks, machetes, hammers, etc. to pummel their various vehicles.

But here’s the weird thing. Not one of them had started the engine of vehicle he/she was attempting to de-ice. Not one! WTF?? I did grow up in a more northern climate, so maybe I’m biased, but isn’t starting the engine sort of an intuitive first step?

Your basic automotive frozen precipitation removal process (learned from my Dad in the ‘70’s):

1. Start engine.
2. Turn defroster setting on “high.”
3. Go back in the house, drink coffee and wait until things start to melt.
4. Scrape until windows are clear enough to see through.

I did it this morning and it worked great. I’ve never tried it, but I’m pretty sure that if you skip steps 1 through 3, step 4 is going to be a real bitch. Come on, people, let’s use those brain cells!

Maybe this would be a good topic for the over-excited local newscasters next time we have an ice storm. Must go check to see if they have a suggestion box on their website…..

Snow Day!

2007-01-16T14:05:00.000-06:00

OK, I guess it’s really an ice day, but I’ll take it. Unfortunately, I’m set up to work from home, so I’m not totally off the hook. It’s still fun working in my jammies though, and I haven’t decided if I’m going to shower today or not. Plus nobody else is at work either, so I’m getting about 550% fewer questions and requests, which means that the work I have to do is going a lot faster.

Yesterday would have been an ice day, but it was a company holiday anyway, so I got the day off regardless. The roads were bad in the morning, but Slag was determined to run a couple of errands and practice a little ice-driving yesterday afternoon, like I mentioned earlier. I forbade it.

Turns out I didn’t actually kick his ass, but I did stand in the doorway while he backed out of the garage, looking very menacing with my hands on my hips, going “Get back in the house this instant! You’re not going anywhere! The roads are icy and you’ll be killed!“

And as he backed down the driveway, “DO YOU HEAR ME?? I SAID GET BACK IN THIS HOUSE RIGHT NOW!”

And as he started off down the street, “I’M NOT JOKING WITH YOU! YOU’RE NOT GOING ANYWHERE!”

And then he hit his remote and shut the garage door in my face. I retaliated by slamming the door on my way back into the house. So there. I guess I showed him.

But the roads were much improved by the time he left, so he didn’t get to do any ice driving. Ha! That’s what he gets for not listening to me.

We got even more sleet and freezing rain last night though. Now there’s about ¼ of an inch of ice on everything. Here’s a picture of my car covered in sleet and ice. Can you see that there are actual icicles hanging from the wheel well in the lower left corner of the picture?? (Anyone reading this who lives in northern climes is kindly requested to refrain from rolling his/her eyes out of their sockets.) This is a big deal around here.

To give you an idea of what I mean, a few years ago, I saw an interview with the guy who was in charge of highway maintenance for the entire state of Georgia or Alabama (I can’t remember which) just after a freak storm had dropped like 10 inches of snow onto the northern half of the state. The interviewer guy asked him, “How long do you think it will be before you have the major highways plowed and cleared?” And the guy answered, “Oh…..we don’t have a plow.”

Yeah. So. That’s pretty much the situation here. The two strategies we have for dealing with frozen water on the roadways are 1) sprinkling sand on the highway overpasses and 2) waiting for it all to melt. Since the temperature hasn’t risen above freezing yet today, nothing is melting just yet.

Which brings us to the exciting part of today’s story. Having missed out on the ice-driving yesterday, Slag was even more determined to drive in it today. I was equally more determined that he would not.

I knew I’d have to be sneaky, so I surprised him with a preemptive strike on his shoes. I did get one of them untied before he saw what I was doing and removed me from his ankle. I unzipped his jacket, yanked it halfway down his arms and yelled “You’re not going anywhere!” while he retied the shoe. I came back with an arm lock on the other leg and got the other shoe untied before he got annoyed and pushed me gently back onto the floor and held me at arms reach while I flailed at him and he retied the second shoe. I had lost the element of surprise. I knew I was beaten. I settled for flopping down flat on the floor and yelling “If you end up in the emergency room with every bone in your body broken, don’t call ME to come and get you!” at the ceiling as he left.

He just called me from the grocery store. What do you know, he made it there without being crushed to death in a multi-car pile-up. We didn’t get to go over the shopping list before he left, and he wanted to know if I needed anything. Yes please. A box of Frosted Mini-Wheats and a dozen eggs.

He said he’s going to find an empty parking lot on the way home to practice skid control or something. He better not break those damn eggs.

The Ice Cometh

2007-01-15T11:46:00.000-06:00

Well, it’s happened. It’s been a couple of years so we were due. It rained AND the temperature has fallen to 30 degrees, so there’s about 1/16th of an inch of ice coating absolutely everything. And around here, that’s the first sign of the apocalypse. Chaos ensues.

Cars start randomly running into each other. Everything is cancelled. We all huddle around our radios and television sets like underground freedom fighters, waiting to hear the word that friendly forces will soon be marching through the city to liberate us.

The local newscasters are reporting everything as if the second coming is imminent. They interview someone who saw someone else drive their car into a tree, and ask some shelled-shocked dude how he feels about his brand new pickup being smashed. They’re broadcasting close-ups of ice covered cars, trees, power lines, road signs, awnings, mail boxes, playground equipment and anything else that will stand still long enough for them to get that shot. They start airing tips on how to avoid frostbite, things like “Wear mittens, not gloves” and “You lose 126% of your body heat through the top of your head, so be sure to wear a hat.” We get hourly reports from the airport, telling us that, amazingly, all flights are running as scheduled. It’s just thrilling.

And oh dear lord, the local weather people are absolutely coming in their pants. They haven’t had anything this exciting to report since that hurricane threatened to bring us a couple of inches of rain about five years ago. They’ve got all this weather-displaying technology at their disposal and they’re going to use it. They’ve got pie charts and historical temperature graphs. They’ve got storm-tracking Doppler weather team radar and they’re going to use it to bring us all the life-saving, up-to-the-minute information they have to give. Over and over again until our heads collectively explode. That’s how much they care.

And then they trot out the historic video of the “blizzard of ’59” from the archive, so we can see how much better we have it than those poor people did back then.

I didn’t pay any attention to the local news report last night, but I’m sure it showed videos of people crawling all over each other at the local grocery store, denuding the shelves of canned food and bottled water, the whole thing probably highlighted with a human interest story about a fist-fight that broke out over that last box of Lucky Charms. Please, can’t we all try to have good will towards our fellow man in these times of crisis??

OK, I know ice is dangerous. You really can’t drive on it at all, no matter what kind of vehicle you have. It’s even worse in an area where people only have to deal with frozen stuff coming out of the sky once every couple of years. This morning there was an eight car pile-up on a highway not far from our house that sent ten people to the hospital.

Here’s a thought: STAY HOME.

I have no intention of leaving the house today. I’ve got one bottle of cheap red wine left. I’ve got seasons three and four of Scrubs on DVD. I’ve got my bunny slippers. I’ll be fine until this phase of apocalypse passes.

P.S. Slag thinks he’s going out later to find an empty parking lot and practice his ice-driving skills. I humbly beg to differ. I predict there will be an ass-kicking in this house today. Whose ass, I can’t yet say.

Her

2007-01-10T18:37:00.000-06:00

I’ve never told anyone this before, but deep inside the recesses of my psyche I have an alternate personality. I affectionately call her “The Bitch.” As you may be able to tell from her name, she isn’t the “nice” one. She’s the one who takes over when the nice one is being taken advantage of. The nice one is me. Really.

As I get older, I’m getting better and better at controlling her. I try to only let her out to play when it seems safe and she won’t be able to cause any havoc in my life. Sometimes I even let her write posts for my blog to amuse herself. But last night she nearly overwhelmed me. It was very scarey. I think she could have done serious bodily and property damage, in a public place no less.

First a little background. Without going into a detailed medical history (I love you, Internet, but you don’t have to know everything), I’ll just say that I’ve been taking a particular prescription medication for the last 14 years. It works well for me and has caused no problems.

About 4 months ago a generic version of said medication became available. Since my insurance company only wants the best for me, they immediately switched me to the generic version, because they were sure that the generic version would provide me with quality, cost-effective medication. The cynic might think they were only trying to save themselves some money, but no, my well-being is their top priority. It says so right there in their brochure. And they wouldn’t say that if it weren’t true. Really.

Unfortunately, after 4 months of taking this quality, cost-effective generic medication, it became clear that the generic version was not working for me. My symptoms were back. At that was a bad thing.

My doctor told me that many others were having the same problem with this quality, cost-effective generic medication and immediately wrote me a new prescription, specifying that only the name brand version should be dispensed. I suspected that the insurance company, that only wants the best for me, might balk at shelling out for a new prescription when I still had two months of the generic stuff left from my last three-month refill, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I was totally willing to eat the cost of a couple of months of the stuff to get something that works. That willingness seemed to cause lots of confusion down at the local Walgreens. Lots of confusion.

Last night I arrived at the pharmacy counter to pick up my prescription, the prescription that had been sent in the previous day. One would think that 30 hours would be enough time to fill one prescription. Certainly.

So I gave the pharmacy tech guy (hereafter to be known as Doofus) my name and asked for my prescription.

“I’m sorry ma’am, but your insurance company is not allowing a refill on your medication this soon.”

“It’s not the same medication. The old prescription is for the generic version, but the generic isn’t working for me.”

Doofus and a couple white coats consulted for a minute or two.

“I’m sorry ma’am, but your insurance company considers those to be the same medication.”

“No problem, I’ll just pay cash.”

“So you want it anyway?”

“Yes, I’ll be paying cash.”

“You realize that this prescription will be $100?”

“That’s no problem. I’d like my prescription please,” as I waved my Visa card in his general direction. The Bitch was now starting to stir. I felt her kick my liver.

“I’m sorry ma’am, but we didn’t fill the prescription because we didn’t know that you’d want to pay cash. It’ll take us about 20 minutes to get it ready. If you’d like to wait, we’ll call you over the store intercom when it’s ready.”

The Bitch took control of my eyelids and glowered at him, but I kept her otherwise restrained. “No problem, I’ll just come back later this evening.”

We only live a couple of minutes from the Walgreens, so Slag and I just headed home. About an hour later I was about to leave and go back to pick up the prescription when Slag talked me into calling to make sure it was ready, to avoid a wasted trip. Plus, he likes to avoid the Bitch as much as possible too, and he knew she’d been awakened and was just waiting for an opportunity to take control of my body and do something bad to somebody. So I called. Was the prescription ready? No it wasn’t, but they’d have it ready to go in about 20 minutes. Good call, Slag.

So we killed another half an hour with an episode of Scrubs and then I headed out. I arrived back at the pharmacy counter almost exactly an hour and a half after Doofus told me my prescription would be ready in 20 minutes. Doofus was still on duty, but he looked at me like he’d never seen my face before. I gave him my name and asked for my prescription.

“What’s the first name again?” as he’s digging through the bin corresponding to the first letter of my last name.

“Jill.”

More time passed. And then he frowned a little into the computer monitor, and told me, “Your insurance company isn’t allowing a refill this soon. Were you planning to pay for this yourself?”

He said it to me as if we, he and I, the exact same two people, had not had an extended conversation about this very topic a mere hour and a half ago in this very spot.

And suddenly the Bitch was awake and ready to kick some ass. I gagged a little as she rose to her full height inside my throat.

“Yes, I’ll be paying cash,” I squeaked out while fighting to keep her from taking control of my limbs. Ordinarily I would let her go at this point, but I still needed something from these people and I was determined not to let her ruin it for me.

“I’m sorry ma’am, but that prescription hasn’t been filled yet. If you’d care to wait, it’ll take us about 20 minutes to get it ready.”

And then the Bitch started trying to move and talk. She tried to grab Doofus by the hair and scream “GIVE ME MY GODDAMN PILLS, YOU STUPID FUCK!” but I tackled her at the last minute and choked off her shrieking with my throat muscles. The words that actually emerged from my mouth were something like “YOU told me that it would be ready in TWENTY minutes an HOUR AND A HALF AGO.”

“I apologize for that. We’ll get it ready as soon as we can.” And he said it with an attitude that implied that he wasn’t a bit sorry. Not a bit. He got another glower of dissatisfaction from me, and then I parked myself in the waiting area and gave him mean looks while distracting the Bitch with a game of video poker on my cell phone.

Twenty five minutes later Doofus calls me back up to the counter. “The pharmacist would like to speak with you.”

Pharmacist Dude had my prescription in front of him, the one that clearly said that only the name brand medication should be dispensed. He was confused.

“Did you want the generic version of this?”

And then the Bitch went nuts. She gave up trying to take control of MY arms and instead stuck her own arms out of my mouth, braced her elbows on my nose and chin, and used the leverage to pull her entire self out of my throat. Doofus was her first target. She opened her talons and threw herself at his ample, soft underbelly, but he was quick for his size and scooted out of reach behind a big filing cabinet. Then she went after Pharmacist Dude. By this time, I was screaming for her to calm down because I didn’t have my pills yet, but she didn’t care. I did manage to get her in a headlock, but she was already too big and strong for me to stop. She ended up dragging me along as she lunged at Pharmacist Dude. The weight of me on her back slowed her down though, so she only got a grip on his lab coat, which she ripped off his body while he screamed like a little girl. The coat distracted her for a second. While she demolished the remaining scraps, I retrieved the pepper spray from my purse and gave her a direct hit, right in the face. She screamed in pain and anger, and dropped to the ground. I promptly sat down on the back of her neck. I figured that if the tactic will keep a horse on the ground, it’d work on her too. Thankfully, I was right.

It didn’t keep her quiet though. The Bitch snarled and hissed like a Tasmanian Devil as I answered Pharmacist Dude, panting from the exertion. “NO, the generic (pant) DOES NOT WORK (pant) FOR ME. I WANT (pant) THE (pant) NAME (pant) BRAND!”

I think Pharmacist Dude was still in shock over the loss of his lab coat and embarrassed about his girly screams, because he didn’t say anything else after that. He just turned back his work table and got busy filling my prescription. I never saw Doofus again. I can only assume that he had fled the building.

I continued to sit on the Bitch, right there in the middle of the pharmacy waiting area, for the additional twenty minutes in took for Pharmacy Dude to count out 30 pills and put them in a little bottle. I was not going to let her up until she stopped making noises that would cause Beelzebub to tremble with fright. It was just too dangerous. Everybody else could just walk around us. I didn’t care.

Just before my prescription was ready, a new pharmacy tech, Sharp Guy, came on duty. Sharp Guy had noticed me sitting there on the floor and asked me my name so he could check on my prescription, without me even saying a word. He correctly deduced that I was waiting on a prescription. He was clearly smart. He was also helpful. He was friendly. He was on top of everything. He understood what was going on after I explained it only once.

The Bitch liked him. His excellent customer service and reliable short term memory soothed her. She started to purr while Sharp Guy checked on Pharmacist Dude and made sure he was really giving me the name brand. By the time Sharp Guy was stapling my receipt to my bag and telling me to have a great evening, she had returned to her normal size and had snuggled back into her favorite spot, right below my solar plexus.

Thank god for Sharp Guy. If not for him, I don’t know how I would have gotten the Bitch out of the store without someone being hurt.

Two Things

2007-01-04T16:35:00.000-06:00

Two things I'm happy about today:

1. godiva.com is having their annual sale of left-over Christmas merchandise. If you don't mind your chocolates being in a box wrapped with a Christmas ribbon (and really, who does?), you can get them for half price.

2. iTunes finally has some Bob Seger tunes besides that one insipid Christmas album that they've had forever. Now if only Apple and whoever owns the Beatles stuff could get their collective underwear out of a bunch. I'd volunteer to de-wedgie-fy them myself if I thought it would do any good.

My Latest Quilt

2007-01-02T21:37:00.000-06:00

What do you know, I accomplished something over my Christmas vacation besides compulsive eating and watching Scrubs reruns. Slag's daughter had a baby son last Friday and this quilt is for him. Jacob....something. Crap, I can't remember the middle name. I'll get the full name and all the statistics when we go up to meet the little guy, hopefully soon.

Offspring

2006-12-30T17:44:00.000-06:00

Dammit to hell, is there no justice in the world?? If there were, I would not simultaneously need both wrinkle cream AND acne cream. I awoke this morning to find that I had sprouted a couple of “appendages” on my forehead overnight. When is this going to stop? Shouldn’t there be an age past which a person should not have to deal with a “blemish” problem? Like maybe the age when your whole face is sagging and you start growing your grandma’s jowls? Will I be 90 years old, in a rest home, my face a roadmap of wrinkles and jowls hanging down around my collar bone, with a big pimple on my forehead or on the end of my nose? At that point, I know I won’t have the dexterity or the visual acuity to pop it or apply the Clearasil, and then what will I do? Just sit there, mentally begging some underpaid orderly to put me out of my misery, probably. All the other feeble old ladies will be laughing behind my back. It’s going to be just awful.

In honor of the impending new year and my resolve to have a better attitude, I’ve decided to take the “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade” approach. Since it appears they’ll be around for a while, and I am otherwise bereft of offspring, I’ve decided to give them names. Diddleton Nimrod, the outgoing one, sits proudly directly between my eyes, while the more bashful Razmick Fernando is snuggled comfortably up against my left eyebrow. I’ll try to post the baby pictures tomorrow.

Christmas Geeks

2006-12-27T15:06:00.000-06:00

As I sit in the living room and look around at our Christmas decor, I can see that we are clearly not traditionalists. We’ve got Yoda on top of the tree and Slag has left the George W. Bush action figure that I got him for Xmas in a very rude and compromising position under the tree. There’s not an angel to be found. No candy canes. No nativity scenes. No Santas except for the dancing, singing Santa in boots and a cowboy hat that sings a reindeer song to the tune of the theme from Rawhide while twirling a rope. I don’t remember who, but I know that had to be a gift from someone in my family. Whenever one of my relatives sees something that might be cowboy or Texas-related, they buy it and send it to Slag, as if we don’t already have enough western-style stuff here in Texas. I will say that the cowboy Santa is one of the better cowboy-themed things we’ve received. It’s pretty funny, though the theme from Rawhide can get a little annoying after you’ve heard it for the 117th time.

The centerpiece to me, though, is the Simpson’s ™ Christmas Village. It’s more fun than all the other decorations combined. Here’s a look before it goes back into the closet until next year.

We are Christmas geeks. Happy Holidays!

Crossing

2006-12-24T06:32:00.000-06:00

Slag and I have always had very different biological clocks. He rarely goes to bed before 2am. I can fall alseep on the couch at 9:30pm. We do our best to keep them somewhat synchronized, but it’s always a battle.

Well, the inevitable has finally happened. After nearly ten years together, our International Date Lines have officially crossed. He came to bed this morning at 5am, about 15 minutes after I woke up for the day. Being the loving wife that I am, I did stay in bed and keep it warm until he was settled in, so we got about 3 minutes under the same covers.

I'm not sure what this is going to mean for the future. The big question now is, how long do I let him sleep? I'm suddenly feeling so powerful....

Narcotic Shopping

2006-12-21T15:58:00.000-06:00

I’ve never really liked shopping much. In fact, I hate almost everything about it. I hate dealing with the traffic. I hate driving around in a 10-acre mall parking lot looking for a space and getting stuck behind some doofus who stops and waits for a lady with 100 pounds of merchandise and two small children to strap into her minivan before she will vacate the spot that the doofus in front of me wants badly and is willing to stop traffic to get. I hate threading my way through hoards of lollygaggers who are strolling just a little slower than the rate an average iceberg advances. Two hours is my limit for any mall visit, and that gets pared down to one hour if it’s a Saturday afternoon and the mall is too crowded to walk normally. I can tell it’s time to go when I start visualizing myself screaming at and kicking the shins of the loitering people who are taking up space in my immediate vicinity and WILL NOT get out of my way. Generally, I shop as little as I can and still remain fed and clothed.

This has always been a baffling situation for my mother. My mother is a black-belt shopper. She has shopping strength and endurance unequaled in this hemisphere. She keeps a complete inventory of her closet in her head and always knows if she needs something or if those shoes will go with her blue dress. She can literally shop for 12 straight hours, stopping only for a coke and a pee break once in a while. I know it’s a bit of a disappointment to her that I don’t share her enthusiasm. She wistfully tells me stories of the shopping adventures she and her mother had, first hitting the downtown stores and staying until they closed, and then heading to the mall in the burbs and closing it down too. I know shopping is one of the highest and best forms of female bonding there is, but I just can’t do it. Somehow the shopping gene didn’t get passed on to me. I think she sometimes wonders if I’m really her child.

She and my step-father were here for a visit last weekend, and the two of us decided to go out to do a little shopping Saturday afternoon while the guys were off doing guy stuff. Yes, that would be the Saturday afternoon before the Christmas holiday begins. Probably the busiest shopping day in the whole year, with the exception of the Friday after Thanksgiving, a day during which I don’t leave the house for any reason. I was afraid of what might happen.

So. I took a deep breath and, as usual, vowed to try not to turn into an irritable, whiney 5-year-old at any point during the day, despite the fact that I already had a sinus headache and would be doing all the driving and the chances that I would be able keep the vow weren’t looking good. I knew I needed to take some preventative measures. First, I needed to address the thing that invariably causes the worst of the whining, sore feet. If my feet are OK, I can usually carry on. Once the feet get tired, I’m done and nothing can be done about it. With that in mind, I put on the most comfortable shoes that I own: my running shoes. I knew that this would make my running purist friends gasp in horror. How could I could I even consider shortening the life of my expensive running shoes by wearing them as street shoes?? Whatever. The shoes aren’t getting a whole lot of wear lately anyway, and desperate times call for desperate measures.

Second, the sinus headache had to be dealt with. A couple of ibuprophen? Won’t even knock a dent in it. Three ibuprophen? That would work for a little while, but I knew it wouldn’t last. Over-the-counter stuff would only push the headache back a little. I needed something that would blow it to smithereens. On a lark, I popped a Vicodin left over from my kidney stone travails last year. Yeah, I knew it was expired, but I was feeling reckless.

We loaded ourselves into the car and set out. Within half an hour, I had a light Vicodin buzz. It may be just a coincidence, but what followed was the thing I least expected, the thing that still leaves me dumbfounded. It was, without a doubt, the most pleasant afternoon of shopping in the history of my life ever. EVER.

It was a Saturday afternoon before Christmas and everything was totally fine! We circled parking lots in search of free spaces. We went in and out of stores crowded with dallying people. We stood in lines. We sampled “peppermint bark” and “warm mulled apple cider.” And I was fine! I hummed along with the incessant Christmas music. I was agreeable and charming. I cracked jokes while we waited in a checkout line about a mile long behind a woman who was certain that the $1.99 ceramic Santa Claus coffee mug she picked up had been marked 40% off and then decided she didn’t want it when she was proven mistaken. My feet didn’t hurt. My back didn’t hurt. I didn’t grumble. I had no urge to punt that obnoxious singing, dancing snowman into next week. I actually enjoyed myself. I think there may even have been a little female bonding. I still don’t believe it. And I’m totally happy that, of all people, my mother was the one there to share it with me. I wanted to go “See, see, I AM a normal human being sometimes. I really am!”

The only disturbing thing is that it took a narcotic to get me to behave like a normal human while shopping. I never understood the attraction of opiates until now. They really do make everything better, at least for a little while. I’m thinking it’s probably a good thing that I only have a couple pills left. But hey, I did have a headache.

Christmas Special

2006-12-12T21:03:00.000-06:00

I think I’ve finally found the origins of all my depression issues. In the last week, purely by coincidence, I’ve had a chance to see a couple of much-loved, animated Christmas specials from my childhood: “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” As a child, in the days before DVDs, or even VCRs, we carefully scheduled our evenings around the airing of the specials, so we wouldn’t miss a single second. Dinner was eaten, baths were taken, jammies were donned, all well in advance of the appointed time, so we could sit transfixed and unmoving, with our little mouths hanging open, watching Charlie Brown or the Grinch. Oh, and when we got the color TV, the whole experience was even more thrilling! Just imagine our delight at seeing the Grinch in his natural green fur.

Watching them as an adult, however, I’m mostly just appalled at the quantity of melancholy dished out by those two, short 30-minute shows aimed at small children. What were the creators thinking?

When I was a kid, I always felt really sad for Charlie Brown and the little Christmas tree he bought that nobody liked. Why did all the other kids have to be so mean about it? Yeah, yeah, I know they came around in the end. They decorated the tree and everybody sang and made up, but that was only about the last two minutes of the show. For the first 28 minutes of the show Charlie was all sad because nobody sent him any Christmas cards and nobody liked him and nobody liked his tree. Two minutes of group love just can’t make up for 28 minutes of gloom. And Charlie is clearly a classic depressive personality. Somebody get that kid some Prozac before he hangs himself.

And while we’re talking about sad things, why was the Grinch so mean to his little dog? His sweet, friendly little dog who only wanted to be loved?? Even today, as an adult, it caused me emotional distress when the Grinch got out the whip and made him pull that big, heavy sled. An old wound was ripped open, right there in the den. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it.

(Sob). Somebody get ME some Prozac too.

OK, enough with the sad stuff. What’s up with Cindy Lou Who? I never noticed until today that she doesn’t look like any of the other Whos. All the others look like the normal Dr. Seuss characters, you know, a freaky cross between a Care Bear and a Troll doll. Cindy Lou looks like a normal, albeit animated, human child, complete with a head full of blond hair and big blue eyes. Oh, except for the ANTENNA she has growing out of the top of her head. If the Grinch didn’t predate Star Trek, I’d swear she was an Andorian rip-off. What are the antenna for? Why don’t all the Whos have antenna?? I’m glad I didn’t notice that as a kid, or I might really have some issues.

Isn’t it amazing how 25 little years of cynicism can completely alter the whole Christmas special experience?

Out Cold

2006-12-07T21:53:00.000-06:00

My body has always responded poorly to prolonged contact with needles. By “responds poorly,” I mean I tend to pass out cold and create a scene. I don’t know why. I’m not afraid of needles particularly. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like getting stuck any more than the next person, but the thought of it doesn’t make me tremble and sweat or anything. It’s like my body just reacts however it wants, without consulting me. More than anything it just pisses me off. I’m not into dramatic scenes. I do not want to get “the vapors” and swoon in public like Scarlett O’Hara. I don’t have a delicate constitution. I don’t, dammit.

I’m usually fine with having a needle in my arm for the normal amount of time it takes to draw a vial or two of blood. I don’t look and I concentrate on just breathing and everyone gets through it without incident. Anything longer than that, and the odds that I’m going to lose consciousness increase dramatically. I’ve passed out a couple of times getting blood drawn. The first time it happened while an inexperienced phlebotomist dug around in my arm with a needle for an extended period of time, looking for a vein. The second time I keeled over after a vein couldn’t be located in one arm and I had to be stuck a second time in the other arm. In both cases, I tried to let the person working on me know that something was amiss, but I don’t know if I got anything more than a mumble out before sliding to the floor.

Then there’s the issue of donating blood. Hard as it may be to believe for anyone who knows me now, for the first 25 or so years of my life, I didn’t weigh enough to give blood. I lived on chocolate and Frosted Mini-Wheats and my weight hovered right around 100 pounds, more if I was in an emotionally stable phase, and less if I wasn’t. So, I was really excited when I finally met the minimum weight requirement and got to participate in the blood drives at work.

The first time I gave blood, everything seemed fine. I gave my pint and was relaxing with an Oreo and a cup of juice with all the other blood-givers. The next thing I know, I’m waking up on the floor with about 5 heads in my field of vision. People were shaking me and putting cold cloths on my forehead and there was quite a display. Thankfully somebody grabbed the cup of juice out of my hand before I hit the floor. No juice was spilled.

The second time, I went out just after the needle had been removed from my arm, while I was still in the recliner chair. This time the scene wasn’t quite as big because I didn’t collapse onto the floor, but it still caused some scurrying. After I passed out the third time, I mentioned to one of the nurse-type people that I had passed out every time I had given blood and was wondering why that was.

She patted me on the arm and said, “Honey, your heart’s in the right place, but maybe you shouldn’t try to do this anymore.”

The subtext: “Please stop coming down here and causing trouble for us.”

My blood-giving ended then and there.

And that brings us to today. Today I went to the dentist to get a couple of old fillings replaced. One of them has been causing me some pain and the dentist suggested replacing both of them because they’re right next to each other and about the same age. Well, you know what they do before they drill your teeth, right? They give you a shot of Novocain. A shot.

So you know where this is going, don’t you? That’s right. I passed out cold, right there in the dentist’s chair, after getting a shot of Novocain. I knew it was coming, and I know I told the assistant person that I was feeling woozy. I woke up with a blood pressure cuff on my arm and an oxygen mask on my face and at least three heads hovering above me. Apparently this happens sometimes, which is why they were so prepared. Who knew that a dentist needed to keep a blood pressure cuff handy? I didn’t until today. I’ve gotten plenty of Novocain shots before for dental work, but I’ve never lost consciousness over it until today. Apparently I’m becoming more sensitive in my old age. By the time I’m 60 I’ll probably faint at the sight of nail clippers or a tongue depressor.

Anyway, after about 20 minutes I felt normal again, and we went ahead with the filling replacement. I’ll have to say that the new fillings look pretty good. The old fillings were silver, but the new ones are tooth-colored and don’t even look fillings. All in all, I’m satisfied. But a little embarrassed. Why does everything have to be so complicated? Sigh.

Yoda Has Arrived

2006-12-04T08:59:00.000-06:00

Last night Slag and I hauled the fake Christmas tree out of the attic, put it together and strung lights on it without any cross words passing between us! Woohoo! It’s the start to a successful Christmas season.

We were pooped after the lights, so the decorations will have to wait until tonight. We had to at least put Yoda in his place of honor at the top of the tree, though. Plus, as you can see, he’s pretty integrated with the light installation.

--------------------------- photo courtesy of Slag

Yoda has been with us since our first Christmas together, living in sin. We spent an entire Saturday driving around town, looking for something fun to top our tree. Slag was hoping for some sort of Clash-of-the-Titans-ish action figure that we could make into a Zeus, but we never found anything that was big enough. I was thinking that Elvis would be cool, but the only Elvis figures we found were multi-hundred dollar Limited Edition type things that neither of us wanted to invest in. At the end of the day, we ended up in a local head shop that carries lots of cool toys, and there we saw the perfect thing: a rubber Yoda hand-puppet. He was the correct size and he fit down on top of the tree like he was made for it. After all these years, he still smells like the funky incense they burn in the store.

Welcome back Yoda!

“When 900 years you reach, look as good, you will not.”

A Shock

2006-11-30T15:54:00.000-06:00

Yesterday's high temperature: 80 degrees Fahrenheit (26.7 Celsius)

Today's high temperature: 38 degrees Fahrenheit (3.3 Celsius), with wind chill 24 degrees (-4.4 Celsius)

Just about every living thing in the area is really confused right now, including me. It's not very often that you need the air conditioning and the furnace within a 12 hour span.

I Don't Know

2006-11-28T18:47:00.000-06:00

My officemate was out sick today, which wouldn’t normally be a problem for me. It’s nice actually. If she’s sick, I prefer that she stay at home and not infect me with whatever pestilence she may be carrying. I happily do the same for her. We cooperate like that. Plus I can eat all the Hershey’s miniatures I want without wondering if there’s someone behind me secretly keeping count.

The problem is that everyone else in the place seems to be under the impression that I am her personal assistant. Every doofus who appears in our office looking for her thinks that I care that he can’t find her. Invariably, he’ll walk in, see her empty chair, and then turn to stare at me expectantly, waiting for me to take off my headphones and provide an explanation for this baffling situation that he is experiencing. She isn’t at her desk. What will he do now?

Usually the stare is accompanied by the pointless query “Is she here?”

Is that a rhetorical question? Do you think she’s hiding under her desk? I don’t think she is, but why don’t you go ahead and look, just to make sure. Check out the file cabinet too. While you’re at it, look under my desk. Maybe she crawled into the AC vent in the ceiling? That’s definitely where I would hide. Did you find her? No? Then I guess the answer to your question, which you interrupted both my train of thought AND a great song to ask, is no. No, she is not. Definitely not here. There is an obvious lack of her presence here, in this place, at this time. She’s not here.

That’s what I wanted to say, but no, I was nice, to each and every one the doofuses (doofi?), even though they didn’t deserve it.

“No, she’s out sick today.”

“OK, thanks” and a quick exit is the appropriate and expected response here. There’s really nothing else to say, is there? “Out sick” is pretty much a complete description of her whereabouts. She may or may not be stoned on Nyquil and sleeping on the couch while an episode of Oprah plays in the background, but for our purposes here, “sick” is all the information we need. End of discussion.

I got that appropriate and expected response from all but one doofus. One was not satisfied with “out sick.” He wanted more.

“Do you know when she’ll be back?”

Do I know when she’ll be back? Do I, a person with no medical training whatsoever, know when a sick person will feel well enough to come back to work? Do I?? Sorry dude, I wish I did. If I had those kinds of unassisted soothsaying abilities, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you. I’d have my own TV show. Unfortunately, I don’t have a functional crystal ball either, and I left my Tarot cards at home. Oh, wait! I saw a Magic 8 Ball on Mary’s desk yesterday. Let’s go see if she’ll let us borrow it. Maybe the 8 Ball will know!

OK, I didn’t say any of that either, but I wanted to. Instead I repeated the only information that I had.

“No, I don’t know. She’s out sick,” said this time in a flat tone and with a slightly sideways glance that silently said, “That was the dumbest question I’ve ever heard. Get out of my sight.”

And then I put my headphones back on. I think he left after that. I refuse to feel guilty about it, because anyone dumb enough to ask that question probably wouldn’t be able to pick up on subtle voice inflections and facial expressions anyway, and wouldn’t know that I had silently told him to leave my presence.

It’s either that, or he just thinks I’m a bitch. Either way.

Successful Thanking

2006-11-27T16:52:00.000-06:00

I’ve completed yet another Thanksgiving holiday and made it successfully through all the seven stages of giving thanks. The stages are:

1. Woohoo! A week away from the office to do whatever I want! (This is the shortest stage. It lasts, at most, 3 hours.)

2. Frenzied Preparation: Realizing that I don’t get to do whatever I want for the whole week. Shoving a little old lady at the grocery store for that last can of jellied cranberry sauce. Watching Slag cook. Cleaning the house so friends and relatives will not see that we are slovenly. Printing out maps for any required traveling.

3. Watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade

4. Gluttony

5. Self-loathing and more pie

6. Feeble attempts at exercise and resolving not to eat like a pig throughout the rest of the holiday season, followed by more pie

7. Lethargy

Last night, just when I thought I was going to miss the final stage, lethargy arrived. Slag and I both nodded off on the couch about 8:15pm, right in the middle of a TiVo’d episode of The Daily Show. I steadfastly remained on the couch, determined to make it until closer to 9pm before giving up and going to bed. It feels wrong to go to bed before 9pm if you’re older than 5 and younger than 80.

I just dozed on and off, but Slag went sound asleep. That was risky for him, because it meant I had a perfectly legitimate reason to wake him up. I usually wake him by sticking my fingers in his ears, tickling his nose, pulling the covers off him, or prying open one of his eyes with my thumb and forefinger. If I’m feeling really patient, I stick my face about half an inch from his face and stare until he wakes up. Don’t ask me how it works, but it does. Really.

I didn’t have the energy to be annoying last night, so I just jostled him awake and we dragged ourselves upstairs. We were both out cold by 9:15pm. I think we’ve had all the thanking we can handle until next year.

Nothing in Particular

2006-11-22T10:45:00.000-06:00

I’m experiencing a serious lack of inspiration, and I’m blaming it on the holiday “grumpies.” Yes, the holidays are upon us, bringing all the accompanying guilt, stress, and subconscious longing for the Hallmark Christmas Special family that never was. Slag and I both become very thin-skinned this time of the year, resulting in conversations like the following:

Slag: “Honey, could you dice those potatoes a little smaller?”

Me: “Did you just call me a stupid bitch??”

So far, we have successfully defused a couple of squabbles before they could mature into full blown altercations of catastrophic proportions. Every year we get a little better at recognizing a stupid blow-up over nothing for what it is and nipping it in the bud before somebody says something stupid. By the time we’re in our 80’s, I predict we’ll be able to behave normally throughout November and December. God, I’m so happy I’m married to a real adult and not a child in an adult’s body.

Now I need to revisit the list of things that I hate. That will make me feel better. Besides, I think the last couple of items weren’t specifically labeled as list members, but they should be there nonetheless.

The current list of things I hate:

1. Hummers
2. August in Texas
3. yogurt
4. Ford Motor Company
5. Bill O’Reilly
6. “compact only” parking spaces
7. control top pantyhose
8. high-protein “nutrition” bars

Stay tuned for further updates….

Bleah

2006-11-15T22:39:00.000-06:00

At my last checkup, my doctor and I discussed my (alleged) chocolate addiction. She mentioned that I might want to cut down a little. I told her that I could stop any time I wanted to, but I didn’t want to right now. Then I whipped out a Reese’s peanut butter cup and ate it right there, just to prove my point.

So she tried another approach. She mentioned that I might try those high-protein “nutrition” bars. She thought they might be able to satisfy my need for chocolate without all the sugar and fat blah blah blah stuff about healthy eating here blah blah protein is digested slower blah blah blah blood sugar yadda yadda yadda I’m getting to that age blah blah blah.

Fine, I agreed to give them a try. I was skeptical, but what the heck. They’re covered in chocolate, so they can’t be terrible. I picked up a couple the next time I was at the grocery store. My expectations were raised a little higher when I discovered that a “nutrition” bar cost twice as much as a regular candy bar. I mean, if they’re charging a dollar for each of these things, the bars had better moderate my blood sugar AND taste good.

When I opened the first one, there was a distinct aroma of cat food, with subtle hints of hamster food pellets. This did not bode well. I know cat food and hamster pellets are probably nutritious and all. I suppose a person could eat cat food and get some sustenance. But why? Aside from a drunken dare, there is simply no reason to do that. There’s plenty of people food available. Plenty.

Whatever. I paid a dollar for the stupid thing and I was going to at least try it. Two chews later and it became clear that it wasn’t cat food or hamster pellets. No, I had paid a dollar for a freaking chocolate-covered Milkbone™ dog biscuit!

These things must be manufactured by Purina out of dog food that’s too old to sell for dogs. They probably just throw all the expired kibble into a big vat, mix it up with some sort of solvent, and extrude “nutrition” bars. A light coating chocolate-flavored paraffin and voila: pricey nutrition bars suitable for consumption by human beings.

I checked the ingredients. The first listed was “soy protein nuggets.” What the hell is a soy protein nugget?? I’ll tell you what it is, it’s dog food, that’s what! I just paid a dollar for a dog biscuit and then actually ate some of it! I’m totally appalled. Are there people who regularly buy these things and then actually eat them, like more than once? Gawd, what are we turning into? Is there anything we consumers won’t scarf down if exposed to enough slick ads promising us that said product will make us healthy and thin? Anything at all??

People eating dog food has got to be one of the signs that the Apocalypse is near. Gah, I’m still gagging just thinking about that chocolate-covered abomination. I think the list of “Things I Hate” just got a little longer.

What Would Miss Manners Say?

2006-11-12T21:14:00.000-06:00

It’s been a busy weekend. Slag’s grandmother passed away last week and her funeral was yesterday in a small town about two hours away. I didn’t know her well. I’d only met her a few times, and long after her hearing loss and frailty made it difficult to get to know her as a person. From the stories I’ve heard though, she was quite a pistol in her younger years. Slag says she told him the first dirty joke he ever heard. She sounds like a pretty cool Grandma to me.

Funerals are always sad to me, but this one wasn’t as sad as many. She lived a long, healthy life. She died at age 89, peacefully and without pain, with her daughter holding her hand. I couldn’t hope for anything better for anyone. Slag’s Mom arranged a lovely funeral and all the family were there. I got to meet some previously unmet relatives. The weather was sunny and clear. Everything went off without a hitch. All in all, it was a very nice day.

Except for one thing. The most vile, insidious contraption ever invented by modern man, a thing so horrible that I can’t imagine why we tolerate its existence. It is ….the control top pantyhose.

If you’ve ever worn them, I know you will agree with me. Control top pantyhose are the most god-awful garment ever invented. Oh, they’re almost bearable while standing up, but that’s just a ruse. In the upright position they substantially reduce the blood flow to the lower half of the body, but not enough to cause permanent injury.

It’s the sitting position where they reveal their true character. They just don’t know how to give a little. They won’t compromise. No, they retain their control no matter what. Therefore, in the sitting position, the waistband effectively turns the normal female body into two sausage-like segments, the lower sausage being completely contained within the legs and feet of the hose while the upper sausage spills out over the waistband with wild abandon. Logically, I should try to spend as much time standing as possible. Sitting hurts, so don’t sit.

That makes perfect sense except for one thing. Almost any outfit that requires control top pantyhose will also need shoes with heels to avoid looking frumpish. I haven’t yet reached the age where I don’t care if I look frumpish, so my poor feet get crammed into non-sensible shoes every time the pantyhose come out. For me, the heels are never extremely high, but they’re high enough to force all the blood out of my toes and cause my feet to go numb after about 15 minutes of standing. I end up teetering around the room, trying not to fall off my shoes, while at the same time trying to look elegant and fashionable. And that’s really hard if you can’t feel your feet.

So there you can see the dilemma. Yesterday, I tried to achieve a happy medium. I’d sit for a while and then stand for a while and then walk around for a while, trying to keep the blood circulating through the various parts of my lower body so as to avoid a case of gangrene that might require amputation of a toe or a foot.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking. “Stop whining and just wear the pantyhose without the control top,” you’d say. “It couldn’t possibly make that much difference.”

Yeah, well, maybe twenty years ago it didn’t make much difference on my 21-year-old, size-5 butt. But on my 41-year-old, slightly-larger-sized butt, it does make a difference. A substantial difference. The control top is not optional. And that’s all I’m going to say about that. Let us never speak of this again.

So I made it all the way through the funeral service without passing out from lack of blood flow or breaking an ankle. I was proud of myself, a little cocky even. Wearing something besides stone-washed denim didn’t have to be so traumatic, did it? Maybe I was turning over a new leaf or something. Maybe I could be fashionable and elegant more often. Maybe I could wear a skirt to work once in a while. Yeah, maybe I could.

But then we got into the Tahoe for the drive to the cemetery, and it was all over. I couldn’t take it anymore. My jeans were right there in the back seat within arms reach, and I broke down. The comfort of all that cotton was just too tempting. I had to have that soft denim against my flesh RIGHT NOW. I totally caved.

I grabbed the jeans and shucked the shoes, the skirt and the hose right there in the funeral procession, with Slag asking incredulously “What are you doing??” as if it weren’t completely obvious. Clearly, I was getting mostly naked in a funeral procession. Was that inappropriate? I wonder what Miss Manners would say. Dunno, but I bet Slag’s grandma wouldn’t have minded a bit.

A Threat

2006-11-07T18:18:00.000-06:00

Last week I passed a coworker in the hallway at work. We used to work in the same group but don’t anymore, so I hadn’t seen her for a while. I noticed she had lost a lot of weight, and, assuming she had been dieting successfully, mentioned that she looked skinny. She stopped to chat and fill me in on the details. I expected her to tell me that she’d started a new exercise program or was doing one of those low-carb diets. But no. The reason she had lost so much weight recently was that her husband of nearly thirty years had, unbeknownst to her, met someone else and now, beknownst to her, wanted a divorce.

Oooooh.

Crap, I always manage to blunder into these things with my little witty quips. What is the appropriate response? I usually end up gaping like a fish, with nothing actually coming out of my mouth, or saying something complete stupid and insensitive.

I do that because hearing stuff like this always makes me feel sick in the pit of my stomach. I imagine myself in the other person’s place, and the picture never comes out very nice. If my husband of thirty years had recently dropped a divorce bomb on me, things would be very bad. I don’t mean to imply that I'd collapse into a pile of quivering flesh and never arise again. OK, I definitely would collapse into a pile of quivering flesh, but I'd eventually get over it and carry on with life. It would still suck big donkey balls, though, and seeing it happen to someone you know makes it a lot harder to pretend that bad things like that only happen to guests on “The Jerry Springer Show."

In my younger days I would have just swallowed my panic at the thought of being in her shoes and gone on with my day. Nowadays, I’m a lot more proactive. Within a few hours of hearing her story, I had snuck up on Slag, climbed onto his shoulders, subdued him in a headlock and informed him that if he ever thought about leaving me for another woman after multiple decades of marriage, I would geld him on the spot. I would then put his testicles in a jar of formaldehyde and display them in the lighted curio cabinet next to my favorite crystal martini glass. And then I made him say “Calf rope.”

He wisely submitted to my demands. Actually, I think his response was something like “Are you completely loony?”

Why, yes I am, as a matter of fact. It’s a good thing he likes me that way.

And my response to my friend? I told her that if she ever felt like kicking his ass, I’d be happy to help her. Thankfully, she laughed.

Enough

2006-11-05T14:43:00.000-06:00

I have sooo had enough of the pre-election media blitz, with all the accompanying jabs, sucker punches, taunts, sneers, insults, half-truths and no-truths from the candidates and their supporters. I feel like I've spent the last month listening to bickering children who believe I have the mental capacity of an earthworm.

I'm not taking any political positions here. I acknowledge that sane, rational people with good intentions frequently have differing opinions. But I have one request of the voters out there. No, I'm begging. Please please please, don't get any of your information about any given candidate from his opponent or someone who blatantly supports his opponent. The information you'll get from these people is likely inaccurate.

Also, to the candidates out there, we really don't need to hear about how you support any of the following. Everybody supports these things. You're just wasting air.

- Lower taxes
- Good schools
- Better pay for teachers
- Eliminating waste in government
- Clean air and water
- Keeping sexual predators away from our children
- Freedom

Thanks.

Cubeification Phase 1: Farewell Window Office

2006-11-01T21:32:00.000-06:00

The cubeification process has begun at my place of employment. Phase 1 is nearly complete. During Phase 1 all of us who previously occupied upstairs window offices move down into the windowless dungeon of the first floor. The offices upstairs are to be razed and replaced with cubes. Then it’s on to Phase 2, when everyone will move from the windowless dungeon back upstairs into a human Habitrail, especially constructed just for us. I’m hoping I get one of these:

Yesterday was my last day in a window office. My beloved window office. That I have occupied for 16.5 years. That’s 16 and one half YEARS, people. I am traumatized. For 16.5 years, I’ve had a lovely view of the air conditioning units and the building where they store the industrial lawnmower. Beyond that used to be a field of cows, but now it’s just another suburban housing development. At first I resented the houses. I missed the cows, but I slowly came to accept and then enjoy the comings and goings that the neighborhood brought into view.

But that’s all gone now. There will be no more watching the garbage truck pick up trash on Tuesdays, no more catching sight of the maintenance guy driving the lawnmower at top speed into the storage building and wondering if he’ll be able to stop before he hits the far wall. I’ll never again see that exciting plume of black smoke that erupts from the generator behind the AC units whenever there’s a power outage. There won’t be anymore birds attempting to assault their own reflections in the window glass and scaring the crap out of me. I may as well just kill myself now.

Today was my first full day in the new, windowless, closet-like cavity that some are calling an “office.” It’s more like a dank, airless cell. How can people possibly be productive under these conditions?? I’m certain that the lack of natural sunlight is going throw me into an acute episode of seasonal affective disorder or could possibly result in a serious vitamin D deficiency.

I tell you one thing, if I end up with a case of rickets, someone is going to hear from my attorney.