After Christmas

Well, what a week. Christmas has come and gone. On Tuesday I did a little too much, and on Wednesday I paid for it with more pain than I’d had in several days. Since my #2 nephew’s flight home from Alaska got totally screwed up by the storms around Seattle, our family Christmas got moved from Thursday to Friday. I had all day Thursday to just play on the computer and watch tv. Yeah, I needed a day with no times that I was required to be anywhere! It did make for a bit of a lonely day though. I’ve gotten pretty accustomed to spending Christmas out west with my BFF & her kids. While the oldest has been humoring us for several years with the whole Santa thing, but we did get the magic back when the baby came. I did miss, terribly the look on their faces when they see what Santa left. So yesterday I baked cookies and headed to my sister’s house around 1:30 with cookies and chex mix on hand, in addition to the gifts for the kids. It was great to see #2, who, as it turns out, had been delayed YET AGAIN, and had only arrived at 1:15 that afternoon. Now, see, I figure that’s what he gets for moving to Alaska and wanting to live there in the winter… you have to expect delays when it’s that cold outside! My sister cooked a rib roast, and my brother-in-law made the most awesome mashed potatoes using ranch dip mix, in addition to sour cream, bacon bits & chives YUMMMMY. In all honesty, today has been the day I’ve been looking forward to, for a couple of reasons, but mostly because it marked the end of a week that had some of my favorite usual activities unavailable to me, through no control of mine. Yeah, silly me, I kinda thought it might actually end up the way that it should, but alas it didn’t, and I guess I just have to keep being patient. Or else give up completely, and I’m just not quite ready to do that yet, so I’ll keep on with my masochistic ways, I suppose.

5 days later

I’m BAAACK! Nope, I didn’t fall of the end of the world. This is likely to be a long one, so go ahead and take your potty break now, grab your snack, and fix a drink to make yourself comfortable. Last Tuesday I had my surgery, and I gotta tell you, I was scared spitless going in! It was less than freezing when we got up and left my friends’ house at 4FREAKING30 in the morning to head for the surgery center. I checked in and they took me back to pre-op at about 5:45. I was scheduled to be in the OR at 7, but it was almost 7:45 when they came and took me in there, which, of course, had me frustrated beyond belief! This was my 3rd, I think, major surgery. The other 2 occurred when I was 3 & 4, so I have no memory of either of them. I remember crying and telling the nurse that I was about to DIE to go to the bathroom, but when we got there, yeah, nothing happened. I was in a private room with my friends sitting with me around noon-ish, I think. I sort of went back and forth between snoozing, and whining about needing to pee, and random goofy conversation with my friends. Finally about 3:30 I had peed enough to make the nurse happy, and they let me leave. It took 3 of us to get me dressed again, and DAMN it was cold when I got outside, but I was so happy to be able to be on my way home to my cats! I got to talk to the people I most wanted to before I went to bed that night, and my sister came by with some soup. Getting up and down in the night was kind of a trick, as I wasn’t moving all that quickly, and I was on GOOOD drugs! Fortunately, the cats behaved and I didn’t have to fight with them to keep them from tromping across incisions! Wednesday, I decided to move from the bed to the couch in the media room, because I was TIRED of being in a bed! I fixed my little nest, with a big ole glass of water, a bit of dr pepper, my bottle of pain meds, and my laptop. I don’t even remember how many emails I had when I logged in, but I waded through some of them before I took a break and laid down on the couch for a little nap with my Bowbitsy up near my head. One of my friends came by after she’d picked up the kids from school to get a grocery list I’d made. It’s just by chance that she lives about 5 minutes from me, but I was totally astounded when the kids asked if they could stay with me while she went to the grocery store for me. UMM, let me think about this for a second. 1. I had major surgery yesterday, 2. You have spent the entire 5 minutes you’ve been in my house rushing around trying to hunt down my cats despite being told that they are hiding, 3. You have a tendency to do whatever you please despite being asked or told not to do something, and did I mention I just had major surgery? Yeah, I told them that I had just taken another pain pill and needed to lie down so they couldn’t stay. OMG, holy cow, when they came back, they again ran through the house looking for the cats. Sleeping that night was a little easier, and since I had gotten out the wedge pillow, getting up and down in the night was a whole lot easier. Thursday I was moving a little better, and able to go longer between pain pills, but Helen’s car died once she got to work that morning, so that started a whole new drama about what to do. In the end, she found a ride home that night, and to/from Friday as well, with a plan to go look for one to buy on Saturday. Friday morning, I hit 72 hours past surgery, and thus was allowed to start driving. YAY! I had serious cabin fever and wanted the hell out of the house. So I got myself dressed in a shirt, and a pair of pajama capri’s which, on my short little legs, are not capris, but rather a lovely pair of highwaters! My jeans still didn’t fit, and even if they had, I’m thinkin’ the pressure of the button on my incision was really a bad idea, and since I don’t have any sweats anymore, a trip to Wal-Mart was in order. I made it to Hobby Lobby for some ornaments and gift wrap, and then to Wal-mart for some pants that wouldn’t bind or cause problems with my incisions, so I wouldn’t have to run around town in my highwaters or my Dr Pepper pajama pants until I can wear my jeans again. I lasted about 2 hours before my body decided it was time for another pain pill and a nap. I spent a couple of hours sleeping on the couch before I headed out for a few more errands. Once Helen got home, we went over to the mall to pick up a few items. Saturday morning I had to run to check the PO Box, since I hadn’t been there since the previous Saturday, and I needed to mail Darla’s box. Unfortunately, there was a HUGE line, and only 1 person working the counter. Now, WTF is up with that? It’s the Saturday before Christmas, and the PO only has 1 person working? Yeah, well, I knew that I could always go to the airport PO and mail the box today, once I actually had a box to put the stuff in. Lunch was good, and yielded prezzies from Capt, Isa and the cats! I should have brought at least the cats’ stocking in, and given them some of their treats, but that hasn’t happened yet either. I have a fabulous pink piggy moshy pillow! We spent a couple of hours at the car place trying to get Helen into a car, but eventually my body started to protest, and I had to head home, and just trust that Helen would manage. By the time I left for a sorority party that night, I had no idea what was up, but went on the assumption that she either had something, or someone to bring her home. When I got home from the party, which, fortunately, one of my sorority sisters had provided me transportation, so I could take a pain pill before we left the party and I could be ready for bed when I got home, there was a car in the driveway in her spot, so obviously things went well. This morning’s jaunt to church came as a surprise to many folks who thought I would be down for longer than what I have been. I guess that’s the beauty of laproscopic surgery, I’m back to a lot of my regular activities in less than 6 weeks. I took Erin & hers their prezzies after lunch, boxed and mailed Darla’s stuff, and then napped for a little while until I needed to get up and go hang with the youth at church this evening and watch Elf. I’d have to say, that while I do get a bit crabby when it’s time to have another pain pill, I can spend time in traffic without being a total lunatic most of the time, and I don’t feel a constant need to rip someone’s head off! This is a HUGE improvement over my moods over the last several months! Yep, this surgery is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made! A think it’s time for bed.

Frustration Mounts

So, here I am, 5 days until I have the surgery I've wanted for about 5 years now. My doctor told me back in the summer that I could have it, and I purposely scheduled it for as close to Christmas as possible, simply because it's not usually a super-busy time at work, and we are closed for 2.5 days the week of Christmas, and 2.5 days the week of New Years, so I won't have to use too much vacation time. Last week I saw my gynecologist for my pre-op appointment, and to get my paperwork to take to the surgical center for the pre-admission work up. I also called the surgical center, to see if there was a specific time to come in and do the pre-admission and fork over my share of the cost. Nope, just come on in anytime during business hours. So, this afternoon, I left work at 2:30 to go over there. I walked in at 3 (they close at 5), and was told that they only do pre-admission between 8 & 2 p.m. WTF??? The person I talked to last week couldn't have told me that? Yeah, never mind that I have about a thousand things to get done before I leave at the end of the day on Monday afternoon, and I really can't afford the time away from the office! So now I'm going to have to go over there tomorrow, probably during my lunch break. I'll just have to get out of the house a little earlier in the morning and get more done before the phone starts ringing at 7. (well, actually, it sometimes starts ringing before 7, but what the hell, who actually conducts business before 7 a.m.??? Yeah, leave me a message because I'm sure not stopping what I'm in early to do, specifically to have time to get it done before the phone starts ringing to answer your call. I had a raging headache before I even left the office, and the crazies on the road made it worse, and coupled with the fact that apparently my uterus has found out it's being evicted and is going to raise a ruckus as much as possible, so I'm cramping a mere week after my last period ended. Yeah, I'm quite happy to be rid of that particular little bit of BS every month! It seems that I get crabbier and bitchier every day, and at this point, I suspect that, despite the fact that I have wanted this for a very long time, and am looking forward to not having the periods and the drama that goes along with them, I am getting nervous about it. The last time I had major surgery (I'm not counting my Lasik 6 years ago, because, well, I was awake, and I felt no pain), I was 4 years old, and having a plate put in to replace a shattered piece of my skull. Ok, yeah, laugh if you want, I am drain-bamaged, I admit it, because about a teaspoon of brain matter was removed several months earlier when the skull fracture happened. I'm ok with it, I have brain damage and I'm weird, what's your excuse for your weirdness? HMMM?? At any rate, yeah, I'm scared, because I've not been anesthetized in over 35 years. I have every faith in my doctor, and in my support system in general, but y'know, it's still a scary thought.

Hump Day

Well, it's Wednesday again, the middle of the week, and only 7 more days that I'll be able to reproduce, thank heavens! Last night, at a meeting, one of my sorority sisters, who has clearly not been paying attention over the last 3 years when I have said repeatedly "I like children, OTHER PEOPLE'S children, that I can play with and have fun with, then give back when I'm done!" looked at me, in all seriousness, and said "And you are really ok with, you know, not having any children?" I just looked at her, trying not to look too dumbfounded. I mean, not only have I repeatedly said that I don't want children of my own, that I don't have the patience, that the 10 days I spent with newborn Nicholas 2 years ago now was plenty of newborn for me, and just last night I said at least 3 times before she asked the question "by this time next week, I will be uterus-free!!!" Some people just don't listen! Good news that I got today is that The Rogues will be playing North Texas Irish Festival in March. This makes me very happy, especially in light of the fact that they got scratched from the location I was planning to see them in February, since the venue double booked it. I have no idea why the Scottish band is playing the Irish festival, but frankly, who the hell cares, it's live pipes a month earlier than I usually get them, so I'm good with it! My rotten little calico cat is wandering around the house wailing, for no apparent reason, anybody want a cat? I'm working on a list of things I need to get work on this next year, including

• 1. getting my storage room sorted out, so it can be used for its intended purpose: GARB CLOSET. When I moved into this house in the Spring, there were a BUNCH of boxes that I just couldn't sort out immediately, and they got put into the spare room. Sure there is garb in there, but it's not in the closet, its in totes. some of it will remain it totes, but other pieces I think would be better stored hanging.
• 2. I also need to do a little more writing. What I'm going to write, I don't know, but there are several things rolling around in my head, screaming to get out.
• 3. I've also got to get some other stuff organized so that maybe my house will be able to stay reasonably organized and not get to the point that it makes me want to scream in frustration.
• 4. I have sewing to get done before faire: wrap pants for the boys and a couple of shirts for them. I can't guarantee that I'll get the shirts done, they may be more trouble than I'm comfortable with, but the wrap pants should be easy enough, since I have a pair I can use for a pattern.

Friday night should be good, I'm taking my youngest (he's 18 now) nephew and my only niece out shopping for their Christmas gifts. I don't spend nearly enough time with them, and I truly enjoy the 2 of them, and their older brother, who has other plans for that evening already. Which reminds me, I need to check the website of the shopping center and see what all is there now.

Saturday is Drink Like a Pirate Day, and a bunch of us are getting together at TGI Friday's in Ft. Worth to celebrate. It's a great chance to hang with friends and a fabulous excuse to wear garb somewhere besides faire!

Off to bed, hopefully to sleep through the night, and get more than about 5 hours straight!

Friday's adventure.

Ok, yeah, I should have written a little each night, but since I was offline all weekend, it wouldn’t have gotten posted anyway, so here we go. Friday I left for the airport around 2-ish, because I had a couple of stops I needed to make on my way over. First stop was this great little shoe store because Dawn, whose blog I follow, convinced me that I NEED a pair of these THAT DAY. Unfortunately since my EU shoe size is like 37/38, and not 41 or bigger (that’s 10-10.5 US), yeah, I was SOL. I did, however go ahead and buy a pair that are not limited edition or with a really cool print. Second stop was at Chase to make my car payment. Now, my November payment was about 2 weeks late, but my December payment was like 3 weeks early. I had 2 checks written. Each had my loan number on them, and either November or December payment written on them, along with “apply overage to principal”. They were not in the same amount, because I’m paying some extra in an effort to pay it off sooner. So the drive thru teller gets them, and I guess does some weird voodoo ritual with them for 8 minutes or so before the following conversation ensues: Her: “ma’am, are these payments?” Me: “yes, my account number is on there, in the memo section.” Her: “ok, and you want to apply the overage to the principal?” Me: *SIGH* “yes.” Her: “ok, how much is the overage?” (clearly it was too hard for the BANK employee to look in her handydandy computer and see how much my payment is supposed to be, then deduct that from the amount of the check and apply the difference to the principal) Me: “I don’t know, because I haven’t gotten this month’s bill in the mail, and I don’t have last month’s with me.” (Ok, since they are idiots and usually apply at least part of the overage to the NEXT PAYMENT DUE, instead of to the principal, my payment amounts change my several dollars every month) Her: “Well, I’m going to send you out a form to fill out with the amounts and then I can apply it properly.” WTF??? I’ve just told you I DON’T KNOW HOW MUCH IS OVERAGE! UGH! In the end, I estimated , based on what I think was roughly the payment due on the last bill I saw (November’s), how much my payment was and how much was overage for each check. Next stop, Love Field, for my 5:30 flight to Hobby Airport. I get all checked in, like an hour and a half early, in the hopes of getting on an earlier flight as stand-by. Yeah, the upgrade to full fare for the 1 flight cost almost what my round-trip ticket cost when I bought it over a month ago! AND then my flight was delayed. *sigh* We were scheduled to depart at 5:30, and at 5:32 the inbound flight on our plane pulled up to the gate to unload. I think we finally took off right about 6:47. The flight was uneventful, and we made it to Houston, at which point I realized that I’d left my full itinerary at home, so I had to go get in line in order to get a copy of it from an agent. I had to have a copy of it to rent my car. I got to the rental car location, got processed, and by now it’s close to 8, and I was supposed to be in Galveston, at the restaurant for dinner at 7:30. I’m walking out the door with the guy, who says to me “you’ve reserved an economy, what would you like to drive today?” I looked at him and said, “you know, NOTHING has gone right since I left work this afternoon, I should have been in Galveston ½ hour ago, and I don’t much care what I’m driving, so long as I’m driving SOMETHING.” God bless him, he looked at me, and the cars that were available and said “how about a free upgrade to this Nissan Rogue?” Well, now, I may do some crazy things, and I may be weird, but I’m not an idiot, so of course I took him up on the free upgrade. Brand new car, had like 241 miles on it when I hit the road. OMG, if I was in the market for a new car, I would SO look at one! It is spacious inside, more in the passenger area than my Escape is, though you give up a little of the cargo space. It drives beautifully, and virtually no road noise as I was pushing 80 mph to get to Galveston before dinner was done! In the end, I’d had them order for me, and I walked in literally seconds after they put my plate on the table! I was quite definitely ready to be in for the night by the time we got to the house a little after 9! I’ll eventually get photos uploaded and included in the post, but for now, I’ll stop blathering one and actually do a little work.

FINALLY

I’m in a good place, I think, finally. The last few weeks have been dramatic and trying for me, and I’ve been rather a whiny brat, I know. And those of you who have put up with my whiny, ranting, frustrated or just plain down in the dumps texts, bulletins, blogs, and tweets, I love you and thank you for your patience with me. I know I’ve been hard to live with for awhile. Maybe it’s that the 341 Christmas songs on my Ipod have finally penetrated my brain. Maybe it’s that I see the light at the end of the tunnel to being uterus free. 11 days for those of you who are counting. Maybe it’s that I’ve come to a better understanding with someone who has frankly confounded me for the last couple of months. Maybe it’s a combination of those things. I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t really care, I’m just glad that the happy pills are kicking in and I’m not so crabby all the time anymore. In about an hour, I’m leaving the office to run by the bank before I head to the airport for my weekend in Galveston. Last year, the first time I went to Dickens on the Strand, I loved it. There were several shops that I didn’t make it into, and I’m hoping that they are not among the ones that have elected not to return after Ike. I had a grand plan to get together a whole Victorian outfit for this weekend, but alas, life intervened, and I didn’t get it done. Perhaps next year I will be healthier, and thus feel better and be better able to get my shit together. Yeah, don’t hold your breath for that, I’ve been saying it for years. I’ve done a lot of traveling this fall, and I can honestly say that this is only the 2nd trip that I’ve truly been looking forward to. Sure, I was looking forward to the others, but most of them, by the time they came around, I was not as enthusiastic as I had been, and would almost (and in a couple of cases definitely) rather have stayed home. That is not to say that any of my trips were a waste, they were all a learning experience of one sort or another, and they afforded me the opportunity to spend time with people that I enjoy, and only get to see once or twice a year. This is my last trip for the year, and quite frankly, I think it’s high time I stopped for awhile. Among all the faires and festivals I’ve been to, I’ve been at faire/fest a total of 16 weekends, traveling for other Celtic events 2 or 3 weekends, family related travel 2 weekends, plus I moved in March and early April, I don’t think I’ve been that busy in YEARS! I’m TIRED, and am going to take advantage of the time off after surgery to try to finish getting my house in order, and do some real relaxing. Back to the Christmas music… I LOVE Christmas music, and this year, one of my purchases was the Tartan Terrors’ Christmas album. Carol of the Bells has always been one of my favorites, and as much as I love the bagpipes, I never thought about having a version of that tune done on bagpipes. Yep, I love it. What’s not to love, it’s bagpipes, right? J I should create links in this post, but you know what? Right now I’m not gonna, because I’ve got a couple of other things to do before I leave, but I’ll probably get back into it and create them later. Have a great weekend, I know I will!

OK, so my pity party isn’t over. I can only hope that once the next couple of weeks are done, some of this craziness in my head & body will go away, once my surgery is done. Sigh. I HATE people who whine and moan all the time about how awful their life is, yet I seem to be becoming one of those people. I seem to have become very negative here lately, and I suspect it’s causing me to push people away, that I really don’t want to push away. Maybe I’m not even pushing, maybe they are just deciding that it’s better to avoid me, I don’t really know. I’m not sure how to ask either. This weekend I have plans to go to Galveston for Dickens on the Strand, and I’ll put on my happy face and get through that, hopefully without too many questions that are going to send me back into this dark place I seem to have found myself in. I’ll be spending time with people who bring great fun and joy into my world, and hopefully that will help. If not, well, at least I’ve done my part to help with the recovery from Ike, right? Off to bed, as my meds are kicking in.

On a better note

It was a hellish week last week, and I've come to a couple of conclusions. First off, I try to do entirely too much. I don't necessarily overschedule myself, I just tend to forget to schedule myself some downtime on a regular basis. I never really thought about it much before, but in the past few months, I have not had a whole lot of just mindless, quiet time. There are several reasons for this. The biggest, I think, is the presence of another person in my house. When there's a roommate in the picture, and you've lived alone, save for the cats, for 6 years, it takes a little adjustment. I can't just go in my room and close the door, because that locks the cats either in and screaming because they want out, or out and screaming because they need the litterbox. The roommate situation should resolve itself by the end of January, but in the meantime, I need to work out how to achieve my own quiet time with someone else in the house. The second reason I haven't had so much down time is because I've done a good bit of traveling over the last few months, and it seems as though I'm always packing for a trip, or unpacking from a trip, or planning what to pack for the next one. Mostly I've enjoyed my travels, but quite honestly, I am glad that this weekend is the end of my traveling until probably spring at least. Secondly, I am so wired to be a caretaker to the world, that I tend to get swept up in helping other people and doing for them, that I forget to make myself important too. Ultimately, this leads me to begin to feel taken for granted. I suppose that the bottom line is that with a couple of exceptions, I AM a better friend than I HAVE. I need to remember to be a better friend to ME, which may sound selfish, but at some point I wind up having a breakdown and getting hysterical over stupid stuff because I've gone too far for too long for too many people besides me, and get, I don't know, lost, I suppose for lack of a better word. Yep, I reached that breaking point over the weekend. It is not my responsibility to save the world, it is my responsibility to save ME, and THEN do what I can to make the world a better place. I am also beginning to feel a little stress over my upcoming surgery. Two weeks from today, I will be uterus-free. This makes me quite happy, as I have had now a total of 371 menstrual cycles. With the exception of 1 that was only 3 days, and 1 that went on for 2 weeks (yeah that was a nightmare let me tell you), they have all been 5 days long, almost identical to each other. Yep, that's 1862 days of everyone's favorite aunt flo. Add to that anywhere from 5-8 days of PMS each month on top of those actual periods, and that's another 1800-2500 days of hormonal bitchiness, crying, and general BLAH-ness. Yep, I'm done. I'm over it. I've had plenty thanks. In the last couple of years, the PMS has been getting worse, I've cramped more than ever, and I just keep being more and more miserable each month. I've had several people ask me if I am sure about the hysterectomy, because, well, there are other options, such as endometrial ablation, which is a 70% chance of no more period. Umm, yeah, thanks, but since the cost is about the same for both options, I'll take the one that is a 100% chance of no more thankyouverymuch. That doesn't mean that I'm not nervous about the surgery. I mean, the last time that I had surgery was when I was 3 and fractured my skull and required neurosurgery (yep, explains a lot doesn't it?). I have no memory of that incident, so I have no idea what really to expect as far as reactions to medications, etc. Fortunately, it's a laproscopic procedure, so it should just be day surgery and I should be able to sleep with my cats that night. I do have someone lined up to wait at the surgery center for me, and take me home, then stay with me until my roommate comes home from work that night. I think I've got someone coming the next day, and beyond that I've not got worked out yet. I've been told by a couple of people that I'm going to want, and actually probably need someone there at least the first week or so. I guess I better get cracking on that. The bonus to the surgery is that I will have a couple of weeks off from work and hopefully get a little sewing done for faire in the spring.

My last couple of trips have not turned out as I had expected or hoped, but I'm determined that this weekend will be different. I am headed down to Galveston for Dickens on the Strand. Yes, Ike did some major damage, and Dickens won't be the same as in previous years, but the festival is most definitely an indication of the island's desire to rise from the rubble and return to normal. Lots of entertainment and vendors, though smaller than usual, it should be a good time. I'm staying with friends, in their historic home, which was fortunately not as seriously damaged as it could have been by Ike.

thanksgiving sucked

/28/08 This has quite possibly been the worst Thanksgiving I’ve ever had. I am finding that I have less and less patience for people in general. I drove 6 hours to come to a tiny town in the middle of nowhere to spend a few days with 3 of my very favorite people. I knew going into the trip that I was going to have to suffer the presence of 2 of my very least favorite people. Darla is my very best friend ever, and honestly I would do anything in the world for her, however I think I have found the one thing that I won’t do. I can deal with her snotty, bitchy sister and her smarmy brat niece, or I can deal with her drunken asshole boyfriend, but I have found that I cannot deal with them all at the same time. I have spent the better part of the last 41 hours either drunk, or crabby, or both. Neither of those 2 adults has reached the conclusion that there are other people in this house who have an opinion, or feelings. Lisa has spent most of the time I’ve been here telling Darla how to parent Nick, because, well, since Darla has managed to raise Nathan to the ripe old age of 17, he’s not been in trouble with the law, he’s doing fine, for the most part in school, and in general he’s a well-adjusted kid, clearly Darla’s an incompetent parent! Rick, on the other hand, has spent most of the time I’ve been here completely drunk and in general being an asshole to everybody except the baby. Last night, once the baby was asleep, the bratchild was also asleep, Nathan had gone to his room, and I laid down on my bed (the couch) in the living room to try to go to sleep. Rick and Lisa decided that they were going to stay up and watch the end of US Marshals or whatever the damn movie was. I plugged in my IPOd and tried to ignore them and go to sleep. Yeah, notsomuch. Asshole decided that he couldn’t hear the movie well enough, so turned up the volume, now that the baby was asleep in his room. I tried to ignore them as best I could until the movie ended. Silly me, I thought that I would actually get to go to sleep. Lisa headed to bed, but oh no, not asshole. He turned on a light, dug around in the cabinet and got out yet another movie to watch! I asked him if he was going to watch movies all night and his response was “oh, just for a little bit.” I got up and started into his bedroom to get in bed with Darla and he acted all offended, but I just told him “I can’t sleep with that TV on. I’ll go in there and sleep in your bed, you can stay up and watch tv all you want.” I eventually fell asleep, about 12:15 in the morning, in there with Darla. All was fine until 4:30 when he decided that he was ready to get in bed, at which point he came and tried to rouse me out of my spot. Darla told him to leave me be, so he slammed outta the bedroom and came out to the couch. I’m ok with it. Fucker. I got up around 7 to get up and hopefully get to spend a little time texting with Tom before he had to go to work, and sent Rick into his bed. I had about an hour of peace before Lisa & bratchild woke up and came out. While I was in the shower, Rick found it amusing and appropriate to try to gawk at me through the shower door, and bang on it. WTF??? He wasn’t even drunk yet… I think he was on his 2nd beer of the day. In all reality, if not for the fact that I will be unable to travel at Christmas, thus unable to do what I have done for nigh on 10 years now, which is spend Christmas with Darla & Nathan, I would not be here at all. I would have stayed home, gotten a few things done around the house, and started getting ready for Christmas. Unfortunately, next year, it will be Lisa’s year to have the bratchild at Christmas, so they’ll be back here again, which means I will NOT spend Christmas with Darla & Nathan for 2 years in a row. Sigh. I want so desperately to talk to someone specific, but even if he was not at work, I am not sure I could talk to him without being completely negative and bawling my eyes out, and I just don’t want to subject him to that. He doesn’t deserve my ranting and whining, because he brings a smile to my face and light to my world, and I hope that I do the same for him, at least sometimes. Eventually I think we’ll reach the point that I feel comfortable telling him what all is going through my head and fussing and crying my little eyeballs out when I’m overwhelmed, but I’m not sure he’s ready to deal with that right now. Saturday, November 29th dawned and Lisa & bratchild finally left. Soon after that, Darla & I headed for the big city. In that part of the state, that means Midland/Odessa… big woo, right? Well, our first stop was The Candle Café in Midland. It’s absolutely my favorite candle shop. More on that later, when I can gather my thoughts for a more positive, less rant-filled post. One of Darla’s other friends met us at the Candle Café. This is a person that I was never terribly crazy about, but in the last couple of years, she’s made some choices that cause me to want nothing to do with her. At any rate, I knew we were going to have to meet up with her, as she had some things to give to Darla for Christmas, but I told Darla to begin with, I do NOT want to spend the whole day with her. It’s bad enough that we get less than 24 hours of time for just us (except for dipshit rick and the boys). So we were driving into Midland, and we passed a street on the outskirts and she said “her aunt lives down that road”. Now, see, I was willing to begin with to meet up with this chick because I thought she lived in Abilene and was only in town for the holiday weekend. But HELL NO, she fricking LIVES THERE. She lives less than 2 hours from Darla, yet the only time that she can find to see Darla is when I have driven 6 hours to see her. WTF???? So as we were leaving, Darla retrieved her things from the chick’s car and the chick said she would follow us to the Christmas bazaar that we were planning on hitting next. As Darla got in the car I said (probably rather loudly, and honestly, believing that chick was in her own car already) “Oh HELL NO, I am not spending all day with her, how long is she planning on following us around? I did not drive 6 hours and 400 miles plus another 120 today to put up with her bullshit today!” Chick pulled out of her parking space before we did, but not angrily as far as I could tell. Darla said we’ll just tell her we’re heading back home after the bazaar. When we got to the bazaar, she wasn’t there yet, which surprised us, but in all honesty, I didn’t care, since I really didn’t want to be with her anyway. She arrived a few minutes later and we set about wandering around. As is our nature, we wind up being in different booths at the same time, but we always manage to hook back up every few minutes. I hadn’t seen her in about 30 minutes, and it had been about 15 since I’d seen Darla, but I did find Darla again and was at a booth with her looking at hair stuff, when chick came up with her bags acting all pissy, and told Darla she was leaving. Darla asked her if there was something wrong and she said no, that she just needed to go home. Off and on throughout the rest of the day Darla fretted about why she left early, if Darla had done something to hurt her feelings or piss her off. I tried to get her to not worry about it, I suspect that perhaps she heard my rant about not wanting to spend the whole day with her, and I don’t rightly give a damn. In the last 6 years, I have NEVER been able to have a visit out there with Darla without her horning in on something, on at least 1 day of my visit. She’s self absorbed, and always has an agenda. When Darla had Nick, she was Darla’s coach in labor & delivery, and she stayed with Darla when she went home from the hospital until I got there. Darla’s choice was to breast feed, and Darla was open about this, though because of some delivery complications, her milk didn’t come in very quickly, and so Nick had to be started on formula. Until I was there and I was able to have a say so and support Darla, chick was doing everything she could to hinder breast feeding. Again, I say WTF??? She was totally unhelpful about making sure the pump was nearby and as soon as he started fussing, instead of handing him to Darla (who wasn’t allowed to lift anything over about 3 lbs, and had to be off her feet except to go to the bathroom for a week after he was born), she carried him into the kitchen with her while she fixed a formula bottle. Yep, she is just one more person in Darla’s world who wants everything her way, hence I don’t want to deal with her if possible. After the Christmas bazaar (which was fun, but that will all go into a nicer post as well), we headed back to Midland to hit the mall, since I THOUGHT that’s where the nearest Lane Bryant was. Talk about a fustercluck mess! The first entrance/exit that we came to was closed off, so it took 20 minutes to get into the stupid parking lot. Yeah, no Lane Bryant. Picked up a few things at Bath & Body Works as long as we were there, then hit Victoria’s Secret to see if they had the sweats Darla wanted. By the time that we got to Academy to pick up what pinhead had sent $ for, and got to Walmart, it was 5:30. We made our rounds and got everything that was on our written list. I had forgotten to write one thing down, but it wasn’t anything major. By 6:15, I was over it and burnt to the ground, so we went to find an open checkout lane. UMM, you know those commercials now, about opening more checkout lanes on Saturdays? I think they forgot to get that information to the Walmart in Midland, right there on I20. I swear to you, there were 8 self-checkouts, 3 express lanes (20 items or less), and 1, yes, I said ONE regular checkout open. uMM, yeah, a total of 12 out of I think 36 or 40 lanes were open. Helpful, since I needed to reload a gift card, and we had about 30 items. I just gave up on the reload, and we did the self checkout, after which we noticed as we walked out, that 2 more regular lanes had been opened. GRRRRR! We rolled into the driveway about 8:45 or so to find that we had company, one of butthead’s co-workers. No idea how long she’d been there, but of course butthead was drunk, the baby wasn’t bathed or ready for bed, AND as I discovered when I heated up some potato casserole and got some carrots for MY dinner, NOT FRICKING FED YET! Therefore, instead of eating my potatoes, I had to feed them to the baby. The company left around 10:30, and the baby was bathed by then. When Darla tried to settle Nick down to sleep, butthead had to keep trying to “help” however in his drunken state, and because he will tell him “you don’t have to go to sleep, but you have to sit here with me and watch tv” the baby thinks he’s going to be rescued and not have to go to sleep yet. I think finally around 11:30 butthead went to bed, and within about 10 minutes, Nick was out for the count. So, finally, it’s nearly midnight, and there’s now way in HELL I am going to try to get the itunes stuff transferred from my computer to Darla & nathan’s so she can sync when she wants to update it. I also discovered that asshole had opened and drunk half of each of my last 2 Dublin Dr Peppers. OK, now screwing me out of my Dr P is a killing offense in my book. And this pinhead has opened not ONE, but TWO, and drunk the sum total of 1 of them, leaving the halves to go flat. Not that I would drink out of anything I know he’s drunk out of, since he’s got a wad of chew in his mouth most of the time, so God knows what his drunk ass left in the cans after taking a swig! Sunday morning I was hoping to be on the road by 10 a.m., but that didn’t happen because I had to do the whole itunes transfer thing, and even then, it didn’t transfer into her Itunes, it just went to her music folder. So I left Nathan in charge of making sure that everything got into the proper place, as well as recreating the playlists, but I was hysterical before I gave him the task! OH, and Lisa called to see if I would go to the Cracker Barrel in Abilene and pick up the baby doll that bratchild left the day before when they stopped for lunch. Um, yeah, that is a great big NO! Especially since I didn’t plan on going through Abilene! I wound up leaving about 11:30. Stopped in Ozona at the DQ to get a DP and some lunch. Yeah, I’d filled my cup with some on my way out the door, not realizing that dipshit had given the company something to drink in it the night before, and left fricking LIMES in the bottom. I HATE LIMES! Yep, we’re up to 3 wasted dr p’s now, 2 from Dublin at a cost of about $1.25 each, plus a regular one. So, I place my order “Hunger Buster with cheese with KETCHUP AND PICKLES ONLY, and a large dr pepper. “ she repeated it back to me, correctly, gave me my total, and I pulled up. I got my drink and about 3 minutes later they told me to pull forward and wait. Sigh, so I did, and about 5 minutes later, here came my food. Go back 2 sentences and see what I said. Go on, I’ll wait. Yep, clear as day I said KETCHUP & PICKLES ONLY. My burger came out “sub ketchup for mustard” WTF??? It’s a good thing that my aversion to onions and tomato slices has to do with flavor/texture, and not an allergy, because hot damn, there they were, nestled in among the shredded lettuce. As frustrated as it made me, it just wasn’t worth the bullshit of waiting in line behind the million cars parked, or the 7 in the drive through to raise hell about it. I only made 1 stop after that, in San Angelo for gasoline and a potty break. It took me a total of about 6 hours from door to door, including the 2 stops, so I made pretty good time. When I got home, the house was pretty much in the same state I’d left it in, which, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t a huge deal, but since I’d been hearing for a couple of weeks that Helen’s plan was to do some cleaning while I was gone. Oh well.

What a fabulous weekend I had. Sunday morning I got up and caught a plane out to Midland, TX and then drove about 45 minutes to Big Spring for a Saint Andrews’ celebration at a friend’s church. The big draw for me was the presence of Randy Wothke, EJ Jones, and Richard Kean at the celebration. This is the second year that I’ve gone to Big Spring for the celebration. It’s nice to be able to have a little time with them without huge crowds, and in a setting other than faire, a festival, or a pub. Since I woke up at 4:21 Sunday morning and didn’t get back to bed until around 11:30, it was a very long day for me, and the alarm going off at 5 Monday morning so I could catch my 7:30 flight back to Dallas did not make for a restful night, that’s for sure! Tomorrow I head for a tiny little town in west TX to spend Thanksgiving with Darla, Rick and the boys. I have the car packed, save for the ice chest, which I won’t pack until in the morning, when I’ll fill it with the stuff I’ve prepared for us to eat over the next few days. I try to ensure that I don’t create any extra work or expense for them while I am there, so I’ve pre-cooked a couple of turkey breasts and several turkey legs (our traditional holiday eats, because it’s easier not to have to deal with the whole turkey and carcass), a couple of pans of potato casserole, a couple of meat loaves, a big batch of soup, and another casserole, that are all frozen and ready to be heated. It is probably more than we will eat while I am there, but whatever is left can stay in the freezer and will be there sometime when Darla comes home from a 15 hour day at work and doesn’t want to think about dinner. It’s a 6 hour drive from southwest Fort Worth, according to the mapping programs, so from work it’s about 7 hours. The good news is, I’m stopping for lunch in FW, so I can spend a few minutes with a special someone before we can't see each other for a week. That will give me a short break before I am back on the road for awhile. The only drawback to the weekend is that Darla’s sister and niece are coming out as well. Nobody invited them, they just decided that they were coming. We do ok, with small doses of them, but prefer those doses to be less than 24 hours. L is just an annoying, know-it-all, pushy, bossy, I-have-class-but-none-of-you-even-know-what-it-is, well, BITCH. K, the niece, is about 7 or 8, I think, and VERY bright, however she’s a spoiled heathen brat. She LOVES to start shit with Nathan and when he tries to defend himself, she cries that he started it or hurt her. She truly believes that the sun rises and sets on her, and her mother lets her do pretty much whatever the hell she wants to do. She is allergic to more things than I can begin to remember or name, including dogs (there are 2 that live INSIDE Darla’s house). They tend to come with 2 air purifiers just for the tiny room she sleeps in, food that nobody is allowed to touch because it’s prepared specifically with her allergies in mind, and in general, a “we are the princesses, you will bow to us and let us have our way” attitude. Now, last week, L called Darla and said “I have a 12 lb turkey that I’m bringing.” Darla told her that we don’t cook a whole turkey, we do the boneless, skinless breasts and a couple of legs for Rick & Nathan, and that I have that covered already, as well as the potato casserole and a few other things. Now, they were there for Christmas last year, so L is experienced with the potato casserole, and knows what it is, and ate plenty of it herself, thankyouverymuch. Well, she called Darla yesterday and announced that not only is she bringing the fucking turkey, she’s bringing mashed potatos, stuffing and god knows what else. HELLO???!!!! What part of WE DON’T DO A WHOLE TURKEY was she not clear on? What part of potato casserole was she not clear on???? The good news is that Darla & Rick have 2 deep freezers, in addition to the freezer that’s on top of the fridge, so there’s plenty of space to put the leftovers. It is my plan to stay pretty well pickled as long as she’s around, because I deal much better with her when I’m drunk and just don’t give a damn! Yep, there’s 2 boxes of booze in the car, and if things were different, I would be there before she was and could have a good buzz going before she arrives, but alas, I can’t leave until 10, and she’ll be long gone by then, I’m sure, so I’ll just have to take a good strong shot of something when I pull up in the driveway!

I tried

I try to be a good friend. I try to help people in need, especially my friends. It's sort of an inborn thing, I think a combination of being 1. a big sister, 2. a Libra, 3. a middle child. I've been taking care of people in one way or another since I was about 4 years old. I try not to let myself be taken advantage of, but on occasion, well, it happens. Several months ago, I loaned a friend money to repair her car as she was on her way back to Texas, with the understanding that once she was here, and working, she would repay the money I loaned her. She's received paychecks for 13 weeks now, tomorrow will be her 14th check. Despite the fact that she has not been asked, nor has she offered to contribute to the rent or utilities, and even though she has had about $700 or so in car expenses in order to keep it running and get her title and tags transferred back to TX, she has NO savings, nor has she paid much of the car repair, not to mention the fact that as a favor, (I know, I'm already doing too many favors for her) I added her to my car insurance, for which she also agreed to pay. So this evening, I wrote her a letter, because I'm better at writing than I am talking sometimes, especially something like this. I told her that while I don't expect or want her to give me what she has agreed to pay all at once, but some effort would be appreciated, even $25/paycheck. I also told her that my bigger concern is not the money she owes me, but rather the fact that she seems to have no plan for building savings for emergencies or establishing her own home. I have offered to sit down with her and help her figure out a workable budget that will allow her to live within her means AND put some money away for emergencies. Yeah, well, last night, she came in, went directly to her room, found the letter, and didn't come out except to go to the bathroom. As near as I can tell, she didn't eat dinner and didn't go through her normal 'get everything ready for work tomorrow routine'. She didn't close the door until she turned out her light to go to sleep, but she didn't come talk to me. When I went to the bathroom, I came out and went to her door to see how work was, and she pointed to a note on her dresser stating "I wrote that this morning, before I went to work". The note lists dates for today and the next 3 Fridays, as well as a dollar amount that she's planning to give me to cover what she owes me. It will leave her totally broke for a few weeks, so I'm going to tell her to cut some off of it, partly because I WANT her to be able to build a little savings, and partly because if she gives me that amount for 4 weeks, she will overpay. She pouted most of the evening, and that's fine, but I choose not to see her as the victim here. She has been a victim all of her life, and I want for her to learn that she doesn't HAVE to be one.

Well, another weekend has flown by. Apparently, I’ve gotten myself way too busy, because now, not only have I totally missed my youngest nephew’s birthday (Oh, I have a card for him, and I HAD a gift card for him, which has now grown legs, so I’ve got to replace it) by 3 weeks, my only niece had one yesterday that totally got past me, as did the surprise party for my sister on Saturday night. Yeah, I suck, I know. I used to be REALLY GOOD at remembering birthdays, anniversaries, whatever, but here lately, I think my brain's gone on strike or something. Saturday morning, it seems that my sweet, precious, yellow-bellied, lily-livered boycat decided to channel his bitchy, recently departed sister. I didn’t actually see it happen, but when my roomie came outside with a band-aid on her hand and said “Leo BIT ME”, well, I got pulled into it, obviously. Now, Rhonda, rest her soul, was ALWAYS testy about who got to pet her, as well as when and for how long. Upon introducing her to anyone, I always included a warning that she looks all sweet and innocent with those different colored-eyes, and sure she’s all purry, but when she’s DONE, she is DONE, AT THAT INSTANT, with no warning. Literally, one second she’s all happy to have you scratching her head, and before you know it, she’s furious that you dared to touch her, and is trying to draw blood either with her claw or teeth, whichever is handier (or both). Most people believed me, though one or two didn’t, and either went home with a fresh scratch, or narrowly missed having one. At any rate, for the last couple of weeks, Leo has been awfully vocal about needing attention. I don’t know what’s going on, but there it is, he wants attention, constantly, and if you don’t give it to him, he’s going to whine and yowl until he gets it. So, roomie is in the house, and he hollers at her, and comes up alongside her and rubs against her leg, so she reaches down to scratch him on the head and talk to him, until suddenly he just turns and chomps on her hand! WTF??? He never bites people. I still have no idea what happened, I tried talking to him, but he just looked around as if totally innocent! He got a stern lecture about not being allowed to channel Queen Bitch, not being allowed to bite people, and about behaving himself properly. He was also grounded from roomie’s bedroom for the day. Yesterday, my sister and I went to the Dallas Museum of Art for the Tut exhibit. WOW! The intricacy of some of the works is amazing, especially considering that they were created without the tools that are available some 3000 years later. My sister said she’d heard or read about people bitching because the artifacts exhibited do not include the sarcophagus that his mummy was found in. Umm, yeah, like Egypt is going to let a treasure like that out of the country, seriously people, what are you thinking?? One of the coolest things there was a model of his skull that was made using the CT scans done a few years ago, which is not in a case, and touching it is encouraged. I guess from the years of seeing the pictures of the sarcophagus, and images of him with the big headdress on, combined with the diadem that was part of the exhibit, I expected his head to be a little bigger than it was. I suppose perhaps he had some SERIOUSLY thick hair or something, because that diadem looked like it would fit ME, and I KNOW my skull is bigger than the one that was exhibited. You know, they will make a bobblehead out of anything, including the boy king! And somehow, it’s just WRONG to pull tissues out the nose of a pharaoh! Those were the most amusing items I saw in the gift shop. My mother would have LOVED the exhibit, as she was very taken with Egyptology. Am working on getting everything together to take down to the sticks to see Darla & crew for Thanksgiving. I think I’ve gathered it all, now it’s just a matter of assembly and cooking/freezing. My kitchen’s gonna be a mess for several days, methinks! Turkey breasts, drumsticks, potato casserole, cookies, meatloaf, meat & mac casserole, & 8 can soup! First order of biz is get the meatloaves made & into the freezer, and the ground meat cooked for the meat & mac and the soup. Hopefully tonite will have that done. Tuesday will be turkey night, and m&m. Thursday is cookies. Friday will be potatoes, and Saturday, soup, and I’m all done except for packing the cooler Wednesday morning with all the frozen goodies.

Peanut butter cup cookies

Ok, so a couple of weeks ago, I was at Sprouts market, a cool little farmer's market sorta place. It's not hugely different from Central Market, but it's much smaller, and doesn't have quite the variety of stuff. At any rate, I'm wandering through, and I found these TINY little peanut butter cups. Now I am NOT talking about the mini size ones that you can buy in the bags at Wallyworld. I'm talking these are, oh, maybe twice the size of a standard chocolate chip, but they look just like a peanut butter cup, and taste like them too! Well, someone pretty special to me LOVES peanut butter & chocolate, so I got some out of the bulk bin they were in, and then set off on a quest for peanut butter cup cookies. It took me a little bit of searching, and winding up with mostly those sorta thumbprint cookies that have a mini cup on them. Finally, on Allrecipes, I hit paydirt.

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup Cookies
SUBMITTED BY: Dan K. "I thought this up totally by scratch! If you like peanut butter cups, you'll like this cookie."
PREP TIME 20 Min COOK TIME 10 Min READY IN 30 Min Original recipe yield 3 dozen
INGREDIENTS
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup peanut butter chips
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
3 eggs
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
1 cup chopped peanut butter cups
DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
Grease cookie sheets.
Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt; set aside.
In the microwave or in a bowl over a pan of simmering water, melt the chocolate and peanut butter chips, stirring occasionally until smooth. Set aside.
In a large bowl, cream together the butter, white sugar and brown sugar. Beat in the eggs one at a time then stir in the vanilla. Stir in the melted chips until well blended then stir in the sifted dry ingredients. Finally, fold in the chopped peanut butter cups.
Drop by tablespoonfuls onto the prepared cookie sheets.
Bake for 10 to 15 minutes in the preheated oven.
Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.
Now, a couple of notes from me:
*I used about 2 cups of the tiny pb cups instead of chopping up regulars or minis
* I used a regular tablespoon to drop the cookies, they were not uniform, they wound up being, oh, about 2 inches across, and I had 42 cookies.
* I'm thinking that if I'd used my cookie scoop, it may have been closer to 4.5 dozen or so.

That reminds me, I gotta put Sprouts on my list for tomorrow

Craziness coming

I just looked at my calendar again, and holy cow, the next couple of weeks are CRAZINESS! Sunday my sister & I are going to the Tut exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art. I missed the last time there was a Tut exhibit in Dallas. It’s one of those things that we would have done with Mom, if she was still with us, she was a HUGE Egyptology fan. Next Sunday, I’m flying out to Midland to celebrate Saint Andrew’s Day at a friend’s church. Why, you ask would I fly to Midland for that??? Because the ever fabulous EJ Jones, & Richard Kean will be piping, with the awesome Randy Wothke drumming. Yeah, I’ll fly to Midland for my Rogues fix! Even if they aren’t all Rogues anymore. I’ll fly out Sunday morning and then fly home on Monday morning before I go to work. Fortunately, work is close to the airport, so I can be to work by like 9:30. Between now and then I have a ton of food prep to do. I’m taking a handful of turkey legs, a couple of boneless, skinless turkey breasts, some meatloaf, a batch of soup and a couple of casseroles. Fortunately, much of it can be prepared in advance and frozen until we are ready to actually cook it, and with disposable foil pans, cleanup will be easy too!!! I’ll head out to the sticks on Wednesday, hopefully around 11 a.m. I’ll be on the road, which should get me there by about 6 p.m. Hopefully, the other company that’s coming in from this area will be a little later than I am, so we can get situated before there are too many people in the house. And have a conference or two with the Captain. Come December, I’ll be heading to Galveston for Dickens’ on the Strand. Yep, Galveston is still in recovery from Ike, and the Strand may not be as pretty as it has been in former years, but hopefully there will be an outstanding turnout for the celebration. I know that several of the acts are performing at no cost to the festival, which is awesome of them to do, so if you’re headed that way, be sure to leave something in the tip jar for them, k? I think that’s about it for tonite.

I could probably use therapy

I'm pretty sure, actually that it would do me a great deal of good to find a therapist, but honestly, that's just not on my list of things to do these days. Blogging will just have to do for now. Not that I do a very regular job of that either... It's been kind of a crazy year for me, ups and downs, fortunately, more ups, I think, for the most part. Right now's rough, however because I once again let my heart rule my head. You would think I would have learned by now. I haven't, and this time it's hurting more than I could possibly have imagined that it would. As a Libra, I admit that sometimes I am in love with the idea of being in love. I like being part of a couple. I don't mind, most of the time, being single. Sure there are moments when I'm somewhere with a bunch of my 'couple' friends that it sorta niggles at me, but mostly I'm ok with it. Over the summer, I developed a bit of an infatuation with a friend. This has never happened to me before. Oh, I've had situations where I was infatuated, but THEN decided that friends worked better, but it's never gone the other direction. I declared my interest, was told, very nicely and honestly that at this point, friendship is all he has to offer anybody. OK. I'm cool with that, I can be patient. The problem arose when words and actions were not matching, and was exacerbated by the fact that OTHER PEOPLE were interpreting actions the same way that I was, and were beginning to think of us as a couple. Hey, it works for me, right? Yeah, somewhere along the way, I lost my heart to him. I honestly don't know if he has any idea just how hard I fell. Sure, he knows tht there is an interest, and he knows that I miss him when I don't see him when I'm accustomed to seeing him, or talk to him according to our usual habits, but I don't think that he really has a clue about how far gone I am. Subtle doesn't work. Banging him over the head doesn't work. I just don't know what else to do, other than just give up and hope that he figures it out. I've let go. Sort of. I've taken our picture off my various profiles where I was using it as my avatar. I've randomized contact lists so he's not the #1 every time someone looks at my lists. He's not the default photo on my phone anymore. Our photo is no longer hanging on my computer monitor or from my keychain. I am trying to be mature about it and not have a kicking screaming fit. Yesterday I completely melted down and even mentioned to a couple of people that I was contemplating sticking my head in the oven. NEVER in my life have I even joked about suicide, simply because I've been left behind, and would not dream of doing the same thing to my friends. Never has a the loss of a relationship caused me to want to die. Yeah, it's bad this time around. And now all I can do is wait

Can you believe

We are 8 weeks away from 2009?? WOW has this year flown by! Went to a Halloween bash at the home of some friends Friday night, which didn't turn out at all the way I had anticipated and hoped, and therefore sulked much of the next day. Sunday was a little better because I was shopping at First Monday Trade Days in Canton, so I was occupied pretty well for the day. This morning my world seems to have begun to right itself again, so all in all, it's a pretty good Monday I suppose!

Generation Gap

It’s official, I am OLD. Yesterday, I bought a pair of ‘thigh highs’ to go with my Halloween costume. I assumed (erroneously, obviously, hence this experience) that they had that rubber stuff up around the top to keep them up on your thigh. So last night, about 7:40, I’m watchin’ a little tv, and decided to try them on, just for shits & giggles. They look VERY cool, except for one tiny little problem. As soon as I let go of the top, they start rolling down my leg. Yeah, no rubbery stuff. I have moved at least 5 times since I last had need of a garter belt, so if I even still owned one, I have NO IDEA where it might be. So Helen & I make a flying trip to the mall in search of said accessory. First stop, JC Penney’s lingerie department. We looked and looked, but didn’t even find stockings, much less garters and garter belts for them. We found the girl working the nearest checkout, right there in the department. She was all of, oh, 19, at most. Bless her heart, she had NO IDEA what a garter belt was. Granted it was her first day on the floor, but still! So we looked some more and found nothing. I looked in the lingerie catalog, and found 'torsolettes’, which everybody I know has always called a bustier, but whatever you want to call it, it had garters, so I showed the girl. She still had never seen them, and apologized profusely for not being able to help us, and suggested we "try maybe an old-timey store". OMG! She also thought we were in our 30’s (God love her for taking almost a decade off of us after all that)! It was truly an entertaining, though not successful encounter. Next stop, unplanned, was the floor in front of a jewelry store where there was a puddle, which sent my right foot sliding forward while my left remained in place, landing me on my left knee. I did a relatively spectacular, for me anyway, splits. I’ve got a denim burn from my jeans and a lovely bruise on my knee, but otherwise, I’m fine. Jewelry store employee was very nice and once I was up and told him I was fine, he called maintenance, then stood outside the store until they arrived to mop to ensure that no one else was hurt. I would like to say that in general, this country is entirely too litigious, I think. As I got up, the 2 teenaged boys behind me, and 2 employees at a cart in the middle of the mall said "SUE THE MALL" WTF???? Umm, yeah, I am fine, thanks for asking! Between the 4 people, I heard the word sue at least 3 different times. Now, if I were one of those unscrupulous people who is out to get something for nothing, sure I might get a lawyer and give him/her 1/3 of any award I might get, and fake all kinds of injuries, etc. That is NOT who I am, and the fact that those people assumed that I might be almost makes me sick, you know? THEN, as we passed the aforementioned cart, which sells some sort of fragrance something or other, maybe aromatherapy, I’m not sure, the guy (yes one of the ones who told me to sue the mall) tried to foist something off on us, then said "Can I ask you a question?" We said "no" and went on our way, because it was now 8:18 and we had a mission to complete and get back to Penney’s before 9. Dillard’s was our final stop. GO DILLARDS LINGERIE DEPT!! Not only did they have a VARIETY of garter belts, though only 1 that will fit me, the young women working, I would say one was probably 18 or 19 and the other early to mid-20’s knew exactly where to look for each style, they also were able to have a ballpark idea of my correct bra size without measuring me! It was DAMNED impressive. They guessed a band size smaller than I wear but a cup size bigger, which is technically, where I belong, but those underwires in that size kick my ass (Well, my armpits anyway) so I go up a band size and down a cup size in order to be comfortable. The next time I need a fitting, I know where I’m heading for sure!!! Dillard’s NorthEast Mall!!! Happy Halloween/Samhain Ya’ll

Living with cats

Since this is a relatively new blog, I should point out that I live with 2 of them. Over the weekend, we got a couch from my sister & brother in law. Nothing fancy, but it's a couch, and I can lie down to watch tv, should I so desire in my media room, however, I digress. One of the cats, my (ok, not so very) little calico, Bow, has laid claim to the end opposite where I tend to sit while I'm watching tv or playing on the laptop. She bathes there, she sleeps there, she watches tv there. So last night, my roomie and I are watching tv in there. I have no idea where Ms. Huzzbucket is in the house, but for whatever reason, my sweet (if yellowbellied) boy Leo is snoozing on the opposite end of the couch from me. He's been there probably an hour or so, all peaceful-like, off in kittydreamland, not bothering anybody. Background for those who haven't met my cats, bless his yellowbellied heart, he's afraid of his own shadow, much less things going thump or touching him when he's not paying attention. In strolls Bow from the kitchen. She walks over to the couch and sees him there in her spot. Hard as I tried to teach her manners, it appears that I failed. She had several options at this moment: 1. She COULD have howled, as she is prone to doing, for no particular reason, at random times 2. She COULD have reached up with a paw, patted him on the head and said "dude, you're in my spot, scoot!" 3. She COULD have climbed up beside him and curled up with him, as they sometimes do, either on the other couch, or on my bed BUT, she did NOT do any of these things. She instead POUNCED up on top of him, using him as a sort of a springboard to get onto the arm of the couch. My poor boy, flew off the couch as if the hounds of hell were after him, too scared to even puff up! Once he thought he was a safe distance away, he turned to see what had attacked him, and saw her, looking all innocent. Yep, she's got an innocent look. When my roomie said "Bow! that was unnecessary and uncalled for!", she looked around with a "what? I don't know what you're talking about" sort of look. I guess we all know who the alpha cat is....

Random acts of nice

In the last few weeks, there have been a handful of instances that have caused the cynic in me to stop and rethink my cynicism with regard to people in general. I am not sure exactly why it is that I am such a cynic, but for whatever reason, I tend to be. Incident #1 happened on October 3rd. We were on the way to the airport at the asscrack of fricking DARKTHIRTY in the morning so I could go to Maryland for my birthday weekend. We stopped at Whataburger on Rufe Snow so I could have a bite of breakfast, and a Dr Pepper before I was stuck at DFW airport without access to Dr Pepper. We pulled into the drive through, and I ordered a biscuit with bacon and a kid size dr p. Note that at no time did the words EGG or CHEESE come out of my mouth. We were the only car in the lot at all. About 8 minutes after we pulled up to the window, she finally handed me my dr p, but not my food, then walked away from the window, leaving my bag sitting just inside the window. I looked at the receipt and when she came back, I told her “umm, I ordered a biscuit with bacon, not a bacon, egg & cheese biscuit”. She went to get a manager, who came back and apologized, telling me that they were out of biscuits and wouldn’t have more for another 5 minutes, and that she was going to refund my money, and that I could either wait for another, or not. Kudos to her for refunding not just my biscuit money, but ALL of my money. As I was sorta antsy to get to the airport and get past security, and in the grand scheme of things, the dr p WAS the most important part of the order, I passed on the biscuit and just got pretzel sticks when I got to the airport. I’m pretty sure that the overnight shift or early morning shift, whichever it was, as it was like 5:15 a.m., in a 24 hour fast food restaurant is the suckiest one there is, and I’ve encountered my share of surly people, but this lady was very nice, and ultimately, was more interested in making sure the customer was happy than she was in making the sale, which was quite refreshing. Incident #2 happened one day last week, I think it was Wednesday, actually. I stopped at the Racetrack gas station nearest work to get a dr p. (hmmm do you see a pattern here?) As I came back out to the car (at like 6 a.m.), I saw a trucker walking across the parking lot. A middle aged man, I would say probably late 40s to early 50s, but I suck at guessing ages, in what looked to be freshly laundered western shirt & jeans. As I reached my door and unlocked it with the remote, he was about 3 feet away, and said “ma’am, hold on.” Now I have no idea what possessed me to not just grab my door handle and jump in the car, other than I didn’t feel threatened by him at all. I glanced at him as he got to my car, and opened my door for me, waited for me to get in, and closed the door behind me, then waved and went on in the store with his coffee mug. Being a rennie, I know that chivalry is not dead, but honestly, I don’t see much of it from random strangers, and it was a pleasant change. Incident #3 happened yesterday morning, at a different Whataburger. We stopped for caffeine on our way to run a couple of errands before lunch. There was a pretty good sized line, but I was desperate, so I waited, ordered my drink, my roommie, who was with me, didn’t want anything. We pulled up to the window, paid for my 1 dr p, and had to wait for the cars ahead of us to move. There was also one car in the outside lane. In a minute, here came the cashier, back to the window, with not 1 but 2 dr p’s! She said “I am giving you an extra just for the hassle of trying to get out around all the traffic. WOW! Whataburger’s got it going on, where customer service is concerned. As it turns out, the way that the line in front of us was and where the car in the outside lane was parked waiting, there was plenty of space for me to get through. YAY!

Look a new post

Ok, yeah, I still suck at this blogging regularly thing. I don’t Twitter very well either, but eventually I’ll probably get a little better at both! Since my last post, I’ve been a little busy.

1. Faire--- yep, did it for 3 weekends, though only 1 weekend was really full.

a. MIDDLEFAIRE still very small, quaint, really only a one day sort of faire. Nonetheless, I got to spend the day with some awesome people, and see friends I haven’t seen since Scarby. Didn’t really buy anything this year, and that’s ok, but I did help someone else pick out a couple of things. Overall I had a wonderful day, and made a few interesting observations that I may share later. Or not. b. MARYLAND – I had looked forward to this trip for a year and a half. I was going to spend my birthday, not just the weekend closest to my birthday, at faire! I was going to see friends that I haven’t seen since Arlington, and won’t see again until December. I had new friends who took vacation days in order to pick me up and return me to the airport, and gave up a weekend at their preferred faire in order to share my birthday at faire, as well as share their home with me, so I wasn’t in a strange place with no one I knew. By the Monday before I left Friday morning, I so did not want to go. Yeah, I won’t have the chance again for 5 years to be at faire ON MY BIRTHDAY, but I wanted instead to stay and spend time over the weekend with someone relatively new in my life. Bless him, he did his best to convince me that I would have more fun at faire, as he had to work and had several other obligations keeping him busy that weekend. My distress at the airport and on the first leg of the journey, from DFW to Atlanta came as a huge surprise to me, even. Over the course of the weekend, I had multiple disappointments, most of them my fault, largely because I didn’t want to be there, and because I failed to really understand the grueling schedule my friends I was originally going to see were on. As hard as my hosts tried to ensure that I had fun, MD is not the faire for me, and I’m not sure I would spend the time or money to go back. c. TRF – yes, I camped, for the first time in like 30something years. Friends rented a popup camper and we split the cost 5 ways, it was a great deal. Well, other than the bed we were in giving a bit at 5 a.m. on Saturday and 7 a.m. on Sunday. We got down there late Friday night after the rest of the crew had arrived early in the day and set up camp. All we really had to do was unload our stuff and start drinkin’ before we went on walkabout with jello shots that Isa made. That was interesting, meeting people with booze! TRF is, well, TRF. I’ve been once this year, and I would go again, with the right person/people, but don’t have a burning desire to go back. I like TRF, but I LOVE Scarby! 2. Work’s gotten crazy busy, and people are starting to get UGLY about us not doing repairs. I’m sorry, but that $16K installation that could cost my company hundreds or thousands of dollars per day if I don’t meet the construction schedule takes precedence over your $300 repair. I realize that you think that your product is the only one that matters, but guess what, the world does NOT revolve around you and your facility, much less your 10 year old product that I have told you for 3 years is pretty much beyond repair and needs to be replaced! 3. House is beginning to be in better order, at least some of the time. I SUCK at housekeeping. I HATE doing it. I blame my parents for this… we had a housekeeper until I was almost 8, and until I was almost 11, my mom didn’t work away from home, other than volunteer sort of stuff, so I didn’t have to pitch in and do cleaning, etc. until after she went back to work. And actually, one of my great aunts told me one time “Honey, you don’t know HOW to properly clean house, because your mother didn’t know how.” Technically, I suppose, that makes it my maternal grandparents’ fault, because they had a housekeeper who was in several days a week, as far as I remember from what Mom told me. This weekend, sometime, my landlord is coming by to winterize the pool, and maybe drain the hot tub to clean it. I think that’s about it for now… maybe I’ll get better at this now.

Once again

I realize just how blessed I am. I was blessed with a beautiful friend for 17 years, and she will live forever in my heart. Someone told me yesterday that his theory is that sometimes when we lose someone we love it is to make room for a new love in our life. I suppose that's one possibility, and I suppose time will tell. I'm not looking for love, necessarily, nor am I looking for another pet. I have some wonderful friends in my world, some old, some not so old, and I won't even go into the whole silver/gold thing... I think most of mine are platinum or something. There's one in particular, we've been acquainted for, oh, about 5 months or so now, but I don't think really became friends until probably sometime in July. I think that this friendship has been the greatest gift of my year so far. I don't know how it will grow and change, but I do know that there's a connection there that is indisputable. A bit of joy is added to my world any time we talk, and I look forward to waking up knowing that we'll be able to have a conversation, whether it is about the hurricane, faire, or just hanging out. It's turning out to be a wonderful friendship, and I'm thankful every day for it, as well as many other friendships. The next 3 weekends I get to spend at faire, some days with the same people, other days without them. Either way, it should be a fabulous few weekends anyway! sleepytime!

Saying Goodbye

Saying goodbye always sucks. Somehow it seems that I do a bit of it in September. I think next year I'm skipping September. Today I had to take my 17 year old cat to the vet for the last time. Rhonda was feral when I adopted her. A few months later she adopted me as well. She was always moody, had enough attitude for a couple of dozen cats, and while she tolerated several people, especially in later years, but she never liked anyone except me, no matter how much they tried to be nice to her. I've had her for most of my adult life, and I hardly remember life without her sassiness, and her copious fluffs of white fur flying about, clinging to everything I own and piling up in corners, no matter how hard I tried to keep it under control. My beautiful princess, we had 17 years, and yet it seems only days. You came to me a tiny ball of fluff, full of sass and fire, odd-eyed. No matter how I tried to tame you, that wild streak was too stubborn to be tamed. You were as close to human as any animal could be. You listened to the answering machine and told me when your grandma called. You snuggled under the comforter in the winter. You kissed me when I needed a bit of comfort. You were never much of a lap cat, too wild, I guess, but you sure were going to be in bed with me at every opportunity. You weren't much for company, other than to accept compliments about your beauty, as long as they stayed out of arms reach, unless, of course, you'd had a drunk sock, in which case you pretty much didn't if they tried to pet you or not. You did your best to keep the other cats in the house, even the senior ones, in line. The memories go on and on. You were my first cat as an adult. You were my first baby. You brought me happiness, love, and perhaps a bit of frustration from time to time. I did my best to give you a good and happy life, plenty of catnip, and a warm bed, I hope it was as wonderful for you as it was for me. In the end, I waited longer than I should have, perhaps out of selfishness, to send you on, but knowing that you were in pain and rapidly becoming unable to get around on your own, and talking with you last night, I think this was the right time. Enjoy your days across the rainbow bridge, and know that you are forever in my heart. Love, Mama

Adventures in the Northeast

It’s taken a week, but I’ve finally managed to set aside a bit of time to tell ya about my trip to PARF over Labor Day Weekend. I left work early on Thursday to catch my flight to Dulles, then on to Rochester. D/FW drives me crazy, and given my preference, I fly out of Love whenever possible. Unfortunately, this time, not possible. I was like WAAY early, being the Queen of Early, for my flight, so I got all checked in, with my boarding pass, and my carryon bag. Knowing that I wouldn’t hit NY for another 8 hours, I went in search of caffeine, and lucked out, because right by my gate was a McDonalds. For those of you who don’t know it, I’m a PEPPER, and while Mr. Pibb is an acceptable substitute, if necessary, Pepsi has no such option, and Pepsi is the official soft drink supplier for DFW airport. McDonalds, however, sells Dr Pepper, and lucky for me, one of the I don’t know, like 3 or 4 of them on the whole property was near my gate. I finished my infusion of caffeine just about the time they called us to board, and started the spiel about gate checking carry on luggage as we were on a regional jet. I’d thought ahead, and brought my cool Marc Gunn To Love is Human, to Purr Divine bag inside my carryon, JUST IN CASE they made me gate check, because the laptop was NOT going under the plane. I didn’t need to GC at that time, but I had my laptop, a book, and a magazine in the other bag, since I knew the carryon would never fit under the seat. We took off about 10 minutes early, and landed in Dulles about 30 minutes early…. hmm, don’t know if we had a good tailwind or if we were speeding, but at least I didn’t have to run to find my gate in the other terminal. I was in line at the little pizza place to get a bite to eat, and there was this creepy older guy (I would say close to 60, which, granted, isn’t particularly old, but to my 40, older than I’m interested in for sure) checkin’ me out. Now, I fully expect, when I’m wearing full wench gear to be checked out. Or if I’m wearing a low-cut or very fitted top. I had on jeans and a loose t-shirt. At any rate, I got my pizza, and glanced about for an empty table, there are none, so I am going to go sit at the gate instead. Creepy guy starts winkin’ and motioning me to his table. EWWWWWW! They called us about 20 minutes early to board, and told us we’d have to gate check anything bigger than a breadbasket, pretty much. In this case, it was a good thing, because we boarded using stairs, and I would have hated to have to manage the smaller bag, plus tote that wheeled carryon up those stairs! We got to Rochester early as well, by just a few minutes I think, and I think Robin & I contained our squeals pretty well, although we were hugging and bouncing up and down right there in the doorway. By the time we got to her place, had a bottle of wine… some YUMMY pineapple wine, and decided which Loki to introduce to PARF, it was after 3 a.m., and I’d been up, literally, 23 hours! The 6 hour drive to PA was beautiful… it’s been a LOOONG time since I saw real mountains… sure we have a few mountains out in west TX, but they are largely brown and uninteresting. Big trees, beautiful shades of greens, yellows and oranges as some had already started changing. Saturday dawned warm & muggy, pretty much like a late May day in TX. We met up in the parking lot with MaidenFaeSnow & Freebird, and the first place we visited in the shire was the hostel at Emporer’s Needle, where I met Betty, and then we went on to Mayfaire Moon to look at her corsets, and meet more wenches… Ysobelle, Surlz, Jayde, Artemisia (and of course Jack the Flying Monkey was with her), Nicole, Cricket, and I’m sure others I’ve forgotten, and rogues… Bryan, Crimson, Bob, Dave the smoothie guy, crap, my brain has lost the rest… 3 days of wandering about the shire, meeting new people, seeing new acts, finding new and beautiful things for myself and friends! I spent way too much money, but I brought home (or shipped) some fabulous things. Sunday I had a bison burger for lunch… YUMMY, OMG, will definitely be buying some bison the next time I need ground meat! The trip back to NY was truly an adventure… yeah, we got lost in the mountains, sort of. I guess not really LOST, so much as we were on a smaller highway, which ran pretty parallel to the one we needed to be on, so we took the ummm scenic route. It took us about ½ hour out of our way, but we made it, and there was lots of giggling, snorting & wheezing along the way. Yes, I snort when I laugh too hard, and you KNOW I’ve gone over the edge when you hear the Arnold Horshack wheeze! It happened, I swear. The trip home started a bit late, mostly because we giggled and such too late and didn’t get up as early as we could have. We got to the airport at just before 9, and my flight was at just before 10. I was seriously sweating it standing in line to check in. This time around, I paid the $40 to check 2 bags, and just had my laptop & other essentials in my kittybag. Experienced, in Chicago, Chicago style pizza… yummy! normally, I’m a thin & crispy crust kinda girl. I don’t want a bunch of dough under my cheese and pepperoni, but sometimes I do like a bit of dough at the edge instead of the hard crunch of the thin crust. Yep, that’s what I got… my crust wasn’t exactly thin, but it was thinner I think, than "hand tossed" that is offered down here, but the edges were nice and doughy, like a pan pizza down here. My flight was scheduled to leave at 12:30, so about 11:45 I headed for the gate. When I got there at 11:50, they were saying "last call for flight whatevernumberIwason. The doors are being closed in 1 minute" WTF???? I made it, fortunately, but I HATE being the last one on, even when I have a reserved seat! We took off about ½ hour early, and landed at least that early, but by the time I got my luggage… yeah, it was right about on time for my ride to pick me up. I’ll never understand how they got my 2 bags at the same time, yet when they give them back to me, one of them is like in the first 5 items unloaded, but the other is the very LAST! UGH! Hopefully on Thursday I’ll get my boxes that Robin shipped me, full of garb & goodies. Wash the garb, and next week ship it back off (at least some of it) to MFS for the next adventure…

Cast

Ok, in all likelihood, there will be a relatively recurrent cast in my blog, and just for the record I thought I'd provide a little information about who's who:

The People:

• Darla, my soulmate and best friend. We've been through a lot together, and there is nothing that either of us doesn't know about the other. Drives the men in our lives crazy sometimes, but such is life. We met 20 years ago in beauty school. We are identical twins born 10 days apart to different mothers, but that's ok.
• Helen, my roommate, and one of my oldest friends. We met in Mrs. Ward's senior English class, a year or so ago *g*. She's just moved back to TX, and is rooming with me until she can get back on her feet.
• Nathan, Darla's older son. Also known as The Boy. He is deaf, and 5 years ago received a cochlear implant, which is, in our opinion, the most amazing thing that could have happened to him. He knows that his impairment does NOT have to stand in his way of doing whatever he chooses with his life. The past 2 summers he's worked as a lifeguard at the pool down the street from their house.
• Nicholas, Darla's baby. Also known as Noodlebutt and The Baby. He's almost 2, into everything, and recently reprogrammed the answering machine all by himself. Yeah, we learned about that when Autie Rae called 42 times and kept thinking someone had given the baby the phone to answer. We believe him to be my mom's cat come back to us, as Nick has many of the same habits as the cat did.
• Erin, fellow wench, born 1 day shy of 10 years before me, she is our identical triplet, except she was born before us. She's got awesome kitties, and bred designer cats for awhile until she started working for the Humane Society.
• Countess Mary, fellow wench, Madame for Local 13 of the IWG. Also known as Countess or Doc. She's a college level English teacher.
• Laura, fellow rennie, my assistant and friend. She & Mike live about 5 minutes from me.
• Mel, co-worker, our brains are frighteningly in tune with each other.
• Craig, another co-worker, love him, think he's kind of a pain in the ass sometimes
• Lea Ann, my big sister. She's 9 years older than I am, has 2 grown boys, Jimmy, who just got married in Cancun, back in June, and Joe, who is hoping to return to Alaska, apparently. Her husband Jim thinks I'm a total wack-job, and I'm ok with this.
• Jon, my big brother. He's about 5 years older, and has 1 grown son, Johnny, an almost grown son Stevie, and a daughter Jamie. There was a time that his wife Sindy & I were VERY close, but we've drifted apart.
• Mom, should be self explanatory. She's been gone for 6 years come September. I still miss her, but she shows up from time to time. Apparently she thinks Joe needs to pull his head out of his butt, because when he's been doing things he might better avoid, she seems to go along behind the car he's riding in, popping streetlamps out as he passes them
• Edie, my late grandmother. She's been gone since '92, but pops up in stories periodically.
• Tony, probably my oldest friend... I've known him since we were about 12. He was the first male with whom my mouth had absolutely no filter... I have no qualms about saying ANYTHING to him. He's married to His Darla, (not to be confused with My Darla, pictured above), and they have 2 precious little boys. He should also not be confused with Erin's Tony, who may or may not be included in the cast.

The critters:

Rhonda, my oldest, and bitchiest cat. I've had her since about '91. She's all white, with one gold and one blue eye. Feral to the bone, despite having a cozy house to live in since she was about 3 months old. Also known as Princess and Gorgeous. Firmly believes we should all worship her

• Bow, my second and brattiest cat. I've had her for 11 years now. Pastel calico, grey, beige & white. the fat cat of the family. Also known as Huzzbucket, Babycakes and The Brat. Firmly believes that anyone who comes through the door is there to hold her and/or scratch her.
• Leo, my baby, is almost 10 years old. He's a beige/yellow tabby. The big sissy of the family. Also known as Handsome and Honeyboy. Firmly believes that anyone who comes to the house is out to get him.
• Sable, my best boy's dog. She is a pit bull mixed mutt. Dumber than a rock. sweeter than you can possibly imagine. I've learned that it's just better for me to go in Nathan's room when I arrive at the house, let her out of her crate, and roll around on the floor with her for a minute, so that we can get on with life.
• Mr. Moro (currently known as Nicholas), Muffin, Mr. Tears, Boots-all are late cats

SLEEP

I'm getting very near the point where I will be totally sleep deprived! Week before last got all thrown outta whack on Monday night, when I stayed up until my new roommate arrived safely from Colorado, at 1 fucking 30 in the morning. Fortunately, I had made arrangements at work so I was able to sleep in and didn't HAVE to be at work until around 1, so I slept until about 8, had a shower, hit a restaurant for lunch and a little flirt, and took my tired ass to work, and then went home and picked up my roomie, and drove over to her workplace so she could see the route before she had to drive it the next day. By the time we had dinner and got back home it was almost 9. Wednesday's my day of torture at the gym, at 5 a.m. (yes, this is MY choice), so once I finished doing whatever I had to do before bed Tuesday night, and crawled in, and settled down to sleep (with 3 cats), it was about 11:30. Yay, I got 5 hours before the alarm went off at 4:15. Came home to pick up a couple of things, picked up the roomie at a meeting point, and off we went for the southwest side, for dinner with our crew. By the time we got back to her car and home, it was 8:30, and I needed clean underwear.... Finally crawled in bed about 11... don'tcha just LOVE 19 hour days??? Thursday was pretty much a blur and I had to take my car in for new brakes and leave it there. Friday I was supposed to go to Grapevine for the show, but by the time I hit Walmart for a handful of things, got home, picked up the roomie and had to go BACK to Walmart, I was pooped. Saturday, after about 4 hours of sleep, I did my first bellydance workshop. 3 hours of tribal with Rachel Brice. She, by the way is awesome! Some of the ways she can move her body are almost disgusting, but she puts on a helluva workshop. I was registered for hers and another on Saturday, plus 2 on Sunday. By the time we were down to about the last 1/2 hour of Rachel's, I was DONE. My arms & shoulders were burning, and my twice broken in the same place foot was screaming 'STOP NOW BITCH'. I went home for a nap, then back up for the show that night. Sunday was the show I was dancing in, and I knew that if I tried to do either workshop, I would not be able to dance in the show, so I just took a leisurely morning and early afternoon, then went up in time to get checked in for the show. Monday night Darla, Nathan & Nick arrived for a few days. More about that in my previous post... Friday we giggled more, as they came back around 11:30 that night, with Nathan STILL sick. I missed Beginning day because I was having a bout of whatever Nathan had. Roomie & I managed to get to the grocery store, Walmart, the hardware store, and church over the weekend, but damn were we wiped out... we both slept for like 2 hours yesterday afternoon. I went to bed about 10, hardly able to keep my eyes open, and with a RAGING migraine, so I took a hydrocodone, and flopped into bed, thinking I would be out in no time (as is fairly normal when I take the hydrocodone). notsomuch this time... I think it was 11:30 before I fell asleep, and THEN I woke up at 12:45, 1 something, 2 something, 3:30, 4:15, and finally at 4:55. So yeah, I'm going on like 5 hours of sleep... not good zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz