So, we went over to Sara's the other night for a 'cookie baking' party, which was more a 'me baking and everyone else watching TV' sort of thing...

and now my butt hurts. How fucked up is that?

I mean, I understand why... Sara doesn't really have what you'd call 'counter space' so she set up the cookie area on a low coffee-table thing, and had little stools around it.

Well, because of my ankle and my knee problems (and let's face it, I'm FAT) I had to sort of center myself over the stool and then drop onto it in order to sit. And most of the people at the party were not even remotely interested in helping, they were interested in watching Shrek III, so it was just me, and a bit of Sara, so I'm popping up and down every 7 minutes as cookies go into and out of the oven.

I have big HUGE black and blue marks over the lower part of my backside. About the width of my hand.

Ow.

Fucking. Ow.

Can I get a do-over for yesterday? Reset? Return to previous save point.

Loading. Please wait....

Argh.

1 - Took Jess to the doctor. A few weeks ago, she got these glowie necklaces and she and her cousin Mike spent an afternoon playing with them. When we got home, she'd managed to break one of them open and get this glowie liquid in her eye. Jess was quite distressed, and apparently the stuff was quite painful. I flushed her eye out and she eventually went to bed.

I honestly don't know if the two things are related, but about a week later, I noticed she had a little bit of a rise under her eye. I didn't think much of it; one of the major disadvantages of having Stafford eyes (aside from the fact that we look a little bit like goldfish) is a tendency to get things in the eye. I've had styes on and off most of my life. But usually they go away in a week to two weeks, and here is it almost a month later, and she's still complaining that her eye hurts...

So, we go to the doctor who tell me she's got a Chalazion (which, sounds to me like a sort of fancy pizza or a pasta dish... or a small yellow flower...) Anyway, we have to put antibiotic ointment IN her eye twice a day, use compresses, and if it's not better in a week, take her to a pediatric eye doctor for the possibility of surgical removal. Yeah, Jess is gonna love that. She's already panicky about her eye since the LAST time she had to have medical treatment.

2 - The city changed our voting location. Like the library was so damn far away... and they weren't really clear about notifying us. Our voter registration card didn't have an address where the poll location was supposed to be... so we went to the library like normal and got redirected to Fairways instead. Fortunately, I knew where that was, as the surly lady at the library's directions were revolting. (This is not a reflection on the library or the librarians, who have always been nice and helpful, this was a volunteer polls worker and was obviously peeved about all the people who'd come to the library by mistake. She was very sigh-y and huffy about explaining what had happened in the 'I've done this 400,000 times today' sort of way.)

Fairways is a church. And while I am given to understand that churches often use their rooms for other non-church sorts of purposes, I don't feel that it's a very neutral voting location. Certainly, in all the years that I've been voting, I've never before voted in a non-government building. Usually it's the school or the library. There was a big old cross on the wall too. And the whole place smelled of incense, which I thought was rather pretty and made Kevin hack and wheeze. And we didn't get a little "I voted" sticker. I don't know why this bothers me, but it does.

Kevin suggests that it might have been the church rather than the elementary school next door because we have a registered sex offender in our neighborhood. (We do, you know. There was a big thing about it a few years ago and the newspaper came around and asked questions and stuff... ) Anyway, he's not allowed to set foot on school property, and so they might have put the polls at the church to accommodate that particular law. I'm not sure how likely that is. It's not like anyone pays attention to their rights.

3 - After we voted, we ran over to the nearby drugstore to get a 12-pack of soda (I drink entirely too much soda; despite several attempts to cut back, I never can seem to manage it for very long). Kevin and Jess stayed in the car and I ran inside. The area in front of the cashier's counter was a little cluttered with display items that had just come in for Xmas and weren't quite set up yet, so you had to do this awkward sort of shuffle to get up there, and as I got to the line, I noticed it was made worse by this... erm. Woman.

Now, I live in a Navy town, and I've lived in the area of military bases for quite a while. This would not be the first time I've seen a whore, but this was certainly the first time I'd been that close to one.

Her hair was piled on top of her head and held there by what might have been a whole can of hairspray. Her makeup was caked on so thick that it creased around her mouth when she talked - and she was talking the WHOLE time, holding one of those tabloid magazines in one hand and gesturing emphatically with the other. Her lipstick was unevenly applied to her mouth and she had a large bruise on the right side of her throat that was ill-concealed by makeup. She smelled... odd. Like clams and beer and sweat and some sort of cheap perfume.

She wore a skirt that didn't quite conceal the bottom of her underwear, and purple tights with a few runs in them, and the ugliest shoes I've ever seen. Plastic and leopard spots. Her shirt did this sort of scoop thing where her breasts were pushed together and out and the whole outfit was topped off with this black gauzy shawl that was falling off her shoulders.

She was complaining about some doctor's divorce and closely questioning everyone who came into the line, leaning over them and gesticulating. When I got up in line, she ran one hand from my neck to my elbow, which made me flinch away from her so badly that I knocked over three of the Xmas displays. I got my soda and got out of there. When I got back to the car, I noticed that the beer and clams smell of her was clinging to my dress.

UG.

4 - Guild drama. The less said about this, the better. Like all guild drama, it is stupid, it is petty, and it is boring to anyone who's not involved.

A week ago, we lost one of our better healers because he got a guild website email telling him he was stupid and useless for a post he made there about mana conservation during the curator fight. Which had been sent to him by an officer, although he wouldn't tell the guild leader WHICH officer had sent it. The Guild Leader spent twenty minutes yelling at three of the officers that he suspected of doing it, while a fourth officer sat around and made snide remarks. Turns out, the fourth officer was the one who HAD done it, and he just SAT there and let them take blame and shit for it.

Yesterday, the guild leader quit the guild, after attempting to yell at Kevin and I for bringing a few of the officers over to a raid hosted by my friends at Fifth SOF (another guild). The raid leader there told me I could invite anyone that I personally vouched for. Knowing that their conduct and gear would be noted, I did not extend an invitation to either the guild leader OR the officer who'd written the nasty email. Go figure. I wanted to make a good impression on my friends from SOF so that we might be invited back. Keeping in mind these are raids that Wild Bunch is currently not going to have a prayer of getting to, so it's not like we were in lockout from raiding with Wild Bunch, and it was on one of our non-raid nights, so we weren't abandoning a guild raid to do it. It did not occur to me that I needed to INFORM our guild leader that we were doing it - especially since I didn't want to tell him to his face that there's no way I would have invited him. Apparently he felt differently...

Ah well...

He's quit, and the note-writing idiot is likely to follow him. The question now comes up: do we want to stay with Wild Bunch and try to fix things, or do we want to just let the guild disband?

Ug... what a day.

Why is it always the little things in my life that get me down?

Why is all the big things my husband does and that I love him for get ground down by all the petty irritations?

• Why is it that Kevin's not capable of putting a damn roll of toilet paper on the roll when he uses the last bit, but can ALWAYS take the time to turn the roll around if I put it on with the free end hanging down the back?
• What is is about the trash? Taking the trash out is supposed to be his job. And yet, the trash bags have to stack up three deep in the kitchen before he takes them out, and there's still a litter bag in the bathroom? Not to mention the soda boxes he can't be bothered to crush and throw out. Or pizza boxes. Or any other 'large trash' that doesn't conveniently find itself put into bags, because why bother with a bag for a box? I mean, seriously, it takes up the whole damn bag.
• Speaking of the trash, why does he always have to take the trash OUT and THEN bring the mail in? 90% of what we get in the mail is trash anyway, so all he does is half fill another bag.
• Why does he have to wait until I've turned music ON to decide that he wants to watch television?
• Why does he get huffy with me if I leave the room because he's watching something I'm not remotely interested in (or actively dislike.) It's nothing personal, I just can't concentrate on anything if the brainsucker is on.
• Why does the TiVo feel like a goddamn to-do list? You know, I was perfectly happy MISSING television shows and either catching them on reruns or buying the series on DVD. Now I feel guilty about everything that's stacked up on the fucking TiVo. Just not quite guilty enough to watch it.
• Jess is mostly going to the potty now. This is good. Sometimes she wants Kevin to take her, and sometimes she wants me to do it. Why is it that Kevin can't be bothered to wipe the floor down if Jess misses her mark? Furthermore, what idiot designed a training potty with 500 million nooks and crannies for pee to get trapped in when a toddler misses the mark? I'm really, really tired of washing that thing out.
• Why is is, you think, that dishes come in two batches - not quite enough to be worth running the dishwasher, and just too many to fit in the dishwasher?
• Why can't the rental office get their goddamn web site working. On time. With the correct rent amounts on it? Although I must admit, it's amusing to find out that they forgot to turn on the monitor for our water this month, so we don't have to pay it.
• Further, why did maintenance have to leave the torn-down gutters in the walkway out of our apartment... haul the damn things away, or throw them in the trash, but they're a goddamn hazard where they are.
• My birthday this year pretty much sucked. SUCK. ED. Teh Suxzor. Uber sux. My present from Kevin? Two sticks of RAM. Guess what? They make my computer crash. For the first time in 35 years, I didn't get a cake. At all. No cakes. Not even a cupcake. My father brings his goddamn broken computer over to our house on my birthday, wanting Kevin to fix it, so for my birthday I have an annoyed husband yelling "fucking stupid piece of shit machine" all evening instead of someone paying attention to me. My birthday present from my dad is a check. That I can use to pay for a little less than half of one of my crowns.
• Every time I think I'm getting close to done with my dentist appointments, I keep getting another one tacked on to the end. I have at least 5 more appointments. And every time I have an appointment, I get a terrible headache. If you'd told me 18 months ago that it would have been this bad and time consuming, I think I'd have just said 'fuck it.'
• I hate insurance companies. My prescription coverage went WAAAAY down this year. Instead of $60 a month, my scripts are now costing about $100 a month. Which means between that and my crowns, we're not going to have enough in flex spending to last for the rest of the year. Some lady and her two kids 'accidentally' got onto Kevin's coverage. A bunch of our flex spending was used to cover some of their scripts. We still don't know if we'll ever get that money back.
• Did I mention my birthday RAM doesn't work? It's now been sitting on my desk for almost a week. I don't know where Kevin got it, or what their return policy is. Kevin's supposed to be talking to them about returning it. This is me, not holding my breath. This is me also noticing that $170 is a lot of money to just be sitting around on my desk not working.
• Kevin's supposed to take the car in for inspection this year, since I've done it the last four or five years in a row. Who wants to bet I end up doing it again anyway...
• My father called this morning and wanted to know if any of the data on his crashed hard drive was recoverable. This is the hard drive that they were warned by their computer was crashing, and they didn't make backups then. I am so fucking tired of people using my husband as goddamn free tech support. I'm also fucking tired of him continuing to do it.
• I'm also sick and tired of 5,000 bits and pieces of computer hanging around the house. Every time I say something about it, Kevin tells me he can't 'just throw it out.' This does not keep Kevin from enforcing the stuffed animal 'rule.' Every time I get a new stuffed animal (for me, not for Jess), I have to throw one away. SIGH.

If you're one of the seven people in the world who hasn't read Richard Adam's Watership Down, you probably should stop reading my blog and go check it out of your local library.

Unfortunately, I can't lend it to you, as I can't find my copy, which is too bad, since I wanted to start this entry out with a quote from the book that goes something like this:

Humans have a saying, "It never rains but it pours." This is not true, as it frequently rains without pouring, although... something something something....

Rabbits, on the other hand, say "One cloud feels lonely."

It's a nice quote, and it sort of sums up the last few days nicely.

I swear, though, I can never, ever get any money into savings...

Every time I put money into savings, something happens. Last year, it was a $700 car inspection on top of $400 for Kevin to get crowns for his teeth, on top of the TV releasing all its magic smoke...

This year, we got almost $2700 back in taxes (your government at work, interest-free savings account... not that I should complain, if we put that $2700 into a savings account, we might have gotten a whole $.80 back in interest for the year...) so Kevin decided it was time to get himself a new computer.

His friend at one of the vendors he works with cut him a really nice deal; he got like $1700 worth of system for just a little over $1k.

Yesterday, I took my antibiotics and prepared to go into the dentist to get a post and fill for my most recent root canal (3 down, one to go). About the same time, Kevin's new computer arrives. I go out to the car. Key in the ignition. Clickclickclick.

Greeeeeeat.

I called and canceled my dentist appointment, but it does mean (having already taken my antibiotics) that I'll have a yeast infection later this week and will not have actually gotten any damn dental work done...

Fortunately, we have a nice mobile phone roadside service plan ($2.99 a month, and we get up to 8 assistances per year for 'free') and I called them. The tow truck came out, gave us a jump and we were good. We went to the Autozone, got a new battery (and while there had a conversation with the Autozone employee, Brian, and one of his other customers, Clarence, about root canals and the expense of dental work, and I wonder what it says that four adults, all 25-35 years old, were standing around outside the Autozone, all having had root canal work in the last year, and three of us in the last 2 months...) and thought we were good.

Ha. Ha, I say. Ha.

After we got home, maintenance came over to the apartment and repainted the bathroom ceiling. It looks great, except they didn't put their tarps down very well, and there's paint all over my sink and everything around my sink (including my toothbrush. paint! on my toothbrush!). In any case, we went to go out to the store to get a cable for Kevin's new computer (his old speakers aren't working right with the new sound card) and some new toothbrushes, and guess what.

Oh, yeah.

Not even a click.

We could hear this weird ticking noise inside the glove compartment and opened it up to find the light in there wasn't turning off, and was flashing oddly. Kevin yanked the bulb out, but the clicking didn't stop.

So I called the roadside assistance people again (have I said how nice they are? Very professional and courteous, and no stupid 'push 1 to enter your name via alpha numeric code' menus.) and they sent out the exact same towtruck guy as yesterday... (if he comes over again, Jess is going to start thinking he's a friend.)

He put the key in the ignition to roll the car back for the tow. And of course, it starts. What is it with my car??? Jesus crispy christ.

Anyway, not wanting to get stuck with an unreliable car, I had the damn thing towed down to the Firestone anyway....

Not much after that, I was eating some lunch (a tuna sandwich, ok? we're not talking about rock candy or anything...) and my temporary filling fell out. You know? The one they were going to be replacing YESTERDAY if I'd been able to get to the goddamn dentist.

Fortunately, the car problems turned out to be just a corroded battery cable, so hopefully (knocks on wood, sacrifices a goat, and burns some incense) that's all over with.

But I swear, if anything else goes wrong this week, I'm going to hurt someone.

Sometimes, even the simplest of tasks is hazardous.

I was fixing lunch for Jess. I got a hotdog out of the fridge, got a knife out of the drawer, and started slicing up the hotdog.

Jess opened the drawer where the silverware is and I turned. "Could you close that, honey?" I asked her. Jess did. Right on her fingers. She yowled, yanked the drawer back open and hit herself in the face with it.

She screamed again.

"Are you all right, pumpkin?"

"NO!' She yelled, running into her bedroom.

I followed her. "Sweetie, are you -" SLAM. She slammed the door to her bedroom in my face. I blinked, then screamed myself.

"oh, dear god, that hurts..."

I barely catch myself from falling immediately (which would have been very very bad, as the hallway is cluttered with soda boxes and falling on them would probably be no fun) and slowly lower myself to the floor.

My toe is... well, feels like it's been split in half. Jess is in her bedroom screaming. The ceramic "here there be dragons" sign that has hung on Jess's door for the last three years is on the floor. In pieces.

My toe is split from the top, along the nail, all the way down to the first knuckle, turning an interesting shade of purple, and bleeding profusely.

Jess comes out of her bedroom a few minutes later and sees me laying on the floor. "Sowwy 'bout dat. Lunch?"

It's o'dark thirty. Mostly still dark, although just the faintest sliver of light touches the curtains in the bedroom, turning them from black to very dark blue. I'm trying to focus, even without my glasses, on the clock that's less than eight inches away from my nose.

Those commercials, the ones that show a headache sufferer with a vise-grip on his head? They've got it all wrong. It isn't like that... it's more like something's inside, trying to get out.

My neck aches. I wish I could pull one of those Genie-from-Aladdin moments and pop my head off to twist it around a few times. That sounds like it might help.

Right. I suddenly remember that I own a pair of glasses.

5 a.m. I glance at the ceiling. Just about time for ::CRASH:: yep. My upstairs neighbor - he's in the navy - has yanked the shower-rod off the bathroom wall again. I have the hardest time not imagining this... some naked, soaking wet, soapy navy guy cursing and stomping his feet as water streams all over the bathroom, wet, slick plastic curtain clinging to him. Usually that image gets a good chuckle. Today, however, I'm not smiling. My head hurts that much.

My face is made from porcelean. A smile will crack it. There's this tiny fellow inside my head with a jackhammer. The noise in my head is so loud I can barely hear anything else. Has the fan turned off? I concentrate, a little. Eventually the whir and rush of the fan penetrates enough that I can start to hear other things. Kevin's harsh and rhythmic breathing that's not quite a snore. Sterling is in the hallway. He must know I'm awake, he's making little murphly noises, hoping I might get up and feed him. I don't. That's a rule in this house. Cats do not get fed until I (or Kevin) am the fuck out of bed.

I look at the clock again. I fumble around on my bedside shelf until I find my soda. Sometimes just getting something to drink will bring the headache down to a dull roar, at least enough to be able to think.

5:27 a.m. I can think a little bit, now. Mostly I remember that my desk is a mess. Trying to find a place to sit my Wendy's Chicken sandwich (slightly better than McDonald's chicken sandwich, which isn't very much praise at all and makes it slightly more tasty than cardboard stuffed between bread) was like trying to find a warm spot in the Arctic. Except the Arctic doesn't have stickers all over it.

5:39 a.m. Have I really been thinking about a chicken sandwich for over ten minutes? Yep. I close my eyes. The headache grows worse. I'm starting to feel sick to my stomach. Damnit. I roll over, sliding/falling out of bed. The floor is nice. It's a bit cooler down here. I lay on the floor, draped over a pile of dirty laundry. It's getting lighter. Grendel stares at me from his hiding spot under the bed, just next to the box of hairbands that I never wear anymore. My neighbor is ready for work. He slams the door. I wince.

5:46 a.m. Slowly, I get to my knees, then to my feet, using the bed for support. I stumble around the bed, tripping twice. Once over my shoe and the other time over the cat. (It is always darkest just before stepping on the cat.) I debate the lightswitch in the bathroom. No. Too much light. I wonder if I'm actually going to throw up this time. I usually don't, although sometimes I do. I wash my face, and the act of bending over the sink is too much. I dry heave into the sink for a while.

6:17 a.m. I manage to leave the bathroom, headed for the kitchen. I wish I could keep my pills in the bathroom, but they have to stay dry and Kevin takes these huge steamy showers. I'm afraid to put them in the bedroom. Have you ever seen my nightstand? I might lose the damn things. I fumble with the child-proof packaging for a while. Peel paper off back of tab. Punch pill through foil. Glass of water... I check the clock again. I should feel significantly better in two hours, or I can take another pill. Usually it takes less time than that. The first time I had one of these pills, I felt better in 20 minutes.

6:21 a.m. Staggering into the living room, I trip over one of Jess's toys. I think. It might have been eight of Jess's toys. I'm not the world's greatest housecleaner. I'm not even in the top 50%. I'm seriously annoyed. I pick up a few toys. Suddenly, I'm like Ripley in Aliens 2. "Oh, look, I made a clean spot. Guess I'll have to do the whole thing."

My head is pounding. There are black spots dancing around just on the edges of my vision. My stomach is rebelling against a half glass of lukewarm water. I'm sweating like I just ran a race. There's a star-shaped sticker stuck to the bottom of my foot. I keep cleaning. To distract myself, I start counting which ones of these stuffed animals used to be mine, a million years ago before I had children.

Child. One child. Who makes enough mess for 80. My friend Julia had another miscarriage. This makes 11, I think. I can't imagine that, I can't imagine her stupid selfish husband who insists on not adopting or not getting donor sperm when its his bloody translocated something or other that's causing all these problems in the first place. Ranting about someone I've never met's husband that I wouldn't know from Adam is distracting. I cannot see out of my left eye at all. The black spot has taken it over. That's all right. Even being able to see half a mess is enough. Stuffed panda, into the box. Pick up 23 pegs. There are supposed to be 25. I sit on the sofa for a bit and put the pegs in the peg board. I arrange them from top to bottom according to how many sides they have (circle, triangle, square, hex, star). I further arrange them in spectrum order from side to side ( red orange green blue purple). The orange hex and the green square are missing.

6:48 a.m. I hear Kevin's alarm clock singing Hips Don't Lie in the bedroom. I loathe that song. I'm not the only one. Hey, at least I can hear again. Mostly. Thinking about it, the noise in my ears surges again. I hold my nose for a moment, popping my eardrums.

7:24 a.m. I take Jess's bath toys back into the bathroom. She keeps wandering off with them. I think that I need a net bag to put them in. Which would require putting a hook up somewhere in the bathroom. And probably wouldn't do any good at all. Kevin, getting into the shower, raises an eyebrow at me.

"You're up early today."
"..."
"Oh. That bad, huh?"
"...."
"Yeah. Hope you feel better soon."

7:42 a.m. I sit down on the ottoman. I have a cabbage patch doll in my lap. She's mostly bald. Her yarny hair is only around the edges of the scalp. Usually, this isn't a problem, as her hair is braided, but Jess tugged the braids out the other day, and now she looks like some sort of demented monk with an overenthusiastic tonsure. I comb my fingers through the yarn, untangling it. I pull several cat-shaped stickers out of her hair and one pony off the back of her head. I part her hair and rebraid it, tying the bows around the edges of the braids. They're lopsided. I remember my own cabbage patch doll. My grandfather drove through a bad snow storm to get her for me in Canada for Christmas one year. She had a white dress with blue flowers on it and a French name. Collette? I can't remember. I put the doll's sweater back on and toss her in the toy bin, lopsided braids and all.

8:01 a.m. Oh, look. I can see again. I get myself a glass of milk. The floor is completely clutter-free. Kevin comes in, shaking water out of his curls.

"Wow, it looks nice in here."

"It's Tuesday," I say, as if this is some sort of explanation. It is, actually. If warcraft wasn't down for its weekly maintenance, I might have logged on while I waited for the pill to kick in.

"Ah."

8:10 a.m. Oh, this is going to be a good day, I think. My sarcasm monitor goes off dimly in the back of my head. I can't hear it over the rest of the racket in my brain. Seven more minutes and I take another pill. I've never had to take two in one day before.

8:12 a.m. THROB. My vision goes completely grey. It's like looking at the world through an ancient camera. Everything is this lovely, antique shade of amber. I supress a mercifully brief urge to vomit milk all over my keyboard.

8:14 a.m. Headache is gone. It's like it never existed at all.

So, I spent last night throwing up, how was your weekend?

There are times and places to notice that you're not a very good housekeeper, even on your best days.

Laying on the floor in the bathroom, head pillowed in a pile of towels that need to be washed after losing your dinner into the bathtub (didn't quite make the toilet... so Kevin had to go out last night and get Drano. fun fun) really... just isn't the time.

Unfortunately, I was too weak and still nauseated to leave said bathroom floor and quite too miserable to actually sleep, I spent a while observing my bathroom floor from eye-level.

Blech. Good thing I'd already tossed my cookies, eh?

Kevin, who is extremely grouchy about people not taking his allergy to shellfish seriously - my step-mother and dad invited us to dinner Friday night and we went to one of the 400 million hole in the wall for locals only little seafood dives - is saying I must have food poisoning from the crab I ate on Friday. (He had a bacon cheeseburger that he says the best thing about it was that the tomato was fresh. He doesn't like tomatoes, so that's pretty impressive.)

Greg went into the ER earlier this week with a very nasty stomach bug... they weren't able to find out what was causing it, except that it wasn't food poisoning (or cancer, I think was the other nasty thing they checked for). Liz had a stomach bug *last* weekend that, I understand, was particularly unpleasant. I saw Liz weekend *before* last, so I'm wondering if it's some sort of long-incubating virus.

I'm pretty sure, at least, that it wasn't a reaction to yesterday's dinner, since Jess had some and she is playing, completely unconcerned, in the living room, and Kevin is still asleep.

In any case, I still don't feel well, haven't quite dared eat anything yet, and am still having occasional pains in my abdomen.

Um... does anyone know how to get rid of gremlins?

This weekend:

- the window in the bedroom collapsed and is now stuck shut. (not entirely bad, as it's summer and I probably won't have the window open much but the apartment complex maintenance guys are going to have to rip out the ENTIRE window and replace it, which will take several hours and we may have to sleep one night with a tarp in a hole in the wall)

- the vaccuum cleaner died. Well, not entirely, but the carpet sweeper part of it did and really, the ground-in dirt in our house is really ground-in, so we need all the help we can get. (replacement vaccuum, $50-$150 depending on model)

- There was a weird ripple in our apartment Saturday night at 8:30 which ended with 2 blown out light bulbs and Kevin's watch stopped. (We *think* those two things were coincidence, but who knows? We'll have to take his watch in to get repaired, because even something as simple as changing the battery on this watch isn't possible because of 15 tiny little screws)

- Took the car in for inspection... brake overhaul... $400. Plus the front headlight assembly needs to be replaced. Dunno how much that's going to run yet, the parts store wasn't open yet. (Kevin had to get a ride to work today and I have no fucking clue how we're going to pick up the car once it's ready to go.)

- I decided to make bread yesterday only to discover that the paddle assembly on the bread pan was rusted in place and won't budge. Checking prices of replacement pans, it'll only be about $5 more to buy a new bread machine. ($50-$75)

- the sink and the tub in the bathroom are backed up again. (At least we don't have to pay for that, since maintenance takes care of it, but sheesh...)

My life.

No instructions. Not even those stupid little picture ones that never make any sense and by the time you've finished assembling the thing you realize you had it upside down and backwards the entire time...

No guarantees. Not even a complicated, with reciept and original packaging in the first 72 hours only sort of return product.

Void everywhere except on the Lunar crater, Daedalus. Unfortunately, I'm not on the moon.

Let's see...

The beginning of the week, last week, I had a systemic infection. Fevers of over 102, pain, chills. Of course, I didn't get to take a day off. I still had to change diapers, do dishes, watch the child thing.

Last week Kevin and I attempted to go to the dentist. I was just getting into the chair for my work when the dentist was called home by the police. Um. Well. I can understand that, but I have enough trouble actually going to my dentist appointments in the first place without making them more trouble than they're worth.

Not to mention the fact that I have to take antibiotics before every appointment. Which give me certain female troubles that you don't want me to talk about too much. So I had to deal with that last week for nothing.

That afternoon, Jess was watching television when there was a loud series of popping noises. I looked over and the screen on the television was completely white. A minute later, a coil of greyish smoke snaked out of the back.

That evening, Kevin and I dragged Jess to Sam's Club, Wal-mart, and Circuit City. We finally bought a 27 inch Phillips. It's nice enough, I guess (no, really, it is. It's got a great picture and Kevin managed to get it hooked up with only a tiny amount of cursing and grumbling) but I didn't really feel like dumping $400 into a new television right about now.

Jess has taken to no napping (ug) and sleeping in the closet at night. This makes me exceptionally nervous and I'm back to getting up in the middle of the night several times to check on her. After all, insists my mutant worry-brain, she can open doors. She could, conceivably, climb out the window and wander off. She could... I don't know all the things she could do, but rest assured, I've considered half a million of them in the last two weeks or so. And not gotten much sleep. And with no napping, I'm not even getting a nap. I'm so tired half the time I could just cry.

I got an unexplained bill in the mail. CHKD says we owe them almost $100. Jess hasn't been to a doctor since October. There's no details on the bill, and it's not a nasty-you-haven't-paid-us type bill, so I called them to find out what the deal was. Their service line was so busy it shunted me to voicemail. They haven't returned my call.

Saturday, we had some friends over. Kevin decided to scrub the house again. I swear, I hate that. We have *friends*, not drill sargeants. No one is going to be the least bit offended if there are a few cheerios on the floor. (Well, if they are, they can keep it right the fuck to themselves, or go away.) I am personally tired of cleaning. I no sooner get things cleaned then Jess trashes them again. It doesn't even take an hour anymore. I quit. I do not CARE anymore if I can see the floor. If Penny eats week-old fruit loops from under the couch cushions next time Liz and Matt are down, that's their problem. I'm done.

We went back in for our make-up dentist appointments today (the dentist is usually closed on Wednesday, but they were open today to makeup for last week). I had to take antibiotics again today (see above about female problems). My appointment went fine and I have two reconstructed teeth in the front. In two weeks, I'll go back in and get two more done. It may take a while before I'm finished with the dentist. Months. Years, even. So that wasn't too bad, even if I got stuck watching Dr. Phil for an hour.

Kevin's appointment... was not so great. The procedure failed and Kevin's got an appointment with the oral surgeon tomorrow. The less said about that, the better, probably. I have to cancel my pulmonary appointment for tomorrow and reschedule.

Kevin is, of course, not feeling well. He's taken some pain meds and gone to bed. I doubt he'll do anything today or tomorrow aside from go to his appointment. In the meanwhile, I'll change diapers, watch the baby, do dishes, take out trash (we're out of trashbags and I'd love to know why this is my fault. He uses the damn things, too, so why am I responsible for noticing that we've gone through 150 trashbags?) and go to the grocery store today. With Jess, of course, since Kevin doesn't feel well and can't watch her this afternoon while I do the shopping.

Void everywhere except on the Lunar crater, Daedalus. Unfortunately, I'm not on the moon.

I sure wish I was, though.

I don't really mean this apartment, although that would be nice.

The place I need to be out of is this sort of greyness around my heart and head that's just dragging everything down into this meaningless muddle of fog.

I'm so exasperated and tired and depressed.

I'm on the edge of tears and have been for days now and I can't seem to actually push forward enough to have a useful crying jag.

I can't stay in a good mood, my moods are as fragile as glass. I start thinking maybe everything will be ok, and then I use a sharpie to write OMA on a box of cookies (because honestly, I like Karen's grandmother, even though I've never met her) and then my mother-in-law calls to say she's 10 minutes from my house and is it ok to drop by. Well, no, not really, because Liz and I were 5 seconds from walking out the door to do some errands and I say Sure, why not, and they stay for 20 minutes or so, which really isn't long, but delays us some and then there's a 45 minute line at the UPS store (you'd think 4 people would be able to wait on more than 1 customer at a time)... and another quick errand turns into a long line and Liz is getting more impatient by the microsecond, which I don't blame her at all for, and I shouldn't have asked in the first place, because it's putting this huge burden on our friendship, but I don't know when else I could have done these things because Enzo's father had two heart attacks and Kevin's going to have to work on Thursday and Lee's daughter is in a school play, and Kevin's working late tonight (16 hour day, so what the fuck am I bitching about?) and everything in Chesapeake is too crowded and takes 8 times longer than it should and by the time we got to lunch, she's completely out of sorts with me. And believe me, I know it, even before she accidentally sent a text message to me instead of Matt. Jess had two massive poo bombs yesterday, one during her nap that necessitated doing a load of laundry and another one that needed a change of clothes. And I forgot all about the sharpie, I'm usually pretty good about remembering to keep things like that away from Jess, but... anyway, four days before Christmas and my daughter's got black marker all over her face and all over the blinds in the living room and has spent all morning wanting me to put her doll in its blanket... this doll was supposed to be a christmas present, but it wasn't wrapped and of course she found it this morning, so it's stuff the doll into the blanket and three minutes later it's stuff the doll into the blanket and three minutes later...

I have cookies I haven't baked and fudge I haven't made and cards I haven't mailed and the CDs I wanted to give all my gamers as a Christmas present have turned into the fucking project from hell to the point that by the time it was done I had to impose on Kevin and his schedule to burn some CDs because my CD burner died and to download some software because my trial version expired and Print was one of the disabled features, and the other software that I downloaded didn't have CD insert booklets as one of the forms, and I couldn't figure out how the custom label size feature worked and by the time it was finally all done, Kevin was yelling at me about were there any more fucking miracles I'd like him to pull out of his ass this year, or could he just be left alone. This from the man who doesn't know or care what his family gets for Christmas and has left that entirely in my lap to attend to...

I want to find something to be grateful for. I know that I sound like an over-priveledged white suburbanite, but it seems like nothing I do is easy and nothing I do is worth doing and nothing that I do actually goes right. I'm in dread of the holidays. Just what I want. More shit that I have no place to store, in exchange for shit that I could barely afford that won't be appreciated all for a holiday I have no religious attachment to. I don't think Kevin's stuff is going to be here before Christmas at all and so at my parents house I'll have one tiny package for him... a movie that he already knows he's getting. It was in the 5.99 rack at Target.

Someone accused me the other day of being a "little fucking ray of sunshine." I wish I was. A ray of sunshine would be light years away from here now.

Sometimes having a high IQ is NOT all it's cracked up to be... Certainly there are less practical applications for intelligence than you might suppose.

1) I have waited very, very late to begin Christmas shopping, and I have NO FUCKING CLUE what to get some people.

2) Walking out of the bedroom this afternoon, I knocked a bag from Target on the floor and stepped on it. It contained - Ribbon for wrapping Christmas Presents (flat) and 4 refills for our plug in air-fresheners, which all popped in a glorious drenching of breezy freshness. Well. At least the bedroom smells nice.

3) I misread one of my cookie recipes and used 3/4 a stick of butter instead of a 3/4 of a cup of butter

4) I was so busy trying to get things done today that could be done today that I wrapped all the presents I have currently inhouse. Forgetting completely that I wanted to take pictures of the photo album (recursive, anyone) that I made, so I could look at them later. And that I was going to show them off to Liz.

5) My CD burner went kaput. This is not entirely my stupidity or anything, but is VERY annoying because I am planning on giving several people custom CDs as part of their gifts, and now I only have one burned and I have no idea how I'm going to get the rest of it done. Again, not that it's my fault, but it does make things difficult.

6) I left a pound of butter on top of the stove when I baked cookies. Go ahead. Try and imagine... you can't....

7) I've purchased a new dress for Jess for christmas. It's very cute. She only has one pair of shoes. They're sneakers. Bleh.

Today, just before lunch, one of the DBAs comes up to Kevin as he and Scott are headed down to the cafeteria.

"Hey! Kevin, I haven't seen you recently. Congrats on the TPM position."

Kevin blinks. "Um. I didn't *get* the TPM position. I got a form letter from HR just after the ISO audit."

DBA: "Really? That... oh. Well... I thought... but? I'm confused. I thought you were..."

Kevin: "..."

Scott has extended the opinion that since the position has not been filled (no announcement made) that Dendrite NJ might have extended the hiring freeze to include Virginia (until after the new year) after the interviews took place but before the paperwork got pushed through.

Which leaves open the possibility that Kevin wasn't supposed to get the form reject letter.

Maybe.

It wouldn't be the first time they'd fucked up royally. I particularly like one of the Admins being told he was fired by one of the Operation Team Leads because while they'd cut his passwords and card-access and sent out an email about him being fired, no one had actually bothered to tell *him*.

So... either someone's just given Kevin a paper cut and poured lemon juice in it.

Or Dendrite fuct up. Again. Which would be a nice surprise. Sort of.

Gyah!

Someone remind me to just SHUT UP when I'm feeling all smug and happy about myself, ok?

OK.

Same mechanism - that of putting shit off until the very last minute - just bit me in the ass today.

About a month ago, I had a doctor's appointment and got refills for my various prescriptions. I tucked the script sheets in the car and promptly forgot to take them to the pharmacy.

Last night, I noticed that my Severent Disk was on its last blister. No problem, thinks me. I'll take the scripts in today and get them filled. Right?

Yeah, right.

We couldn't find the damn scripts. The best I can come up with is that Kevin threw them away by accident cleaning the car out about two weeks ago.

So.... I call my doctor to see if he'll call in the scripts for me.

My doctor is... on vacation until the 31st.

The message on the phone line says that someone will be in the office Monday and Wednesday of this week from 8 - 12 (it's now 1:20pm) and then not until the 28th.

Great.

So I have to go to the Patient First today and sit in a doctor's office for almost two hours so that someone who doesn't know me can go through my entire medical history with me, listen to my chest and say "You're not wheezing."

Like, no shit, pal. I take my medication regularly.

In any case, I finally got home from getting the scripts written, grocery shopping, picking up my medication, et el.

And people think I'm too hard on myself? Well, this is why. Every time I think I might be doing something right, I immediately get slapped for it. Easier to think I always do things wrong and then if things work out, I can be pleasantly surprised.

Didn't I just have a vacation?

A couple of baby-free days?

Sigh.

This morning: Jess has dumped a teaspoon or so of bright red triametic on the floor (she's got the sniffles) and on herself.

Dumped a quart or so of water down my shirt.

Spilled milk down her front and in her hair (and on the floor.)

Sneezed a mouthful of milk all over me.

Dumped her Cheerios all over the floor.

I had a vacation. Not all that long ago, either.

You know, before I had kids, I never wanted kids at formal functions like weddings and stuff.

Now I have kids. And I'd still like no kids at formal functions. Hand the baby off to someone else and go eat good food and listen to bad music for a few hours. Sounds great. Someone hurry up and get married. And no kids allowed!

I was going to write an entry about the stupid, immature, jackass thing that is going on between two friends of mine...

However, the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that the two immature jackasses aren't mature enough to deal with my opinion, and the rest of you already know and agree with everything that I would say on the virtue of having Been There and Done That.

Please pick up your t-shirt on the way out.

Tuesday night, I had vivid, upsetting sorts of dreams, woke up to the annoying sound of yarking dog and chirping cricket.

I hate autumn in this house. We've had a late run of flies that just sort of showed up. While they're big, fat and slow, there are also a lot of them. And we have those lamps with the upside down covers. Burning fly. Yummy. There are crickets everywhere. Loud ones.

Yesterday morning, while getting a soda, I had a three inch palmetto bug fly up the back of my shorts. (At least I'm going to assume that's what happened and that's why I noticed it, because the thought that he was in my shorts when I pulled them on in the morning and was crawling around inside there for a good ten-fifteen minutes before I noticed creeps me out entirely.) I screamed, batted it, Jess started crying, the roach gave me a dirty look and scurried under the stove. I didn't see it again, but it's probably still in the house. I spent most of the day rubbing absently at my arms and legs.

The back porch is crawling with ants. Sometimes they wander into the apartment. Jess thinks they're funny.

Coming home from the grocery store last night I had a cricket run over the top of my foot. Or maybe it was another palmetto bug, it was moving fast, so I have no idea, didn't get a good look at it.

I got up this morning - more crickets chirping... go away, there's no mates for you here - and went to the bathroom.

Sitting smugly on the floor in front of the toilet is a large brown spider. I'm not dressed and my shoes are all the way out in the livingroom.

The spider looks at me. I look at the spider.

"Oh, fuck you," I said. I grabbed a handful of tissue paper and squashed it against the side of the tub. Crunch.

The cricket's stopped chirping, for the moment. But I'm just waiting.....

I have, from time to time, considered legally changing my name. It doesn't cost all that much, really.

I usually talk myself out of it because it is sort of a frivolous expense. And it wouldn't do me any good anyway.

The family members who refuse to acknowledge that I haven't answered to my quote real name unquote in over 25 years aren't going to actually start calling me KT just because that's my legal name.

(As an aside, I really wish they WOULD, though, because I fucking HATE being called Kelly. I hate it, I loathe it, it makes my skin crawl and honestly, about 90% of the reason that I'm so goddamn tense around them is because they're PISSING ME OFF by not having the courtesy to call me by the name I ANSWER TO. "Kelly" isn't even my name, it's the SHORT form of a name I don't like.)

So, I'm doing this customer survey thing for diapers - they paid me $50 and gave me 4 weeks worth of free diapers - and I went in last night for my second interview. My interviewer checks my sheet.

"K. T. Hicks?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"What's that stand for?" Gods, I hate that question. I really do.

"My first name and my middle name. Which I don't go by."

"No, really, what do they stand for?"

"Does it matter?"

"No, I just want to know." Fuck you, lady.

"Sorry. I don't go by that name. K.T. is fine."

"Oh, now I'm really curious."

"Get used to disappointment."

"Why not?"

Ok, generally in situations, I'll go ahead and confess to my "real name" just to move on with my life. But I didn't like this lady to start with, and now she's gone and laid a hair across my ass with this.

"If I'd wanted to tell people, I'd go by it. No. Can we move on with the interview? I'm supposed to have dinner after I get home."

During my interview, which was partially on the computer, she continued to badger me about it.

"Well, what don't you like about it?"

"Everything." Click next to continue.

"Why don't you tell me, and then I'll tell you whether or not it's a good name?"

"Because I don't care what your opinion is?"

"It just doesn't seem right for a nice white girl like you to be going around with a made up name."

What? "Excuse me?"

"Well, you know, like all these colored ladies who name their kids stuff like Monaniqua."

Blink. Blink. "Really?"

"Yeah," she nods vigorously. "And Shawanda, and Patriqua and... made up crap."

"All names were originally made up," I said. I'm still in shock over someone using the word colored like that. I haven't heard that since the late 70's.

"No, they weren't," she retorts. "They mean something. Like Mack, which means 'son of' and John that means 'God's grace'. Good, proper names."

"I see." Click next to continue.

"I mean, if people keep getting away with that, you'll have some poor kid named Supercalifragilisticexpealidoscious."

"That might be difficult to spell." Click next to continue.

"So I guess your mom was one of those hippy weirdos and named you something like Moonunit, so you go by your initials because you're ashamed of it?"

"It must really bother you that the world doesn't conform to your limited little view."

"What?"

"I mean, they do make herbal supplements for all sorts of sexual frustrations, maybe you should consider taking some of them."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You ought to." Click next to end survey. Thank you, god.

"Well, I never -"

"Then it's probably good for you."

She gawks at me.

"Hey, lady," I say. "I don't just wear this shirt because it fits."

She glances at my t-shirt. Bites when provoked.

"Bye now."

At 6:45am - after staying up til 1am or so to kill dragons Blackrock Spire - the phone rings.

"Hello, Darling Daughter." Bright, cheerful. Perky.

"Mmmm." This is as bright and cheerful as I get at just-past-dawn o'clock.

"Did I wake you?"

Getting out of bed to walk down the hall. Kevin has not so much as twitched.

"Mm." That's early-morning mom-speak for "What do you think?"

"Oh. Well, I just wanted to let you know that Arthur called and the weather is going to be good for a few days."

"Really? Lovely." Weather? I care about the weather?

"Yes, and well, we have to make hay while the sun shines."

"Yeah, I know... been rainy a lot recently. Moldy hay. Bad for the animals." Where's my damn Mt. Dew? Trip over cat twice. Find soda. Turn on light. Woah. Too much light.

"Anyway, I'll be down next week, I think."

"Two weeks, right?" This project, estimated at 8-12 weeks, has been going on now for 13 months.

"Oh, yes."

"Kevin won't be here next week," I say, starting to clear up last night's late-night pizza boxes and plates.

"Well, we can walk over to that Mexican place, if you'd rather just take the stroller."

Crossly. "I can drive, dad."

"I know you can. Anyway, I'm really disappointed not to see you today. Give Jessie a big hug for me."

"I will."

"Love you."

"I know."

Click.

Fast forward til 9:15am

"... ook the bones of me, shook the bo-" slap

<KT> brb

Walk back through the hallway. Trip over the cat again. Jess bangs on the gate seperating the living room from the rest of the house.

"Honey?"

A bundle of blankets rolls over on the bed and peers at me flatly. "Mmm."

"Dad called this morning. He's not coming. You can turn your alarmclock off."

"mmm." Slaps alarm again.

Return to the computer.

<KT> bak

Just once, it might be nice to sleep in...

I got up this morning.

This. was a mistake.

I pulled on my bathrobe and started to wander over to the bathroom and baby's room and "oh, ICK. The floor is wet?"

At first I thought - since I'd emptied the bedroom trashcan yesterday and Kevin said later that one of my trashbags had leaked - that that was it. Although I didn't remember any wet spots last night when I went to bed.

My second thought was that the cats had finally given into evilness and peed on the floor. I blotted up the spot and sniffed. Nope. Just water.

My third thought was that Kevin forgot his towel in the bedroom and had to walk - wet - into the bedroom to get a spare towel.

However, the more I blotted at the water, the more there seemed to be. Eventually it occured to my sleep-stuffy brain that there was something really, really wrong here.

I started picking up laundry from the floor. Soaking wet. Kevin's Lord of the Rings Monopoly game? Wet. Our suitcase? Wet wet wet. Panicked, I called Kevin and the apartment complex. Kevin came home to help me move our stuff off the floor so it didn't get wet/ruined.

Maintenance showed up about an hour later... to discover that our upstairs neighbors (who are at work) had their water-heater explode and water was gushing out of the pipe up there and leaking down the inside of the walls to our apartment where it was seeping up under our carpet.

They're currently fixing the upstairs neighbor's place and then they'll send the wet-vac people over here to clean up the mess.

Gods.

I just met my new next door neighbor. Oh, gross.... *sigh*

To whomever was sending me aims this afternoon around 2:30-3pm or so... sorry, my phone was eating them. I got exactly no aims. Have no idea who you are or what you wanted. Unless, of course, you wanted money, in which case, I was ignoring you. Have a nice day.

Hi, my name is Headache and I have a small kt behind my left eyeball.

• It has occurred to me that the expense of going to the movies isn't worth it. $14-18 for movie tickets, $15 for 2 sodas, 1 popcorn and 1 candy bar, $25 for babysitter, $2 worth of gas there and back. $60 total. For 2 hours and 30 minutes of entertainment. I could just buy the fucking movie on DVD, sight unseen and THROW IT OUT if I didn't like it for less money. And the movie industry is wondering why ticket sales are down. Gee.
• Jess, who was apparently "wonderful" for the babysitter, decided to be hyperbabyfromhell after the babysitter left. She smacked me with the backscratcher so many times that I eventually took it away and threw it across the room. She is also endlessly fascinated with Shit On My Desk. Which annoys the crap out of me because I haven't got enough space for the shit I have, and it ends up all stacked up in the very back, so if I actually want to use some of it, I have to dig it out.
  

  Addendum: despite knowing that Jess is fascinated with Shit On Desks, Kevin still steadfastly refuses to check his desk before bed for things that she might get in to. Dice. Full, open cans of soda. A bowl of peas. Cup of coffee. His phone. Do I really fucking have to be responsible for all of my stuff and watching her and watching all his fucking stuff, too?

• At 4pm, coming home from the theater, JD calls me. "We doing stuff tonight?" "Sure, why not?" "Ok, we'll be over around 6:30-7ish." Hang up phone. "JD and them will be over around 6:30-7ish. I think, since my ankle's bothering me and it's going to take a while to do the grocery shopping and such, we should just put it off til tomorrow so we don't leave them stranded on the porch for half an hour or so.
  

  I shouldn't have fucking bothered to worry about them. No phone calls. And they show up around 9pm. I kept my mouth shut and let Kevin chew them all a collective new asshole for it. Which I think was perfectly justified, as they've been - none of them - taking my 'gentle' sarcasm and reminders to any degree of heart. I am very much hoping that next time, a tiny bit of common courtesy might be remembered.

And now I'm going to take my kt and go to bed. Maybe tomorrow, I won't have any kt left at all.

My life feels White Wolfy, and if I may steal a line from JD, it's reading something like What: The Fuck.

(White Wolf really capitalized on the 90's angst is cool - everything they wrote was "existence sucks." Vampires have angst because they "hurt people." Werewolves have angst because there was a war and they lost. Mages have angst because - well, actually, I don't know why. The mage book was far and away the most incomprehensible fucking thing I ever read, and that includes some of the treatise on whatthefuck-ology I read back in college. And if you write a comment to tell me how wonderful Mage is, I will merely lump you in with the group of fuck-wits who can't honestly say that "Solaris" was incomprehensible because they don't want to seem under-cranial. Just because someone created it don't make it art.)

There I go interupting myself again.

Anyhoo:

• I like to put Jess in those footie-pajamas. One piece, zips up the front. You know the kind, I'm sure. It keeps her from scratching her ankles raw at night, not to mention being relatively easy to get her in and out of. Always a plus.

  I'm having a lot of trouble finding them in her size. I can find them in 12 months and under. And I can find them in 3T and higher. (Sorry, I can't see putting a 5 year old child in those types of PJs, but still...) I don't think Jess is really old enough for a night-gown - not to mention that I never liked them myself... personally I don't see what's so comfortable about a garmet that ends up twisted all up and bunched up under your armpits.

  So we tried some of the two-piece pjs (shirt and pants) that we found in We Be Babies. They come with these bright yellow tags that read: For Child's Safety, garments should fit snugly. This garment is not flame resistant. Loose-fitting garment is more likely to catch fire. These should more properly read as: Because our inspection department sucks ass, this garment will not fit over your child's head. Likewise, you will probably break her fingers trying to get her hand out. Further, attempting to remove this garment will dislocate her shoulder. But it's fire-safe. Er. But really, there's nothing fire safe about this garment. Really.

• Last year, I wrote a fairly extensive bitch about allergies. Yeah, that time of year again. I hate the dry-eyed spaced-out feeling of taking allergy meds. I also hate sneezing constantly. But go read it so I don't have to repeat myself too much.
• One of my gamer-friends.... grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I mean, I like this particular individual a lot, but he's really absent-minded.

  He bought a cup of hot chocolate at the 7-11. And took one sip and forgot about it on my coffee table. When he got ready to go home, I handed him the cup.

  Which he apparently put down on the washing machine in my laundry room while having an after-game discussion in the breezeway outside my apartment. And forgot about it. Again.

  When I found it - going out to do a load of laundry - I found the cup and its contents inside the fucking washing machine. I had to waste a dollar's worth of quarters to run an empty load to wash it out so that my clothes didn't get all chocolate-ified.

  Christ!

• My god, the wind. Does it ever stop blowing?

  Yesterday it was so windy that the siding peeled off the side of my apartment. (by the way, if it's siding on the side, why isn't it "fronting" on the front?) That was sort of scary. There's this huge ripping noise, like someone letting off an allmighty fart and then the power went out. I wasn't sure what happened.

  When the power came back, about an hour later, I found out that the cable was out. It was back on this morning, but I spent yesterday in a state of cable-less-ness. I got a lot of reading done, though.




Posted by tisfan at 11:26 AM

Got the estimate to repair the Buick.

$1,900.

No fucking clue what I'm going to do now.

In the most recent season of SG:1, when Jack gets promoted to Brigadier General, he says "All my life, I been sticking it to the Man. Now I am the Man. I don't think I can be the Man."

In all my life, I don't think I've ever managed to stick it to the Man. Most of my experiences with the Man involve getting it stuck in. And sometimes broken off.

Today... is no exception.

Our story actually starts about five years ago. We were living in a third floor apartment with a crappy AC and 14-foot ceilings. And it was bloody fucking hot that summer. I mean, really... days of 100+ temps in a row. The best thing about the movie Wild, Wild West was that it got me out of the apartment and into an Air Conditioned theater for two hours.

Ok, yes, it was hotter outside - the excuse maintenance always used when we complained about the AC. But honestly, I don't think that 95 degrees in the house indicates a functional air conditioning unit. Do you? I spent at least three trips to the ER, including a short visit to ICU from asthma problems related to overheating.

During this time, Kevin and I were struggling to make ends meet and with the heat being so bad, Clinton had actually put together a power-relief financial aid package to help with electrical costs. I applied for it, since the power bill was something like $190 for one month. I told the power company I was applying for the relief and they said "Ok, you'll probably get it, we'll hold your bill until you hear, ok?" Ok.

Except that we didn't get it. And all the sudden the power company wanted all the power bill for the entire summer. Something like $519. And, while I was at it, they thought I should pay an additional $180 deposit, because we were delinquent on the bill.

Needless to say, things were pretty bad. I managed to get enough of the bill paid to keep our power on, but not much more than that. We were consistantly a month or so behind. Around February of the next year, when I'd just managed to get most of that bill paid off (and the $180 deposit), the power company decided we were just a bad credit risk and insisted on another $210 deposit. (For those of you following along at home, that's $390 in deposits.)

It took a long, long time to recover. I would pay the entire month's bill from two months ago and $20 on the current month's bill, trying to get things paid off. Needless to say, it took a long, long time to get current on the bill.

Finally, around January of 2004, we got current. And stayed current. We haven't had a delinquent bill in over a year. A month or so ago, I started wondering about that deposit.

Today, I found out.

We're not going to get it back as a check or anything... they're just going to deduct our power bill from it until it's all gone. For probably the next four months, I won't have to pay the power bill.

But you know, honestly?

I could have used that $390. I really could have.

FUCK YOU, THE MAN.

My step-mom gave me a subscription to Parents magazine last year for Christmas, and most of the time it's a fairly light, enjoyable read.

They do have the inevitable "moving" story - the woman who's four-month old died from SIDS or the woman who was artificially inseminated because her husband had AIDS and who died from AIDS related complications days before his children were born...

And, of course, they have the awful "400 ways that other parents make cooler things than you do" articles with cakes that look like pocket books or snacks that look like ladybugs or whatever... stuff that I really hope to god that no one actually does because if they do, they should be shot.

But, most of the time, I like it....

And then there's this month's little doozy:

Easy Ways you can FIND MONEY:

Essentially a little lecture about how Americans spend too much money, go too deep in debt and can't afford to invest for their retirements (something we all need to do because Social Security isn't...)

Here's the list of things to do to cut costs followed by my own situation:

Get rid of the second car. Can you carpool, drop your spouse off, etc. Hmph. We had a clunker, now we have my dad's old car that he hated. We still have the Ford because we haven't gotten rid of it yet, but we're not keeping it. We haven't had two cars in.... six years? And when we did, they were both clunkers.

Commuting Costs. Take a bus or train instead of driving. Bah. We live less than .7 miles from Kevin's work. The only thing he could do that would be cheaper is walk and there's this big 6 lane freeway between here and work.

Groceries. Shop for a week's worth of meals at a time. Yep. Do that. Clip coupons. (Don't do that. the sunday paper around here doesn't have them.) Belong to the frequent shopper's program. Do that.

Clothing and Shoes: Do you really need a new black dress or three pairs of heels (can we see who that's directed at? sexist article). Hey, I own exactly one pair of jeans and one pair of shorts and about three dozen tee-shirts, most of which were bought for me by someone else. Do I spent too much on Jess's clothes. Not if I can help it. We usually get her stuff from consignment shops or the Wal-mart or hand-me-downs or as gifts.

Kid's Activities: sports, music lessons, dance lessons. Nope. Nope. Nope.

Phone Service: get rid of land line or cell phone. All ready did that years ago. Shop around for the cheapest cell service. Did that.

Gym or Health Club: Never had one of those.

Resturant Meals: Add up how often you go out. Cut that in half. (Kevin and I go out .... oh, maybe once a month. If that. Dad takes us out from time to time, but he pays, so that doesn't count.)

Takeout food: Ok, so we probably order Chinese or catch fast food at the mall more than we should. We mall it once a week taking Jess to her playgroup because that way she actually gets to play. If I had to feed her before we went to playgroup (and us too) we wouldn't leave the house til 7:30, get to the mall at 8 and she could play for 2 minutes before we went home again. And there really isn't another good day to go.

Coffee Shops: Don't go. Well, I do Starbucks maybe once a month, if that. Usually I'd rather do Wawa's if I can get it, so...

Household Help: "You can live without that lawn service or cleaning lady." What fucking cleaning lady. I'm the damn cleaning lady.

Entertainment: Cut back on your entertainment. Fuck, the last movie I saw uin the theater was at the 2nd run movies about... three months ago? We haven't paid for a babysitter since ... sometime before September, I think.

Vacations: Kevin's sick for his vacation this year. We had sort of tentatively talked about taking a trip, but I don't think we will.

Grooming expenses: Don't get manicures, waxing or tanning treatments. get a haircut only when you need one. Kevin hasn't had a haircut in over a year. I got a small dye job done last week that cost me $22. Which was the first time I'd done anything to my hair since last year.

Books/CDs/Videos: Go to your local library. Yeah, I do already. We get movies from netflix instead of renting them from the blockbuster. These days I might buy something like 5 books in a year and maybe 10 movies. Perhaps I could cut that down some.

Gifts: Cut down on the presents you buy for people. Didn't I bitch about this earlier that I could not buy as nice of presents for people as I'd wanted to?

So, where exactly is this extra money supposed to come from? I'm supposed to give up luxeries I don't have?

I do note, for the record, that they don't say anything about giving up magazine subscriptions.

Yeah. Groovy.

(references to bodily fluids of many sorts to follow. Skip, if you can't handle it.)

[UPDATED on Thursday]

Jess started out this morning by a truly magnificent poo. I'm talking shit of epic proportions. And serious diaper containment failure.

From the back of her knees all the way to her hair, she was covered in poo. I started to undress her and she reached behind her to see what was back there (and lo, it was baby shit) and then took her poo-besmeared hand and grabbed my shirt.

So.... I gave her a bath.

[Laundry count for the day: onesie (1), baby sweatpants (1), Mom's shirt (1)]

She seemed mostly ok, but somewhat cranky - inclined to watch TV and lay on the sofa rather than actually do anything. And quite mad when I decided an hour of TV was enough. After being pinched, howled at and bitten, I relented and let her watch TV until lunch. (Yes, my child is a brat when she doesn't feel well... )

She didn't seem very hungry - sort of picked at her food for a while. Ate most of her oranges, a bit of cheese and absolutely refused to have anything to do with her hotdog.

She went down for her nap easily enough and around three started crying fit to split the walls. I went in to get her...

and she was covered in vomit. She'd thrown up at least twice that I could tell - both under and over the comforter - and was positively drenched.

Very carefully, I picked her up and started to take her clothes off to wash her up. I got the pants off and was taking off the onesie when she threw up again. On herself. All over the changing table. On me.

[Laundry count for the day: onesie (2), baby sweat pants (2), Mom's shirt (2), Mom's pants (1), comforter (1), fitted sheet (1)]

I put her back in the tub, gave her another bath and called Kevin - at this point, I really needed some assistance.

Got her out of the bath and... she threw up. On the towel and herself. And me. And in my hair. Back into the tub.

[Laundry count for the day: onesie (2), baby sweat pants (2), Mom's shirt (3), Mom's pants (1), comforter (1), fitted sheet (1), towel (1)]

Got her out of the tub again and into a clean diaper. She walked around undressed for a while as I cleaned the changing table, the crib and the carpet. Kevin arrived home to help me and I set him to holding the baby and getting her dressed while I took a shower.

We got the laundry started and Jess was sitting in my lap for a while. She reached up, snatched my glasses off my face and... they broke. Not a screw came out, not the lenses popped out or anything easily fixable. But broke. I am now wearing glasses held together by a piece of tape.

Another twenty minutes or so passed. Jess had some juice and promptly threw it up onto herself and the carpet.

[Laundry count for the day: onesie (3), baby sweat pants (2), Mom's shirt (3), Mom's pants (1), comforter (1), fitted sheet (1), towel (1)]

Sent Kevin to the store for pedialyte and saltine crackers. He came back with the above items and a single rose.

"Happy Valentine's Day, sweetie," he said. "Sorry, the rose is burnt."

"Burnt?"

"Well, apparently they were shipped frozen, and one of the cashiers decided to thaw them out by putting them in the microwave."

"Burnt."

"Yep. Sorry about that."

It is now Thursday:

On Tuesday I called the doctor, since Jess still hadn't eaten anything that she hadn't thrown up, found out we'd been exposed to influenza while in the "sick" waiting room on Friday (so that Jess could have her ears checked, since it was three weeks after she'd had an ear infection... best place to get sick is at the doctor's)

The doctor instructed a *half-teaspoon* of pedialyte every ten minutes, increasing the amount slowly every hour that she didn't throw up, and starting back at the beginnging every time she did.

Tuesday, she threw up three times, but was still relatively in a good mood. (I wasn't, but hey, no one cares about that.)

[Laundry count: onesie (5), baby sweat pants (2), Mom's shirt (4), Mom's pants (2), comforter (1), fitted sheet (1), towel (2)]

Yesterday at noon, we were still on the half-teaspoon.

Jess slept almost all day yesterday in small increments of about eight minutes, sucked at the medicine dropped that I was using to administer her fluids, and threw up twice. The first time wasn't that big of a deal, as she hasn't been eating anything but pedialyte and that in tiny doses.

[Laundry count: onesie (6), baby sweat pants (2), Mom's shirt (4), Mom's pants (2), comforter (1), fitted sheet (1), towel (3)]

However...

Around 5pm yesterday she woke up from a nap and started screaming. She cried and cried and cried. She did not want to be held. She did NOT want any pedialyte. She did not want to NOT be held. She did not want to not have her pedialyte. It took me almost a half hour to figure it out, and I only did so when she forced her way off the sofa and snatched the piece of cheese I'd been eating off the computer desk and snarfed it in two bites.

She was hungry.

Ok....

We started with the piece of cheese and attempted some more Pedialyte (hey, other parents out there, does pedialyte make your baby smell weird or just mine?) which she Did Not Want at all.

It was with some trepidation that I gave her a few ounces of milk. Oh! Happy Baby! Joy and rapture! She slurked all the milk and then refused to release the cup, even once it was empty. I waited.

By seven-fifteen, she still hadn't thrown up, so I offered her a moderately small dinner. More milk, some pear bites, and a bit of oatmeal. She ate, she was happy. She went to bed.

At ten-thirty, she woke up screaming, threw up, and had another explosively unpleasant diaper.

[Laundry count: onesie (6), baby sweat pants (2), Mom's shirt (4), Mom's pants (2), comforter (2), fitted sheet (2), towel (3), stuffed lamb (1), sleeper (1)]

(Actually, as of this writing, I'm not entirely positive that the Day is Saved... but it's pretty likely... check back for updates.)

Have I mentioned what it is Kevin does for a living? He babysits a bunch of servers that hold data from pharmacutical companies - which reps visited which doctors and gave out samples, etc etc. This data is held in a database, then backed up and stored off-site. Standard data-storage procedures, really...

Last week, one of the big, big drug-manufacturing companies - in fact, the biggest, and Kevin's company's biggest client (they account for more than 40% of Kevin's company's business) - requested some year-end backups from 2003 that they needed for a lawsuit they're currently involved in.

So.... important data. And a year-end back up is - surprisingly enough - only done once a year.

The request comes in for the data, the shift on duty (not Kevin's shift) checks the company's log listing for what data they have on the off-site. The year-end back up was missing from the list.

Not. Good.

Except that Kevin knows that many of the other employees aren't as vigilent about maintaining those logs as they should be. So he called the off-site storage company and had them send him a list of what they had. There was discrepancy... the year-end backup was there, it just wasn't listed on the DCS's logs. (Data Center Services)

In any case, Day is Saved part one. Kevin finds the missing tapes and recalls them. The tapes arrive on site. Kevin, as is proper, goes to the DBA and turns over the tapes, which are then put in the server where this sort of recovery takes place.

The DBA says, "I'll write-protect these, ok? And leave them here until I'm done, ok?"

Kevin says, "Ok."

Kevin... goes home from work.

Less than an hour later, we're at Jess's playgroup and his phone rings. He talks for a while, then looks somewhat pale.

After he gets off the phone, Kevin tells me that one of the night-shift operators accidentally deleted the year-end backups...

The DBA in question hadn't saved the recovered data that he was working with...

He also - the DBA, I mean - hadn't write-protected the tapes.

However, it is possible to recover data from tapes like this - an erase doesn't actually erase the data, it just erases the table of contents for the data. (It's like taking a 1,000 page doccument and just tearing off the index... the information is still there, you just can't find any of it easily.)

Kevin immediately upon arriving home, started researching software solutions to recovering the data. Amazingly enough, this doesn't cost very much... so, barring more unexpected fuck-ups, the Day is Once Again... Saved.

(I'd have no luck at all...

Gloom, despair and agony, oh me!")

Sorry for revealing my redneck upbringing for a minute there.

Yesterday, Kevin came home for lunch (he's been doing that a lot recently) and before he left I was putting dishes in the dishwasher.

I came across the wishbone from our New Year's Day turkey that I had rather sentimentally saved. My mother and I always pulled it when I was growing up.

I took one end and offered the other to Kevin. He blinked, then took his end.

We pulled.

POP!

The wish-part of the wishbone broke off both legs and flew off into the kitchen somewhere that I have still not found it.

Kevin and I were both left holding short stubby legs.

Typical.

Catastrophic.

Hard.

Drive.

Failure.

FUCK

Explanation will be added as time permits....

(No, I don't have backups, why are you asking silly questions.)

(Addendum #1: those people who feel that I deserve this as some sort of boomarang karma trick for past indiscretions: thank you for your commentary, it has been dealt with appropriately.)

There are some things about having an online diary that are good, and some things that are not so good. And some things that are downright awful.

I keep trying to be elequent here, and it's not working, so I'll just go back to my normal status quo: blunt. I'm good at blunt. I have all the grace and beauty of a 9lb hammer anyway.

The best thing about an online journal/diary/blog is the ability to just sit down and spew things out when they occur to you. I find it to be immensely stress-relieving at times. And I've never had quite the same reaction from a paper-private don't-read-this sort of diary. Believe me, I've tried.

(I might further add that one of my attempts to keep a diary resulted in getting massive shit from my grandmother, who decided to read it and thought that I needed some major professional help. I did. Need it, that was. But I didn't get any. What I did get was a major guilt trip and some serious issues about being able to trust people, since one would think that a private diary should be private, but apparently privacy is for adults only.)

There's a bit of a compulsion about having some sort of audience to write for - even if it's just the few people I'm friends with who keep blogs of their own. It keeps me at this, and I'm sure every one else who blogs agrees - we write partially for our readers.

Part of the problem is, of course, that because what we have is out there on the interweb and available to everyone who can use a search engine...

Yeah.

I've been outed.

It's not the first time it's happened, either. About five years back or so (don't bother combing through the archives, this is before I started this aspect of my blog and I don't have the archives from the 2+ years of journalling I did before.) I made some rather snarky comments about a friend who was acting like a possessive asshole about another friend. It was a stupid situation to witness and I felt obligated to comment about it. Said friend was, of course, none too happy about my negative portrayal of his behavior. And when he brought it up to me, my response was "Well, don't act like an asshole if you don't want people to think you're one."

Of course, it's much easier to blow off a sometimes friend that you don't see very often than it is to blow off someone you care about.

Turns out that my step-mom reads my blog. (which I did Not Know). And you may recall, I said some pretty biting things about our Christmas trip up to see them, week before last.

There are also lots of things I didn't say about that particular trip or the events immediately surrounding it. But these things did contribute to my rather nasty post.

It's difficult to bitch and/or feel justified about bitching when there's something going on in the world that's so tragic you can hardly breathe when you think about it. I mean, who cares that I'm somewhat grouchy when there are 150,000+ people dead in Asia? Unfortunately, it doesn't change the fact that I'm grouchy. It just makes me feel guilty about being grouchy. But it doesn't make me less grouchy... my problems may be small and relatively insignificant. But they still bother me. I just have this load of guilt on top of it.

The people that upset me the most in my life are the people I love. When some woman calls me trailer trash in the convenience store because we're driving a shit-car and Kevin just cut her off for a prime parking space... it makes me angry. For a little while. And then I get over it. When the people I care about make me mad or upset, it festers. I get upset and I keep getting upset. I pick at it. There are things my father's said to me that I've picked over for most of my adult life, despite the fact that he probably doesn't even remember saying them.

I love my step-mom. I really do. Even if I didn't like her for myself, I love her for the change that she's made in my dad's life. I guess, at one point, my dad might have been happy with my mother. But if so, I don't really remember it. I mostly remember them ignoring each other. To me, it's like watching someone do magic tricks, to see my dad actually having conversation during dinner. To care about what other people say or do. My step-mom has done wonders for my dad.

And she's a sweet woman on her own merits.

What I didn't mention about my Christmas visit was that I was already feeling bad when we got there. My father had made it clear that he was gifting us with his old Buick as a Christmas present. Plus, I was pretty sure he intended to purchase a digital camera for me. Both of those things, he did. And for Jess's birthday, he gave her a car seat. And a trust fund for Jess that will probably pay most - if not the sum - of her college expenses.

Do you have any idea what sort of obligation that puts on me? To a man who's birthday I forgot this year because I was so busy that I completely let it slip my mind until after Christmas? I know that gift giving isn't supposed to be a contest, that it's not about who can give more. But jeez, I spend every single fucking holiday feeling inferior. I can't compete. What can you get for the couple that not only has everything, but has everythingx10? I have spent every single Christmas for the last eight years - at least! - feeling pathetic. Feeling broke. I make Christmas cookies because I can't manage my own finances well enough to actually get someone a gift of any value.

I spent $70 that I didn't really have and over 15 hours putting together a scrapbook to give to my dad and step-mom. And for a change, I really felt like I'd been able to do something that they'd like and care about. I was really, really looking forward to them opening it and looking at it.

Instead, I spent a few days feeling slovenly and filthy and lazy and inconvenient. I know, -believe me-, I understand that my step-mom didn't mean for me to feel that way. I know that. But it doesn't change the fact that I spent at least forty minutes hiding in the back bedroom crying over feeling inadequate. And it was partially this very large amount of self-esteem problem that caused the post I made previously. And it is easier to be angry than it is to write about how sick and soulhurt I am about things. That I feel poor and wretched, like someone's charity case. That I feel like nothing I ever do is good enough.

I don't like feeling that way, much less do I feel like talking about it, most of the time. Instead, I tend to get angry. I focus on the few things that I can be pissed about then the whole rest of my fucking life that I feel ashamed of.

That I took it out on my step-mother was not nice of me. It wasn't. I recognize the fact that sometimes I'm just not a nice person. That I hurt her feelings was unintentional. I didn't know she read here, or I would have been a little less harsh.

That being said, I find it runs me into difficulties. Again.

The big question is, of course, now what?

Do I delete the offending entry? Edit it?

And what do I do with the blog? I hate feeling pressured or censored. That I have to watch what I say and what I think. The whole point of my blog is to give me someplace to bitch and rant and rave. If I have to watch everything that I say, I may not say anything at all.

I mean, see, this is the thing. I know Dee wasn't meaning for me to feel the way I did. And I know she wasn't meaning to drive me bats. And I know that she is really doing her absolute best to make things "perfect" for the holidays. And while I may have some problems with perfect - especially where it concerns me, since I'm about as far off from perfect as a person can get - I do appreciate her efforts. Which is why I didn't say anything to her about it.

But this is my blog. In essence, my diary. My thoughts and my feelings and my self. And I like sharing it. But if I have to put on my Lee-press on smile and pretend that everything ok when it's not... or even not vent about something stupid... I mean, once I finished writing the entry, I felt better.

It's difficult to figure out. Where to draw the line between saying what's "acceptable" and what's true.

I'm very upset and very frustrated today.

My child has too many books.

I'm not talking about board books - which she also has a lot of - but of actual paper books.

Years beyond her current reading level. With her great fascination for ripping paper, I suspect it'll be years before I can even read them to her.

I understand this, sort of. I read a lot. Jess's first word was "book". But enough, already!

(My step-mother wants a list of the books Jess currently has to make sure that Jess has the "complete childhood collection". Whatever that means.)

Jess's Books (in no particular order)

Peter Rabbit & Friends (Complete Library)
Busy Day, Sleepy Night
Baby Gonzo's Dream
Baby Crow
The Foot Book
I Can't Wait Til Christmas
But No Elephants
One Fish, Two Fish
Mickey Mouse Meets the Giant
Strawberry Look Book
The Fisherman & His Wife
Stone Soup
King Midas
The Four Musicians
The Boy Who Cried Wolf
The Gift
The Velveteen Rabbit
My Favorite Season
Tiggerific Band
Piglet's Night Light
Surprise Garden
Just So Stories - Kipling
Complete Uncle Remus
Aesop's Fables - the complete collection
Anderson's Faerie Tales
Knuffle Bunny
Tickleoctopus
Snuggle Up, Little Penguin
Wind in the Willows
Sleepy Pig
What Are You So Grumpy About
Spot goes to the Farm
Spot goes to the Park
Miffy's Big Activity Book

(this, by the way, only includes books that she's not allowed to touch. All the board books are in a huge pile all over the floor.)

Right now, we have got absolutely no space in this apartment. We're keeping some thing against the day where we plan to have more children, so Jess's closet is filled to bursting with things like her swing and bouncy seat and old car-seat. Her toy-box in her bedroom is full. FULL, ok? Mostly of books.

Well.

I hope you had a Merry Mid-winter Spending Holiday.

I have had a pretty bad week, honestly. I mean, not awful or anything. Just bad. Annoying. Aggravating.

Let's see....

Macaroni & Fire Alarms

Wednesday night, Kevin and I were playing Worlds of Warcraft (very cool, by the way, so I'll be saying goodbye forever to EQ as soon as my subscription runs out) and I was hungry. So I went into the kitchen to make Mac&Cheese. That's a simple dish, and happens to be one of my favorite quick-foods. Boiled the water, dumped in the noodles, set the kitchen timer. Came back out to play WoW while they cooked.

"Is something burning?" Kevin asks a while - no, I don't know how much later - later.

"Huh?" I went into the kitchen and indeed, something was burning. The kitchen timer was gleefully flashing 10:00, 10:00, 10:00 at me and the noodles were on fire. Apparently I'd forgotten to turn ON the timer, I'd just set it.

"Fuck it," says I, turning off the smoke alarm. "I'm ordering a pizza."

Piss Off, Piss On

Somewhat after the flaming Macaroni incident, Kevin and I wrapped four hundred million presents. Ok, I'm exaggerating, but not much. I decided to put almost all of Jess's presents into one box, given that she doesn't really care much yet about presents. And it gave me less stuff to wrap.

And we packed up our stuff that we could pack - given that things like Jess's playpen/changing table couldn't be packed until morning - which was upsetting the cats.

We didn't know how upset, though, until the next morning when Kevin was packing up the car. One of the cats - I'd guess Sterling, but since I didn't actually see it, I can't beat him to death - pissed all over Jess's present. (We'd been storing the wrapped gifts in the bathroom because we have a LOT of room in there that we don't use for anything.) So I had to unwrap it - pissy paper and all - and unpack it and check all the items inside and then re-pack it and re-wrap it.

Which got us on the road over an hour late.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Headed up to my dad's place, I decided to take a nap. I didn't sleep well Wednesday night. I closed my eyes and pretty much went dead to the world. For about ten minutes. Then it started to pour... loud rain splattered all over the windshield and I woke up in a panic as Kevin hit the breaks trying to avoid running over some guys in a pickup truck. There were seven of them all together - three in the cab, and four in the back. They skidded to a halt underneath the nearest interstate overpass. I bet by the time they did, the four in the back were soaked to the skin. In fifty degree weather. Brr. Better them than me, but still... I panicked badly, because what I woke up to see was taillights getting uncomfortably close and I was too panicked after that to go back to sleep.

We Don't Need No Stinking Baby-Proofing

My step-mother has so obviously not spent much in the way of time with toddlers. She didn't proof a single thing. Not the tree, not putting up her papers, not putting a gate around the fireplace. Nothing. Which meant me, or Kevin, had to spend every single second watching the baby to make sure she didn't destroy every/anything.

This is very, very time-consuming and tiring. Jess likes to explore, and there wasn't a single room in the house that was closed off, so I spent three days chasing a baby. Ug. Fortunately, she didn't hurt herself. Or anything.

I mean, I don't expect her to proof the whole house or anything, but one room that we could have closed off and let her play in safely would have been nice.

Yes, Babies Are Messy. They Are.

Like I said, my step-mom knows nothing about babies. Babies. Are. Messy. Unless you want to plonk the baby in a playpen, you're going to get crumbs, dirt, torn bits of paper or sticky fingerprints on things. Toys will end up on the floor, played with and quickly abandoned. It just happens. Dee about turned herself inside out chasing the baby around with a vaccuum cleaner and a sponge. She had complete fits every time Jess's sippy cup dripped even a little bit. It was exceptionally annoying. I mean, I know, Dee's house is so fucking clean you could eat off the fucking floor, but RELAX a few minutes, would you? A little dirt isn't going to hurt your goddamn museaum of a house.

It definately made me feel unwelcome.

(Not only that, but she was upset that Kevin and I weren't "dressing up" for Christmas Eve dinner. Dressing up when you're going to be feeding/handling a toddler is just asking for stains on your clothes and I don't have so many nice clothes that I can afford to throw out a shirt because Jess gets a gravy stain on it.)

The Baby Essentials

The night before Christmas eve, I went to get Jess a bib for dinner and discovered that in being so mad about Sterling and the pissy present, that I'd gone and forgotten Jess's entire bag. No spare clothes, no bibs, no medication, no fruit-cups or small cans of vegetables. The bag was back on Jess's dresser.

After we found this out, Kevin and I started making plans to go up to Fredericksburg to the Wal-mart to get Jess some replacements.

"Oh, you don't need to do that," Dee kept saying. "We have clothes for her as presents."

"Yes, we do need to go," I said. "It's not just the clothes, it's her benadryl, which we need in case she has any allergy reactions. And baby-tylenol, in case she starts teething."

"No, you don't need to go," she kept pressing the issue. "Nothing will happen. You're just being paranoid." Ok, so she didn't quite say that, but she was pretty damned insistant that we not go.

We did anyway.

We got two outfits, some washclothes, some socks, Benadryl, Tylenol and some milk. I forgot to get food, but the Wal-mart was REALLY crowded.

Extremely Inconvenient

Christmas Eve, we had a hard time getting Jess some lunch, since Dee didn't have any food that wasn't "set aside" for Christmas Eve dinner. Now, don't get me wrong, I know we were having 10 people for dinner, but I really, really don't think that a handful of frozen peas one way or the other was going to make a difference.

Anyway, Dee got pretty hostile about the whole thing.

"Well, if you'd just told me I needed to have all this stuff we could have taken care of it before/" She said, guarding her frozen peas.

"I didn't know we were going to need it, Dee," I said. "Really, she doesn't eat much and it's all packed in her bag which I left on her dresser!"

Finally Kevin broke our rule about shopping on Christmas Eve/Christmas/Holidays and went to the corner store (5 miles away) to get Jess some vegetables and fruits.

(I noticed, when Dee was cleaning up from dinner, that there was rather a LOT of leftover peas)

Lori Is Better??

Christmas Eve dinner was pretty good - although Dee was still pretty snippy with me most of the evening - and Lori, who has two children of her own, although they're adults now, was a lot more understanding about baby messes and getting into things.

It's weird to spend an evening where I liked Lori better than Dee, since usually Lori is really bossy and sort of weird in a Martha Stewart sort of way.

Good Thing For Us We Went Out

Christmas morning, we had breakfast first - eggs, muffins, apples and kiwi.

Turns out that Jess is also allergic to kiwi. A few minutes after she ate a piece, she started breaking out in spots and swelling up. Guess it was good we went out, since we dosed her with the Benedryl and a bit later, she started feeling better again.

We thought.

She seemed a bit subdued, although she was breathing ok and her swelling was mostly gone.

About halfway through opening presents, she threw up. All over Kevin and herself and the rug. Dee wouldn't let me use one of her cloth napkins to contain the mess, so it was worse than it should have been.

We cleaned up as much as we could - changed Jess's clothes (guess it was good we had some spare clothes!) - and went back to present opening.

Not much after that, Jess had an explosive poo and had diaper containment issues. That was the last outfit we had, too. Gee, no, really, we didn't need to go to the Wal-mart.

Chinese Food For Christmas Dinner

Well, because of Kevin's work schedule, we had to leave just after present opening. We didn't get any turkey this year... we had Chinese take out. And played Warcraft. Somehow, this just makes me depressed.

The Crabbity Baby

Jess was very, very spoiled from being held, chased around for three days and has not wanted to go back to normal... so she's been a real pill for the last few days. Cry, scream, no nap... fuss whine moan...

Yesterday, she was such a demon-weasel that I actually yelled at her. "You are aware that there ARE snowbanks out there, right?"

Macaroni & Fire revisited

Last night, for dinner, I went to make macaroni and cheese. Again.

And... Apparently when I made fudge last week, I slopped some sugary stuff underneath the burner.

Which caught fire.

On the plus side, melted, burned sugary stuff smells like s'mores.

On the bad side, the fire alarm woke the baby.

In Need of Shelving

And this morning, while getting my morning Mt. Dew, the shelf collapsed. On me. I was hit with about 40 cookbooks, a large pot, four casserole dishes, five muffin and cookie sheets, a dozen tupperware dishes, three bookshelves and a box of cookie cutters.

Can we just scrub this week and start over?

So many things have gone wrong recently, it's difficult to make an accurate summary of them. I've had a couple of really good days in there, though, so I haven't totally lost my mind. Although it's come close on a few days.

The day after Thanksgiving, while our upstairs neighbors were out of town, it got down into the 40's. On previous chilly days - of which there have not been many - our upstairs neighbors have been kind enough to be baking their apartment to death, so we've not had to bother to heat ours. So, of course, with them out of town, we turned on the heat.

Nada.

Zip.

Zilch.

Inside twenty minutes - the heater for whatever reason draws outside air to heat - the apartment was colder than it had been before I'd turned on the heat. We called maintenance and turned the "heat" off. (After scrambling to make sure the gas bill was paid and all, which it was, but maintenance asked us to check) With three computers in the living room, it didn't really get too cold in here, although it was a little uncomfortable.

Now, technically, we have gas heat - but apparently we don't actually have a furnace. Air passes over the coils that also heat the hot water and... blah blah blah. In any case, in order to work on the "heater" they had to shut the water off for a while. (This will be important shortly)

We weren't actually here when they fixed the heater - we'd gone up to my Mother-in-Law's place. When we came home, they'd fixed the "heater" but also left some space heaters just in case... I'm mildly confused about this, but okay...

That night, we notice that something is wrong with the sink in the bathroom. The water coming out of the tap was coming out in two streams, at high pressure and at opposite angles to each other. However, it wasn't considered, by any stretch, to be a high priority issue, so it took a while for maintenance to come back and fix it.

In the meanwhile, Kevin and I've been going about our normal routine, including brushing our teeth in the bathroom. The water-stream was difficult to use, but not impossible, especially for something as low-water-necessary as brushing one's teeth.

Maintenance dropped by yesterday to fix the sink.

Ug.

Turns out when they closed the water off to fix the "heater" an insect crawled into our pipes. When the water was turned back on, said insect met an untimely end being first drowned, then squashed against the filter at the end of the tap.

Kevin's sum up?

"We've been brushing our teeth in Eau de Insecte all week? Gross."

I have this old friend, you know. Amazing that I managed to hold onto her for as long as I have, but I have. We don't get together much - last year we got together for a bit of Christmas Nostalgia, but that was it for the last ten years or more.

However, we do chat on AIM from time to time, and last night I was complaining about some things and she said "Come now Kelly," (you can tell what an old, old friend she is by the fact that not only does she call me Kelly, but that I let her get away with it) "Let your Inner Bitch out for a while and tell me about it."

That's an amusing statement in and of itself. And somewhat inaccurate. I have many Inner Bitches and they compete for my time.

Inner Bitch #1 - Ermengarde

Ermengarde is my writing bitch. She has two functions of which I'm aware - the first is to nag me about writing. I can't believe it's been three months since you worked on that novel! Your plot is wasting away because you have writers block. Oh, how tres boring that is! She's been quite outspoken lately and I have silenced her recently by doing some unrelated work on a short story.

Her second function - and here is where she's been really vocal - is to complain about other people. She has a few pet peeves; the sloppy writer and the "oh, I always wanted to write."

Oh, and I always wanted to be a brain surgeon! Look, if you want to write then write. If not, shut up about it. Writing is hard. Writing is a lot of work. However, there's no easy way to do it. To write means to write. You must write or you are not a writer. (By the way, KT, this means you, too. You may no longer claim to be a writer unless you WRITE SOMETING DAMNIT.)

Her second peeve is people who say things like "Oh, well, I'm a writer too," and my response is "Well, your journal/blog/emails are crap. Don't you know what a period is? How about capital letters? Is sentence structure a foreign concept to you?" "Oh, well, I only worry about that for important writing."

Excuse moi? All writing is important. Bad habits are easy to get into and hard to break. I'm not saying your post-it notes have to be letter-perfect or anything, but if you habitually use crappy grammar and half-completed incomprehensible sentence fragments, it makes writing something "important" that much harder. Besides, I hate spending 15 minutes trying to puzzle out someone's crappily written email or blog post.

Blake, however, is my inner Feminist. And boy, is she blowing her top recently.

Ok, let me first state that Blake and I have no problems with people who cross-gender in gaming (or in real life, for that matter.) What we have problems with is people who do it badly.

I cross-gender on the Meadehall (heck, at least half of my Hall characters are male) and I cross-gender on EQ (where I got the most excellent comment the other day that I was being "such a guy"). So I understand the interest in playing someone of a different gender.

What pisses me off is the people who do it badly. If you want to play a girl, play a girl, not an over-sexed, slut-child, spandex-wearing whore. If you want to do that, by all means, go play Fallout II and stay out of my house. It drives me nuts. I mean, honestly, jackass, have you ever actually talked to a girl?

I don't know anyone who randomly announces in a conversation to almost total strangers that "Oh, he likes it when I get naked." Well, yes, he probably does like it. But most women I know don't talk about it with people they don't even know.

Part of it is sheer exasperation. The other part of it is that it's insulting. Is that really what you think of women? Or is that the only thing that interests you about women?

I guess it just boils down to: You don't see me playing a guy who does nothing but scratch his balls and breaks things while trying to be manly and fix them, do you? I recognize that men have actual personalities and think actual thoughts. Now, if you can't allow women the same courtesy, don't play them, ok?

So.

It's Saturday.

Backtrack a little to Saturday last week, when I was making plans for the next two weeks.

Plans looked something like this:

Sunday evening: Run combat session for 7th Sea
Monday evening: Play on Meadehall
Tuesday evening: Take Jess out to Lynnhaven Mall's toddler playarea so she can run around.
Wednesday day: do grocery shopping and buy wrapping paper
Thursday: lunch with dad and start laundry
Friday evening: Werewolf game
Saturday: birthday party for Liz and Matt. Take babies to Lynnhaven mall. Have lunch at Applebee's
Sunday - Tuesday: No plans
Wednesday: pack and see how Kevin felt after work (if good, drive to Lynchburg.)
Thursday: if kevin felt bad, drive to lynchburg in morning. Have dinner with mom and steve
Friday: hang out in Lynchburg and be bored all day
Saturday: drive home

What actually happened.

Sunday: attempted to have 7th Sea combat, but was stymied by Liz and Matt's internet connection hacking up a hairball
Monday: Matt at basketball practice. Faced with underpopulated Hall session versus season six Stargate. Stargate won out.
Tuesday: cancelled plans to go to Mall in order to take care of 7th Sea combat. Mom called to cancel plans for thanksgiving. Fished for invitation to dinner at the Lucks.
Wednesday: Kevin slept all day. Talked to MiL, made plans to go to dinner on Friday at her place.
Thursday: did lunch with dad. got groceries. went to Sam's club. did not remember to get wrapping paper. Liz cancelled birthday plans because Penny was sick. Sort of thought about making plans to visit on Friday next week before (or after) dinner with MiL
Friday: cancelled werewolf game because Kevin wasn't feeling well. Did nothing all day. Liz tentatively rescheduled party on Saturday because Penny was feeling better.
Saturday: finally started laundry. Liz firmly cancelled plans for party. Which is ok, since I still haven't gotten any damn wrapping paper.

::sigh::

To everyone who has been wondering exactly what my problem has been recently, allow me to elaborate, but it classifies as TMI, so if that's not your thing, don't clickie the link.

And god forbid, if you clickie the link and then are unhappy about it and complain to me about it, I swear to god and sunny jesus I will beat the everlasting fuck out of you with a wheelbarrow. And since I'm sure that will throw my back all out of whack, please don't, ok?

Despite my OB's cautions when she said the completely non-hormone carrying IUD sometimes made for long or heavy periods, I really wasn't expecting this.

I am on day 11 of my period.

Day 11.

Thus. I am moody. Go away.

The most common letter in the English language is supposed to be "E".

Looking at my keyboard, you wouldn't know it.

Cheap thing.

It's a good thing I touch type, because hunt-and-peck isn't going to cut it for much longer. I got this computer six months ago. And already the A and S keys are totally blank. The M and N keys are badly faded. The E key is a little faded, but it'll probably hold on for another two or three months.

Greaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.

Fools said I,you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you.
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed
In the wells of silence

-- Simon & Garfunkle, Sound of Silence

I have suffered from tinnitus my whole life without knowing what it was or what it was called.

I remember as a child thinking there where ghosts in my room because I could here this endless singing accompanied by a rhythmic knocking, as of someone trying to get in.

When I got older, I saw several different doctors in an attempt to be treated for chronic headache and fatique. I couldn't sleep. I had constant headaches. I started suffering from small episodes of vertigo - the entire world would flip over for a few seconds. The first time it happened to me, I fell out of my desk at school. The doctors never found anything. At least two different doctors told my parents that I was "imagining" it, or it was "a plea for attention." Eventually, after I wrecked my car caused by a vertigo-related episode, I was given medication for headaches. This medication had a tendancy to make me sleepy and mostly stopped the vertigo problems.

My freshman year of college, we didn't have air conditioning in the dorm rooms. I discovered by accident that a fan running in the background - white noise - damnped down the sound in my head enough that I could ignore it. That has been my solution since then. The fan runs. Constantly.

I have never known, in my entire life, more than two or three minutes of absolute silence. Always, always there is this constant, continous noise. Sometimes it's light, like the song of a bell as the ringing actually stops and there's a brief shimmer in the air for a few moments.

Recently it's been like someone shaking a sheet of very thin metal - sometimes they use this as a sound effect for thunder during stage-plays.

I haven't been sleeping. The sounds in my head are loud enough that I can't hear the fan. Sometimes I can't hear people talking.

I really, really hate this.

Sorry I'm not home right now
I'm walking into spiderwebs
So leave a message
And I'll call you back
A likely story, but leave a message
And I'll call you back

--- No Doubt, Spiderwebs

I really don't get that many phone calls, all things considered.

Kevin usually calls once a day or so, around lunch time. Usually if it's a bad day and he wants to bitch about something (which is to say, almost every day). My mother calls about once a month (almost inevitably when I'm gaming). My father calls once a week. And every once in a while I get a phone call from someone else.

So, tell me... why is it that I can't walk half a mile without getting THREE phone calls?

I get all sorts of spam (doesn't everyone?). Offering to change my dick size, to improve my sex-life, to remortgage my house (if only I had a house to remortgage!), to sell me ink cartridges at discount price, to order medication without a prescription... you all know the stuff, I'm sure you all see it regularly...

But this?

This was new...

Subject: Jewish Nation Sucks --kill them --peace --ijrefjrcs

Hey bpvoq, Israeli's Trying to Control USA in next 12 Years so guys beware now before its too late.

yowch!

Hatespam!

I swear to god, I need a vent pipe or something... just some way to blow off steam before I reach critical mass....

Nothing I have to complain about is a major trauma or anything. Which is part of what annoys me so much. If there were at least one big (or even one medium) thing in there, I would feel more justified about getting medieval on someone. But no, I just have this long ass list of tiny little pisseries.

Word versus Spirit

Ok, this is the one that's singeing my hair right now... for the past nine years or so (ever since C. left a paper McDonald's cup half full of Dr. Pepper TUCKED behind the sliding shelf on my video cabinet - which, of course, leaked and I didn't see it for days and days because it was BEHIND the sliding shelf - and got goo all over some of my video tapes as well as attracted a minor horde of insects) I've had this rule in place for my gaming groups. THIS IS MY HOUSE. I don't have a maid service. And I'd like to keep it clean. Leaving your trash around my house (in the trashcan, people, we have several) is cause for being docked experience points. In the case of Shadowrun, you are docked 1 karma per piece of trash you