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 |  "Clean cup! Move down!" ~~the Mad Hatter, Alice in Wonderland, Walt Disney cartoon |
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** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Sometimes in life, you have to pick up and move down the table. A regroup, a fresh start. A clean slate. |
| I have a friend I went to college with. We were in the Geography department together. C has a big fancy job doing GIS (computer mapping) with an engineering firm here in the valley. He loves it. We go out to eat together or shooting once a month or so and shoot the breeze talking shop. He messaged me the other afternoon. He knows I really don't like my job. Apparently he had his one year review. The position he has is one that was basically created FOR him. The firm always outsourced their mapping or did without. Now that C does all their mapping they decided that they can't live without him. They LOVE him. They LOVE GIS. So they have decided his 3-5 year plan is to create a GIS department around him. (They are a big firm with offices all over Montana and branches across the Rocky Mountains.) So he would head the new GIS department and take on 3 or 4 other people and manage them. The upshot of his message? "I need you to go to ESRI (they are the main GIS software people) and get certified by them ASAP." I was like, "Why?" He said, "Because the first person I'm recommending they hire is you!"  I love this kid. (He's the same age as CJ.) I swear, I am pretty sure I'm older than his mom. So, I am in the process of getting certified by ESRI and he has begun talking me up at his work. He said they were projecting they would bring the first person on by the end of the year. I am trying to be positive and hopeful but not too eggs-in-one-basket. We will see. ~~~~ Our boss at our work has made some interesting offers to Hubby that are effectively a money trap for us. Without going into specifics, he basically offered Hubby part ownership in the company as part of his compensation package. A significant portion. We have been talking all along of taking our toys and leaving Montana. We have a grandchild on the way. BUT, CJ and her husband are moving back to TX in July-ish. Back to essentially my hometown. To live literally next door to her biological father. (Literally. The house next to his.) It is a good deal for them, because they won't be paying rent and her husband can finish his EMT training there in TX, but, I have stated unequivocally for the record, I will never, ever, ever, visit them in that house. Ever. Period. Full stop. It's a non-starter for me. I understand her reasoning for doing this, but my heart is broken. I want to live near my daughter and grand children. But, I will not move back to TX. I won't do it. Me getting the GIS job and Hubby taking the compensation package and agreeing to stay another 5-10 years would keep us up here around no family. ~~~ We went to Colorado the weekend of the Broncos playoff game there. (Beginning of Feb.) We stayed with the Outlaws. Hubby and FIL went to the game and Mom In Law and I went to the Butterfly Pavilion. Big fun was had by all. But that raises a whole other set of questions about our staying here. FIL has had quadruple bypass heart surgery. He is very overweight and more importantly out of shape. He also works a more than full time incredibly high stress job. He turns 70 this year. It is only a matter of time before they force him to retire. MIL has had multiple neuro exams and the doctors can't make up their minds, but has been alternately diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers and early onset dementia. She will be 69 this year. She still works, but they don't let her deal with money. They live in the middle of nowhere on the side of a mountain in a two story house with a dangerously steep driveway that gets severely icy at the drop of a hat. We got them a snowblower some years ago, but it is huge and a struggle for them to use. (But it beats Dad having a heart attack trying to shovel their enormous drive way.) Hubby's sister and her husband work most of the time in Antarctica, but when they are in the States, they spend the majority of their time in the Denver area because that is where the main offices for the Antarctic program are based out of. They say they are buying a house/condo/something in the Denver area this summer and are going to quit being citizens of the world, which is what they currently are. SIL and I have had some frank conversations about MIL and FIL. Hubby is in denial. SIL and I agree that something serious needs to be decided sooner than later about MIL, because she is getting worse and worse. She used to be in the stage where she knew she forgot things but could remember if you prompted her. She is now in the stage where she doesn't really know she has forgotten or asked you a question for the tenth time. And then she gets upset about it if you call it to her attention. FIL and Hubby want to keep on keeping on. SIL and I want her to start getting treatment of some kind. Or a firm diagnosis. Or anything. Ignoring it isn't working. FIL still has her doing vital things like paying bills and running errands alone. SIL and I want that shit to stop. We are afraid she is going to get down in the valley somewhere and forget where she is. She has a cell phone and SIL and I work with her on how to use it each time we are with her, but she struggles every time. Half the time it isn't charged and she isn't quite sure how to charge it. She was never an embracer of new tech (they still have a record player in their living room that she had when she was a teen and she still uses it). She refuses flat out to use their computer at all. Anyway, Hubby and I envision a time when we will need to either move one or both of them here or move to them. SIL and I have discussed in detail how she will care for MIL but FIL listens to no one but Hubby. He never has. FIL is kind of an ass. I have assured SIL that FIL can not come live with me. I would shoot FIL and then myself in short order. She laughingly agreed. ~~~~ So that's where we are on all of that. No real solutions. No real endgames. Just a bunch of nebulous maybe things out in our future. I guess we have to wait and see on all of it. |
| Hubby isn't so much into my hobbies. Gaming, reading, comic books, crochet. Under protest he will watch my comic book movies. So, he has been inviting me to partake in his hobbies. I have taken up trap shooting. I watch football. (American football.......Hubby doesn't like soccer.) I watch endless History and Military channel documentaries about random things like WWI, WWII, Desert Storm and the Iraqi Invasion. Things I could honestly give an actual rat's ass about. The latest thing that I've been doing is playing Texas Hold 'em poker. I've only sat at a live table three times. One of the guys we played with last night called Hubby a liar about that.  The problem with being a woman at a poker table full of men is all the blatant misogyny. It's so prevalent, that I can't even make my husband see it. He's blind to it. To the backhandedness of it. Last night I was playing in a hand and it got heads up with me and a man who had bought in late. He was in his sixties? A lot of swagger like he was the shit and he was big money. A boardroom kind of guy. So the turn comes out and it was Q, rag, rag. I'm holding Q A offsuit. There is no chance of a flush or straight draw. The only thing that can beat me is an over pair or a set. And Money Bags isn't representing either. I realize he is holding either a middling pair or a Q something. So, I start betting hard into him. He bites. We play to the river. Rag, rag. Again, I know I've won. We turn over and he has Q 5 offsuit. I win the hand. I'm raking in my chips. The guy to my right quietly says, "Nice hand, well played. You put him on that didn't you." I said, "Thanks. Yeah, I did." Money Bags (who has been drinking quite a bit) shouts across the table, "Nice hand, Little Lady. You got lucky there, I think." I didn't respond and eventually, after getting felted once, rebuying and getting felted a second time, he finally goes the fuck away. But, first of all, I'm forty four fucking years old, I'm a wife, I'm a mother, and I'm about to be a grandmother. Don't fucking call me "Little Lady." You wouldn't call any of the men at this table, "Little Man." Second, when you get beat? Take the beat. Don't start insulting me like you think a Little Lady like me couldn't read your ass and know what the fuck you had in your hand, douche. I didn't "get lucky." I read you. Like a fucking dime novel. And then I beat you. I have been there three times now and every time I deal with some douche and his version of "What are you doing at the Big Boys Table, Cutie?" And Hubby thinks it is me being overly sensitive. No. It is me being fed right the fuck up with the Men Only attitude of the world I keep inhabiting to do things with him. Shooting, Construction, Poker. I even put up with that bullshit in gaming. Which I had to laugh myself silly, I saw an article that adult women are now the largest demographic in gaming. Take that neckbeards. [Embed For Use By Upgraded+] |
| Gah! The months get away from me. I need to blog more. I do okay reading y'all's blogs. But I think, "I don't have anything interesting to say about myself."  Today is Imbolc. That's one of the big eight holidays for me. It is from a Gaelic? Welsh? I'm too lazy to look it up right this second, meaning ewe's milk. Basically it is the celebration of the return of spring. Wait! You say. It's freaking snowing and cold and February! WTH?! I know. But.....there is a symmetry to the pagan year. There are eight holidays. The four "quarter" holidays--the two equinoxes and the two solstices. The solstices are Yule and Litha (people have various names for them, but that's what most call them). The equinoxes are Ostara and Mabon (same deal). Then there are what are known as the Cross Quarter holidays--Imboc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain. They occur on fixed dates: Feb 1, May 1, Aug 1, and Oct 31. That means you are having a holiday roughly every six weeks. Where are you going with this? You ask. I'm glad you asked. When early Reconstructionists or Neo-Pagans sorted out the basic Pagan calendar, they liked the symmetry of these eight holidays as they fell on the year. So in someways, they pulled a Catholic Church and pulled random "ancient celebrations" out of their ass or adapted them from the Christians who had adapted them from the early Pagans in the first place. Imbolc is an adaptation of the Christian celebration of Candlemas, which was an adaptation of early Pagans who welcomed back the spring at this time of year. It is......as the name suggests.....the time of year when animals are birthing and coming into their first milk. It is the first hint that winter will leave and spring will come. The baby lambs being born are the sign that soon they will be gamboling in green pastures and while there may still be snow on the ground, seeds that have been lying dormant, are beginning to wake under that snow, stretching and putting down roots. Now.....some caveats: In the southern hemisphere, the Pagan calendar is reversed. Today is actually Lughnasadh down under, or first harvest--the end of summer has been signaled. Also, in some far northern latitudes (and those without the benefit of the milder weather the UK enjoys from sea currents) where winter won't be letting up until much later? They don't celebrate strictly to the calendar, but to local natural dictates, when their seasonal changes happen. (That can mean several holidays packed into fewer months, though, especially for the harvest holidays.) Anyway, Happy Imbolc to you all.  |
| Back to the salt mines today. The holidays passed too quickly. As, I have noticed, all time passes too quickly lately. I'm trying to do new and different things in this new year. I've been going out and snowshoeing. Not a lot, just puttering around the backyard. It's a 1/4 acre lot, so there is lots of backyard, but still, it's not mountain trekking or anything. Just me and Sofie tromping around in the snow like goobers while the neighbors watch. Hubby laughs at me because I use my poles and everything. Sofie is pitiful. She's only about six inches tall at the shoulder (she's a doxie) and the snow is about a foot deep right now. She does this leaping fish thing in my tracks. Hop! Hop! Leap! Hop! Then she gets tired and watches me round the yard, forlornly. Occasionally she will bark at me as if to say, "The Momma! Come back!" Then she leaps her way back to our porch and off the other side into the deep snow and meets me as I round the yard where she barks some more at me as if to say, "Finally! You made it back from the wilds!" When in reality she can see me the whole time. I'm also teaching myself Irish on DuoLingo. It's free and a lot of fun. I enjoy the learning. I've been listening to TED talks every day again, too. And thanks to my all time favorite TED talk, which I will link below, I'm not eating out lunches for the entire month of January. (That's my 30 day challenge.) http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_cutts_try_something_new_for_30_days |
| I've discovered in life that not everyone is good at gifting. Either giving or receiving. I love gifting. I love to find just the right thing for someone and also? I love receiving gifts. My husband sucks at gifting. He very occasionally is excellent at finding exactly the right thing, but he absolutely completely sucks at receiving gifts. He sits there uncomfortable at being the center of attention. I did gifting for the women in my office on Monday because, as I explained to them, Monday was my winter holiday, ergo gifts. They all brought theirs in today. K- is an excellent gifter. She is great a choosing gifts and she is easy to give gifts to. A- is pretty easy to buy gifts for, but she is what I like to call a scattershot chooser of gifts. She doesn't really know what to get you so she buys tons of little weird chotchky things you'd never get yourself in a million years interspersed with actual useful things you might conceivable want, you get a mishmash of good and bad. S- of the recent red pen incident is a terrible gifter. I've known this woman for going on 12 years, have worked side by side with her for four, and she is awful to buy gifts for because even if you get her exactly what she wanted, she makes weird and awkward, uncomfortable, sometimes flat out rude, comments. "That took tons of thought." Really? And she is an awful gift chooser. In the office over the years, we have had any number of conversations about how scarves are in and how cute scarves look on all of them (they are all fashion scarf wearers) why don't you wear scarves, Teresa? Um, because number one I don't like things around my neck. (I don't wear turtlenecks either.) And number two, I am a size DDD. I put anything, anything at ALL, extra on my chest much less a yard of fabric and suddenly I look like a cartoon hen. And, honestly, who needs that? What does the woman give me every. damn. year? A fashion scarf. I also never ever ever wear holiday pins. Again, she's known me closely for four years. Every year, I get a holiday pin. The mind literally boggles. You have to actually be trying to get gifting that wrong. I'm not complaining about the gifts. I'm grateful she got me gifts. That's not my point. My point is.........I just wind up re-gifting these items every year. To people who do wear fashion scarves. And holiday pins. You'd think after three years she'd say to herself.........hmmm, I've never once seen Teresa wear the fashion scarves and holiday pins I buy her. Perhaps I'll go another way this year. *smh* I can't even with that kind of rut gift buying. If you aren't getting any happiness out of buying the gift or knowing the person is going to have happiness from using the gift, then WHY BUY THE GIFT? I guess, then, my point is I feel bad that I'm just a tick box. I'm a box to check off and move down to the next thing on her holiday list of chores. I'm sad that her holiday season is filled with tick box items. I'm sad that gift shopping isn't more joyous for her. Also, for the visual: [Embed For Use By Upgraded+] |
Inspiration: "Invalid Entry"  Thanks, Lorien  .I've written before that Hubby and I are going to be grandparents in May. So I'm going to be Nana. I'm stoked about being Nana. CJ and I kinda jointly named me Nana years ago jokingly and it stuck. Her cats and my grandhedgehog "call" me Nana. But Hubby has never been anything but the Daddy. (Our daughter calls us "the Momma" and "the Daddy". As in "The Momma, are you going to the store?" "Did you want anything from Dairy Queen, the Daddy?" She has been pestering him to come up with a grandparent name ever since she told us she got pregnant. We've even hung a few on him with all thumbs down from him. My dad was Big Daddy, so that was off the table. He rejected Papaw, Poppa, Pops and PawPaw all out of hand. Gramps, Grampy, and my favorite, Grumpy, were also rejected. His dad is Grandpa, so that is off the table, too. He had been telling us for a while he had a name in mind but he wasn't telling anyone but the baby. We informed him that she talks to the baby and tells him all about Nana, so if he wanted in on any of that he had to cough up a name, quick quick. This past weekend he finally caved and told us. He is going to be Pappy. Pappy. ~smh~ I can't even with Pappy. The thing is, there is this whole long backstory about WHY Pappy. It has to do with a WWII fighter pilot, yada blah blah. And when he was telling me about it, I was like. WTH? It was a weird glimpse into Hubby's rich inner life. He doesn't let me peek behind the curtains on what makes him tick very often, so in someways it was cool and in some ways it was creepy. |
| So in related nonsense, we think the anesthesiologist may have damaged my vocal chords while intubating me. It is not unheard of during procedures, but, damn. Can I not catch a break? I sound like I have laryngitis. I can barely talk above a whisper. We thought at first I had caught a bug while in the hospital. But I have no other symptoms. No runny nose, no coughing, no sneezing, no fever, no sinus drainage, no nothing. I just can't talk. I am going to try to go see my regular doctor on Monday about it, maybe she has something useful to add to the situation. *smh* On a positive note, the stones are all passing nicely, if uncomfortably. Also, Hubby is treating me like the fine china. He isn't allowing me to do anything but sit on my (reconstructed) computer and play games or crochet. We are watching a lot of TV together. Football games, sitcoms. When he breaks out the Christmas movies I'm done.  |
| Yesterday I went to the hospital and had outpatient surgery for my remaining kidney stones. It was a procedure called lithotripsy. They pound you with soundwaves until the stones break apart. In true Teresa fashion this shindig was a comedy of errors from the beginning. We get there a little early (only about 15 mins) because the roads were really bad and Hubby wanted to give us enough time. No problem. We get me checked in. The hospital went to a new computer system about two weeks ago. No one knows how to use the damn thing. So they were having a lady train on the system to check me in. Mmmk. Whatever. She keeps asking me asinine questions and they keep leaning over to her saying, "No that's on the other screen." Then she wants to scan my insurance card. I asked, "Isn't this system throughout the hospital?" I'm assured it is. "Then why is this the third time you have had to scan my insurance card?" Blank looks and crickets. Whatever, they finally finish up with me and we get checked in. A nurse comes to take us back to the pre-op room. She gives me a gown to wear and sorts us out. It is now 10:45. Per instructions I have had nothing to eat since 9 the night before and nothing to drink since midnight. I get dressed and sorted and climb into the bed to wait. Hubby gets out his phone to play poker and settles in to wait as well. Yesterday was a bad pain day. I have had good days and bad days throughout this process and yesterday was a bad day. But according to the instructions, no pills, no water, no food. I was just sucking it up. At 11:30 we are still sitting in the room. Staring at the walls. Finally two nurses come in and begin sorting out my IV and putting name tags on me. One of the tags is a yellow allergy tag. It says in bold letters. "NO KNOWN ALLERGIES" Um, no? I was like, STOP!!! She is all confused and I said, what are you giving me in the IV right now? She said just saline solution, but we also have X, Y and Z to add to it and she holds them all up. I said I don't know what kind of deal y'all are running, but I have a HUGE list of known allergies and two of those things are on it. We are done here, y'all are going to kill me. I started to get up and get dressed. Hubby starts making super angry bear noises. She gets really flustered and starts checking the computer and is like, Holy crap. None of these printed out. I'm like.........well I don't think very much of y'all's new computer system because you just nearly killed me. So we get that sorted. Then, we wait. It's now noon. They assure me the surgery will be at 12:30. I'm like, ok, but I hurt. A lot. Can I get something for that in the mean time? Let's wait, you are almost ready for surgery. Ok, we'll wait. One o'clock rolls around. They come back. We are just waiting for your doctor and for the surgery ahead of you to finish up. OK, but I'm dying of thirst and I hurt, can I please have some ice chips or a pain pill or something here? It will be soon, just wait. Two o'clock rolls around. My doctor comes running in breathing heavy, wearing street clothes. With him is another guy in surgical clothes. My doctor was not aware I was having surgery today. This guy will be doing the surgery. Mmmmk. What kind of shit show is this?! I still hurt and am very very thirsty. I have sand dunes in my mouth. They relent and give me some morphine for the pain. (For the record, not a fan of morphine.) But nothing to drink. At around 2:30 they finally take me to surgery. At 4:30 I wake up in recovery and I'm shaking like a leaf and I begin vomiting from the anesthesia. Awesome. My favorite. Nothing like vomiting when you've had any kind of abdominal work. My entire torso feels like a gang of bikers spent the previous two hours working me over with baseball bats. Then I realize I have to pee. Yay, bedpans. The nurse sorts that out and then walks away looking super concerned. It is literally all blood. I mean they warned me to expect blood in my urine? But when the nurse looks that concerned? I kept expecting the surgeon to come see me, but no. At 5ish they took me back to the preop area for final recovery. Where I got cheese sticks and Sprite. (FINALLY) I also peed again and this time it was all blood again. Again the nurse looked concerned. I was like, y'all are not filling me with confidence. By now it is 5:30 or 5:45 and the ward is quiet and we are pretty much the only people left. Us and one nurse. She gave Hubby a prescription for me and then was basically done with us. She didn't have us sign discharge papers or give me aftercare instructions or anything. She brought me my clothes and was all, you need a wheelchair? Um, yeah? It's two floors down and I barely made it to the bathroom next door. Overall? Not a fan of the process. |
| I like to cook. Like, I really, really enjoy cooking. I enjoy creating new recipes from scratch and then cooking them. Sometimes, I can stand in the grocery store and invent new recipes on the spot just by looking at ingredients. It's amazeballs when it happens like that. But, when I feel crappy all. the. time. I start slacking. Especially when Hubby is on his eggs only kick and he makes his own meals. Because for me, half of the fun of cooking is cooking FOR someone. I kinda get sad just cooking for one. I'd rather just heat something premade up. Unfortunately, that isn't an option for me and my myriad of health problems, many of which start with my diet. My crummy, crappy diet. So, I have to start eating better. Which means, yay! cooking. I love reading Mighty  's blog about all the yummy things she has made. So I'm going to reciprocate. Tonight I created a stuffed chicken breast recipe that was to die for. There is a grocery store I like to go to that, although it is probably the most expensive grocery store in town, it is the best. They have a scratch bakery, a killer meat counter, a completely separate whole foods grocery section, the freshest and best selection of fruits and veggies in Bozeman, and they also have a little specialty cheese selection and an olive bar. I love, love, love this store. Today, I had the butcher butterfly two chicken breasts for me, just make a pocket really-for stuffing. I also bought some seasoned kalamata olives and some peppers in oil from the olive bar. I got some herb and garlic goat's cheese, too. I chopped up the olives and peppers and mixed them with the goat's cheese and a big double handful of baby spinach until it was like a sticky paste and then spooned it into the chicken breasts. I sprinkled some roasted garlic sea salt, some cracked pepper and just a little drizzle of olive oil on each of them and then baked them for about 35 mins. OMG. These things were so freaking good. It was like having a salad course inside the chicken. The saltiness of the olives and the tanginess of the chevre' were to die for. The hint of spiciness the peppers provided was perfect and the spinach wasn't too cooked, it still had the slightest crunch to it which provided a nice texture to the meal instead of just boring chicken. Hubby ate his super quick and said he'd have them again. But the next time he'd like to try it with feta. (He's not a huge fan of chevre', too much....taste.) Which is a big deal, because Hubby, as a rule, doesn't care for chicken. Tomorrow morning I'm going to make up some Irish steel cut oatmeal to have for the week. I do a version with chopped apple pieces and dried cranberries that is super yummy. I will also probably make up tuna for lunches. And possibly I will make up salmon patties for dinners. I had little crab cakes last night and I made a ginger lemon remoulade that was fantastic. I can't wait to have it with the salmon patties. Which, all of this sounds super fancy? But it isn't. It's pretty basic stuff. The remoulade is mayo, some fresh ginger, a little lemon juice and some cracked pepper. But SOOO good on fish. (I hate fish, so it's a big deal for me to find ways to eat it.) I just know the fancy words to use because I watch the Food Network all the time. |
| Once upon a time I was young and stupid. Now I'm old and apparently still stupid. My sister in law T- posted an article from my hometown paper about her sister T-R-. To short it up some, T-R- is basically head bitch in charge on the county's chain gang. She works with non-violent offenders (trustees) to do various chores around the county. Good deeds, good deeds, all very fabulous. Go T-R-. But as I was reading the article, I got about 2/3rds of the way through it, and they were interviewing one of the trustees for his take on T-R-. After all he was a veteran with the program. He has been with them for almost 4 years. Lo and mother fucking behold. It was my ex-husband. Now, I paid very dearly back in 1996 for this asshole to basically fall off the planet when I divorced him in Colorado. (He is from my home county--we met there. We just moved to CO together.) I have literally not heard word one about the man since January 1996. Not. One. Word. And there it was, in black in white. Apparently he has been enjoying the hospitality of the county lock up for at least the last four years. (If I had to guess....it is drug related.) So, let's recap Teresa's love life shall we? CJ's biological father, let's call him Dickhead, spent 9 years in a federal pen for manufacturing meth. Now my first husband is currently in jail. I am AWESOME at picking men. Hunh? Hunh? AWESOME. I told Hubby it is a good thing he found me and basically picked me up like some kind of stray because I clearly can't be trusted to choose men for myself. And if something ever happens to Hubby? I'm never dating another man again. I'm going to date women or get 20 cats and more dachshunds or something. Because clearly, CLEARLY my taste in men can't be trusted. I choose losers. |
| I've talked before about my small office and the women in it. One of them, S- does our Payroll. S- is an interesting woman. S- has worked for the company (s) for over 12 years off and on. From stories she has told, she has what I would characterize as a bad marriage. She also has two teenage boys. She LIVES for her boys. She has no outside friends she does things with. Everything she does, she does with and for her boys. Recently we had some problems in the office with petty cash going missing. It was simply kept in a drawer. Not hidden really, but not easily accessible unless you were one of the four of us. Over the course of a year, A- the office manager would track $20 here and $40 there going missing every month or so. It amounted to several hundred dollars. Once a system where a lockbox that only A- has the code to was implemented, the money situation sorted itself out. No more missing money. Over the years I have worked with her, S- has been an inveterate office supply pilferer. The rest of us have to guard our pens, sticky notes, etc..... Like, hide stuff in our drawers at night, go retrieve things from her desk when she isn't there, that type of thing. When confronted directly, she will look you in the eye and deny having stolen your item, even while holding it in her hand. Just baldface denial. It's pathological. I use the cheap Bic red ball point pens. (Different colors mean different things in the office.) They cost something like $1.96 for a bag of 10 of them at Walmart. I buy my own, because I like the Bic ones. I don't like the gel pens the owner's wife gets us. (I hate gel pens.) I keep them in my desk except the one I'm currently using. That one I keep in my cute little teapot that I use as a pen holder. When I got to work last Wed after missing three days of work for my kidney stones, my red pen was gone from my teapot. GONE. I was incensed, but I just got another one out. I knew where the first one had gone. Today, I went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea and S- had gone to the bathroom and she had left "her" red pen (MY!!!! red pen) on the counter on her way through. I picked it up and calmly walked to my desk and tossed it in my drawer then went back to the kitchen. When she came back through the kitchen 30 seconds later, she looked on the corner of the counter and asked, "Have you seen my pen? I thought I left it on the counter." I looked her dead in the eye and said, "Nope, haven't seen your pen." Then I poured my tea water and went and sat back down. If she can be pathological, so can I. |
Got to have lunch with Kåre Enga in Montana  today. He came over to Bozeman for the annual Cat-Griz game between Montana state and Missoula's University of Montana. A friend of his was coming to the game and Kåre Enga in Montana came to hang and do lunch with me.He brought me a small book of his poetry and read to me from the book he's working on. It is all excellent. And I've decided that he should be an audiobook reader. We sat and talked for several hours. I was sad when I had to punk out on him. I went to the doctor this morning. I have another kidney stone. It's craptasticly painful. I've decided I'm done with them. |
| I'm sitting here, not laying down, waiting for my husband to come home with crackers. And orange Gatorade. I fashioned myself some rudimentary soup out of beef bullion and half a package of Ramen noodles. (I tossed the seasoning packet. Or as I like to call them......the migraine packet.) Today is day three of being home puking. Yay puke. Huzzah.  Hubby keeps telling me to go to a doctor. I told him NOPE. No doctors. This is a simple stomach bug I picked up at work. I'll get past it. So what if I screwed up my neck puking. So what if puking makes my liver hurt like I've been worked over in my body by Apollo Creed. So what if laying down makes me queasy as hell. We ride it out. That's it. We just ride it out. That's the new official policy. We let it ride. It will come right in the end. Some Reiki, some crackers and Gatorade, my homemade soup. I'll be right as rain. While I've been home, I've been applying for jobs online. I hate my job. I'm done doing it. Just done. Also CJ and I have been working on the reading website. To get it up and running. She's home sick today, too. She got cooties at work, as well. I don't think I'll go shopping tomorrow. I'm not feeling it. |
| One of the neat things about being pagan is all of the New Years and harvest festivals. We have Lammas (Aug 1) which is the grain harvest; Mabon (the Autumn equinox-usually Sept 21 or 22) which is the fruit harvest. And then the last harvest is Samhain (Halloween). And if you are American you get the final harvest celebration of Thanksgiving on the last Thursday in November. Samhain is the official end of year/new year on the Pagan calendar. It's nice, because then we get the calendar New Year on January 1st, too. And then if you celebrate it, Chinese New Year usually sometime in February. (I think it's the 8th this year?) It's like a fabulous reason to celebrate the same things once a month for six straight months starting in August. Although, if you are like me, and Halloween is your FAVORITEIST FAVORITE holiday EEEEVVVAAAAARRR!!!!! You just start the celebrating on October 1 and then celebrate Samhain on the 31st like a normal pagan. I have a whole section of Halloween shirts that I pull out and start wearing on October 1 and I almost have so many I can wear them without re-wearing them all month long. It's pitiful. I also have a whole section in my jewelry box of Halloween earrings that go with said shirts. Cats and witches and pumpkins and fall leaves and candy corn and more. They are magical. This month was kinda cool because the full moon was last night, so Saturday it should still be pretty bright and full for all the little tricky treaters. I love seeing all the kids in their costumes. The tiny little people are my favorite. CJ and her hubby made their official announcement on facebook this week. They carved pumpkins. One was a Star Wars pumpkin, one was a Firefly pumpkin and the third tiny pumpkin had a question mark on it. The announcement said they were expecting a little one......fandom to be announced. They are big geeks like me. They said they hope the baby chooses to be a fan of everything like the two of them are, but they won't push fandoms on the child. |
| Have you listened to the new Adele song yet? If not......for the first listen? I recommend you only listen. Go back and watch the video later. The first time through, just............listen. [Embed For Use By Upgraded+] I first heard it today on my way home from work. I'm not sure what it is about her music, but this song is no exception. It dug deep into my psyche and.....it hurt. I almost had to pull over I was crying so hard by the end. Tears were just streaming down my face. All I could think about was my failed relationships with my brothers. I just sobbed. It was like a visceral thing. I'm crying now writing this. I listened to it again when I went and embeded it and I cried then. I think this may be one of those songs I will simply cry every single time I hear it. Adele just speaks to my soul. I am going to pre-order this CD as soon as I'm done with this post. Apparently it comes out Nov 20th. Sometimes I get in a mood and just play her CD 21 when I'm in the car on repeat singing my heart out with every song. Her voice. Her lyrics. They gut me. It's cathartic. |
| Hubby just found out today. The guy who would be his main boss down in Phoenix? Who would ultimately hire him or not? It is the guy who taught him what he knows about running batch plants in the first place from his first ready mix job down in Boulder, CO, 20 years ago. Boom. It's good to know people. |
| Hubby and I work at the same place. We hates our jobs, precious. Hates them. We hate our jobs, we hate our coworkers, we hate them all. Ok........not all. But, most. Upshot? Hubby is actively searching for a new job. And I mean.........searching. The thing is, Hubby has skillz. He has massive marketable skillz. Sadly, Bozeman, MT, is a small market. He can't really market all this stuff here. So, he has been doing a nationwide search. He had a phone interview today for a sweet job in Phoenix, AZ. I'm not so excited about living in Phoenix, AZ, but I am wanting to not have this job. I can't do it anymore. What I really want to do is open the web business with CJ. She is wanting that, too. We like our house. We like Bozeman. We don't like our jobs. Time to move on. |
| CJ and her hubby FaceTimed us today. In April or May we will be grandparents. Yay!!!! Bebbies Bebbies Bebbies!!!!!! We are excited. At least I am. Hubby says that he isn't old enough to be a grandparent. He refuses to be PopPop or Pops or Grandad. He says we need to figure out a different cooler name. I'm Nana. I've been Nana all along. That's what the grandcats and the grand hedgehog call me. I've informed her I will be calling the bebbie Eustace in the meantime. CJ is not amused. K, her husband, giggled. I amuse K. |
| Once upon a time, two years ago, I owned a metaphysical business with a woman who is now a former friend. Things went sideways with her and I and the business at the end of that year. I just last week finished sorting out the legal side of the situation. I didn't want to close the business. I enjoyed it. Very much. But it wasn't sustainable in its then model with me working alone. I had to step back and sort of, punt, which at the time meant closing the business. Now, I've reshuffled the business model to an online only one and picked up two people who will act as contractors along with me. That way I don't have to mess with FICA and other employee tax filing nonsense. Instead we can each file our own tax info. Also, that sets the business up for a sustainable growth model vis a vis adding future employees. So, I have downloaded a generic business plan model from online and I'm slowly filing it out. I want to have all my i's dotted and all my t's crossed before I approach Hubby about going down this path again. He will be very gun shy about me doing this again because last time turned out so awful. So, I need to be clear about everything before he can feel comfortable. |
| I finally finally passed the stone Saturday. It was the size of a grain of sand. Not even. Pitiful. ------- I met with my friends tonight about their wedding on Saturday. I'm excited about performing the ceremony for them. It's going to be a small ceremony up at his family's cabins near Big Sky. It will be in a little clearing by a mountain stream with about 35 people. I'm starting the ceremony with the speech from the marriage scene from The Princess Bride. "Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder tooday. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam..." The bride and groom are stoked. She can't wait for me to call her Pwincess Buttercup during the ceremony. |
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