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Tuesday, February 10, 2009

urggh. I mean ahhh. Of course. Ahhh.

I don't EVEN want to write about today. It was long and frustrating in several ways and that's all I'll say about it. Better tomorrow, right? Meanwhile, here is a picture of a serene and lonely place where you never give yourself a crick in your neck trying to set up a backup computer, or get into arguments with internet service providers about whether you bought or rented a modem, or have to clean up your floor after your dogs find their way into the compost bucket, or anything yucky like that.

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

ugggh

I've had one of those days that seems tailor-made to make me feel like a complete failure. You know the type: the kids bickered at each other all day and disrespected their mom (um, that's me) and I couldn't muster the creative energy to do anything about it besides send them to their rooms and restrict their privileges AGAIN. My first attempt at pickling peppers, involving our entire crop of pepperoncini (came out to 12 quarts or so) ended up being a fiasco wherein it took FAR TOO LONG for the water in the canner to boil, and the peppers are floating in the jars all wrong because I didn't do a hot pack, and I didn't do a hot pack because I didn't want the peppers to be mushy, and then they came out mushy anyway, and mushy pickled pepperoncini are just blech. So I wound up with fourteen jars of blech and a wasted afternoon. The service department at the dealership where the new car is getting new innards (i will not swear i will not swear i will not swear) was supposed to call me today with an update (well, they were supposed to call Monday too, and when I called them on Tuesday they said they'd call me today) and they didn't and I forgot to call them which of course meant that T was ticked off at me on top of everything else. I missed Bible study because the stupid canning was taking too much stupid time so I'm here with just the dog and the cats and my grumpy bad obnoxious frowny self.

And now I'm going to take the dog and go check the mailbox to see if anyone sent me anything fun, like a million dollars or maybe a new attitude. The way today's gone, I'll probably get an unexpected tax bill or a federal jury summons or something extra awesome like that.

EDITED TO ADD:

There was nothing in the mailbox at all, but even so I feel much better. T and the kids came home full of hugs and kisses; apologies were offered and accepted all round; T opined valiantly (and untruthfully) that pepperoncini are always mushy and that mine are just fine. Plus I'm staying up late having just a weeeeeny teeny bit of ice cream while I wait for an upload and a load of laundry to finish. Ice cream always helps; I don't know why I didn't think of that before.

Friday, November 09, 2007

relief

The doctor says it's a keloid scar, slightly inflamed. Completely harmless, although we're to watch it in case it turns out she's wrong, and it starts oozing or anything sinister like that. It's already getting slightly smaller, so odds of that are slim. Thank you all for praying and caring.

This was good enough news that the fact that my beautiful Dart has started spewing oil from its innards for some completely undiagnosable reason (this, in case you were unsure, is a Very Bad Thing) is almost insignificant by comparison.

(Poor T... the guy never gets a rest. He is the one who hired himself as the family mechanic, though.)

Thursday, October 25, 2007

I am too tired to think of a title.

I haven't lost anything substantial in two weeks! That's good news, right? Except that now I totally jinxed myself and who knows what I'll lose tomorrow. Probably my mind.

Also, I stayed up late in spite of a nasty miserable head cold in order to register for next semester's classes, thinking that Friday was the 27th. (Because online registration is fun, OK? No, there's no danger that the classes will fill up. Yes, I have until January to register. Just realize that I'm a nerd and move on.) Except when I looked down at the handy-dandy little date display at the bottom of my monitor I realized (as you doubtless already have) that I had made a mistake and tortured my poor sickly self for nothing. Oops.

In spite of the fact that I'm apparently a total airhead who can't remember what day it is, I am doing OK in school. Music Appreciation is an absolute blast, and I manage to keep myself from being TOO annoying without having to shut up completely. And the English class is going better than I thought. So far I am surprised at how good my grades have been; the entire grade is based on writing papers and essays, which I hate. I'm especially surprised at how lenient the instructor was when he graded my in-class essay, which had to be done in ink, as in, without a word processor, in the process of which I learned two things: 1) My handwriting is abysmal and 2) I rely a bit too heavily on revision and I need to learn to organize my thoughts more thoroughly before I start writing, or else I end up starting over after writing for about forty-five of the allotted 150 minutes, and then turning in a paper that looks like it was written by a Rhesus monkey anyway.

There is actual house news! The house is in escrow (am I the only person on the planet who says that all confidently but in actuality has only a very foggy and incomplete idea of what it means? Probably.). We are making plans for the renovations and repairs we will be doing, and I THINK maybe we can squeeze Pergo floors into the budget, which makes me a happy happy person. There will be painting to do in every single room including both bathrooms (augh), and there will also be a complete replacement of the ceiling in the living room and kitchen, but at least I will have those lovely floors to look forward to. Maybe. I hope. I think escrow closes in mid-November (hi, I'm so on top of things that I have no clear idea of exactly when I take possession of a house), but we won't be moving in right away thanks to all of this exciting stuff that we have get to do first.

I am thinking of a nice creamy, sunshiny yellow and white with lightish, warm-toned hardwoody floors. What does everyone else think? Please comment.

Some people have asked for pictures of the house. Here are a few. Sort of.

It's just a single-story fixer-upper rectangle of a house, nothing to write a magazine article about or anything, but it's ours. Or will be soon. We hope.

There's a little woodsy area below and beside the house. This is the kids' favorite tree. Someone at some point built a treehouse in it, but it's no longer usable; they have plans to build their own. Unfortunately, a lot of this old live oak is dead, so it'll have to be cut away.

I stitched together a panorama of the view from the front yard, and added silly notes; it's here.

Friday, September 08, 2006

in which we officially arrive in the twenty-first century

Last night, just as we were supposed to be dashing out the door to AWANA (for which we are perpetually late because they start the meeting fifteen minutes after T walks in the door needing his supper, and it's a half-hour drive) we got the kind of phone call nobody likes to get. The kind that is all, "dude, we noticed some suspicious activity in your credit card account. Did you spend $1600 at Apple Computer today?" And of course we didn't; we're PC people, not Mac people. (no granola or raw-silk scarves in our house either.) So that began a really fun phone conversation about all kinds of interesting things like: dude, the people bought flowers with our credit card. "Happy anniversary, honey! And they were free, too! Sorta! bonus!"

So now we're sincerely hoping that it was only that account that was compromised, and that this isn't the beginning of some identity-theft hell where we're trapped in a bad Sandra Bullock movie and people in black coats start trailing us and we try to check into hotels but we're already there. Or something. I never actually saw that movie (did anybody?). The good news is that we only had that one credit card account open, and it's actually closed now (duh), so it's not like they can do this with a bunch of other accounts. Which would, uh, not have been the case say a year ago. We're going to sign up for that credit monitoring thing where they notify you anytime anyone tries to open credit in your name, but anyone else who's been through anything similar who has advice about additional steps to take, please please feel free to lay it on us because we are woefully inexperienced as crime victims. Thank you.

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

I am SO SO BITTER right now.

Don't you love it when you're trying not to worry and then you start to worry about how much you worry? Fun.

This is T's first day back at work since before Mother's Day. His back hurts. He's on light duty. He hates the idea of light duty. His boss is either carrying a grudge or terrified he'll re-injure himself on work time and hence make it his (the boss's) problem, and he seems to be wanting to take this out on T in a passive-aggressive way that makes me want to scream. (I do all the 'wanting to scream' and actual [rare bouts of] screaming in our family. T is not precisely unruffled, but things like this, he just plain internalizes, and they manifest themselves as ulcers and backaches and all kinds of crazy fun stuff like that. I think my way is probably healthier, if less comfortable). We are STILL WAITING (as in, I am playing phone tag and hold/answering-system roulette with the office as I type this) for word from the doctor's office as to whether he will or will not be having surgery, which means we are still waiting to find out whether he will ever be able to go back to his normal life or if he'll be on light duty and unable to pick up anything heavier than ten pounds for the rest of his life.

me bitter?

Also, the flaky non-tenant (see Saturday's "definition" post) sent us into a whirl of panic, not the least of reasons for which is that, on the strength of his assertion that he would arrange with the previous tenant to get her things out (they are friends) and his stuff in on the first, we had just bought a new refrigerator for the apartment AND done a really big and necessary grocery shopping trip on the day this would presumably be occurring, when we got home to his message on our answering machine (see above re: flaky) telling us he'd changed his mind. So we've been advertising the place for five days and had two nibbles, one of which already turned out to be nothing, the other of which I am trying not to hope for because I think they think the place is too small and are just too polite (and flaky, me bitter?) to tell us to our faces, so they're just going to let us dangle until we figure out they're not interested. I keep telling myself that all this must be for a very good reason. Maybe God has a tenant who will need that space and love it and be the most awesome neighbor and reliable payer in the world, and maybe today that tenant is going to realize his/her situation and call us. Any time with that, God. Anytime at all. Or maybewe're supposed to give up my cell phone, my website, our DSL, and our XM subscription (this last would be fine with me, but the rest... I drag my feet, shall we say) so that we can Learn A Lesson and eke out an existence without subletting the space at all. Hey, at least I'd have my sewing room. And LOTS OF TIME to use it.

Also, did I mention that T is back at work after two months off? The missing him, it hurts. Especially since he has to spend the night up there tonight and possibly for three nights a week from next Monday until hell freezes over the road to his shop gets fixed. Unless his boss allows him to take the bus even though that would technically cut into his work day. HA HA HA. Tee hee. Yeah, that'll happen. ha ha.

Saturday, July 01, 2006

definition

living beyond yourself (gerund phrase): 1. not smiting flaky people who tell you on the very day they were supposed to be paying you first/last/deposit and moving into the apartment you sub-let that they won't be taking it after all. 2. smiling when you run out of gas 3. not knocking a doctor over the head even when s/he tells you the direct opposite of what the doctor who referred you to her told you about your condition. 4. not blowing up Costco with homemade incendiaries.

I think that about covers my weekend so far.

Sunday, February 26, 2006

Open Letters

Dear Elizabeth:

While I must say that I really do appreciate your special brand of feline affection, with all the textbook purring and paw-patting and lap-snuggling you dish out, I must ask: was it truly necessary to suspend yourself in mid-air from your two claws, dug into the tender flesh of the upper inner part of my left arm, when I went to put you down the other night? The bruises look hideous, and feel worse. I'm just wondering.

P.S. I'm sorry I yelled "You beast!!" at you. I didn't really mean it. It was just... the pain. You understand.

**********************

Dear Mary:

You are the overachiever of cats, I must say. Litter-trained from day one, never using the closet instead except for those early horrible days when you were in heat, perfect blend of condescending affection and haughty back-turning, good gopher-catcher (back when you were allowed outside, that is), never running onto the highway to break all our hearts. Thank you for all of these. However. When you've used the litterbox, is it really necessary to attempt to bury your good deed by scratching and clawing at every neighboring resonating surface? It's surprising how loud your claws can be against a wooden cabinet at 3:30 a.m., it really is. And the litter in the box truly is the only thing that's going to actually move.*

Please think on this.

Love,
the humans who sleep in the room next to your litter-room

*Yes, I know the toilet paper moves too. We're trying to forget that, though, aren't we?

***********************

To the person with the drooping handlebar mustache:

Thanks so much for ruining our dinner last night. It's really no fun to go to a restaurant and spend $50 for dinner if we're going to have, you know, peace and quiet for the whole 45 minutes or so that we're there. Who wants that? Everyone who dines out really wants a loud-mouthed, intoxicated, swaggering jerk to go around to nearly every table, pummeling strangers' shoulders, telling raucous jokes in a voice that would shatter concrete. You certainly took care of this for us, and for everyone else as well. Great job.

P.S. No more beer for you.

P.P.S. You are so not funny.

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Why I've not been posting

Well, it's because I've been sort of drowning, for quite a while, in this ugly murky nasty kind of sea of my unmet expectations for myself, and my frustration with this nasty old cluttered cave of a house, and a good amount of shame, and anger at my total inability to do what it seems like every other person on the planet can do just fine. It doesn't help that our family does not include one (1) person who is tidy by nature; we all like to collect stuff, and in some cases the stuff is quite large, and none of us seems to be able to part with much of anything once we have it, and much of the time we are too lazy to put stuff away. And then I compound things for myself by having the most un-Godly, unladylike, unhelpful reaction possible -- that is, I yell, and then I cry, and then I sit, defeatedly staring into space. And I most definitely do not blog about this, because then I wind up with a bunch of sympathetic emails that make me cry, and at least one recommendation of a System That Works (oh please don't mention Flylady to me, OK?), when I know what works, and that's, well, work. Reading and IMing and Internetting until the wee hours, sleeping till eight-thirty or nine, and then spending a goodly portion of the morning looking at people's blogs and reading comics and news and who knows what all is not really the way to go about maintaining a house, I know this -- and yet it's what I do.

So. Tonight I'm going to bed by ten, and I'm getting up with T in the morning, and I'm going for a walk, and then I'm coming home and doing a couple hours' worth of housework before the kids get up to start school. Sounds a bit more... boring... than what I'm used to these days, but hey, better bored than utterly and completely insane, right?

Friday, December 23, 2005

a few more snapshots

Snapshot 1: C is lying on the couch, finally asleep, doped up on the following:

• Tylenol for fever
• Dramamine because right before she got the fever we still thought we were going to my parents' -- more about that in a second -- and her tummy was upset (um, VERY upset, as it turned out)
• about three episodes of Little House on the Prairie watched back-to-back. Maybe it was two. I lost count.

The date on the snapshot says "December 23rd 2005", which coincidentally is the date marked on the calendar with "Rachel's BDay Mom and Dad's". So, that's not happening, nor is the Nikon getting to take its first walk down Christmas Tree Lane tonight like it was hoping it would.

Snapshot 2: LT is in the front yard, where he was sent by his mother about an hour ago under orders to put away the rakes and shovels he'd left lying on the lawn. Rakes and shovels are put away, and LT, who was 'so bored and there's NOTHING to do outside without [my friend down the street who is also ill, along with his entire family, with symptoms strikingly similar to C's] or C' is now battling imaginary foes and running around in the fresh sixty-degree air and bright sunshine having a grand old time.

Snapshot 3: Mommy's not bummed about missing her birthday party or anything. Naah. Especially not since the rest of the crowd is likely going to take THEIR Nikons down Christmas Tree Lane without her. Nope. Not at all. (item: I know my husband and son well enough to be certain that by the end of this weekend, their sweet thoughtfulness about my birthday will likely have brought me to tears at least once. So I'm genuinely not terribly bummed. Much.)

Whoops! I've just been invited to play Scrabble with my nine-year-old (T's at the store buying sickie supplies and a last-minute gift or two). What sane mother would pass that up to sit in front of this machine whining to her vast blogging public? Not this one.

****EDITED TO ADD****

That little stinker beat me! As a homeschooling mom (who, er, might have helped a little), what can I say but YES! :)

I'm going crazy; want to come along? Archives | Page 1 of 5

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